Anticlea elegans var. glaucus

mountain death camas (Anticlea elegans)

Native

Beaches, prairies, bogs in coniferous forests

July to August

Whitish or greenish-yellow

4″ to 24″

This is a 4″ to 24″ tall, erect, perennial forb that rises from a layered, unclustered, narrowly egg-shaped bulb.

There are 10 or fewer basal leaves. They are grass-like, linear, 4″ to 11¾″ long, ⅛″ to ⅝″ wide, hairless, untoothed, and covered with a whitish, waxy coating (glaucous).

The stem is erect, hairless and glaucous, with a few much smaller leaves.

The inflorescence is a 4″ to 12″ tall, 1¼″ to 2⅜″ wide, branched cluster (panicle) of 10 to 50 flowers at the top of the stem.

The flowers are subtended with egg-shaped bracts which, at full flower, are tinged with pink or purple and are wilted but persistent.

The flowers are bell-shaped and ⅝″ to ¾″ in diameter. There are 3 whitish or greenish-yellow petals and 3 similar, petal-like sepals (6 tepals). The tepals are oblong to egg-shaped and have a green, inversely heart-shaped gland just below the middle.

The fruit is a narrowly cone-shaped, 3-lobed, ⅜″ to ¾″ long capsule.

Mountain death camas (Anticlea elegans var. elegans) is a smaller plant. The leaves are sometimes but not always glaucous. The inflorescence is usually a narrow, unbranched cluster (raceme), sometimes a 1 or 2 branched cluster. In Minnesota the ranges overlap and the two subspecies intergrade.

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