Plant of the day is: Toxicoscordion venonosus or meadow deathcamas
I've got this listed as Zigadenus venenosus and several other sites do as well, including the USDA Plants Database. Take your pick. It looks like Toxicoscordion appeals to a larger taxonomic crowd. Always a good idea to check synonyms for plants if you're having a hard time finding information. This is a pretty neat plant, and QUITE deadly.
Taxonomy, etc.: A member of the Melanthiaceae family whose members reside in the northern hemisphere. It is a family of monocots that contains about 17 genera and 5 tribes. Toxicoscordion is in the Melanthieae tribe along with Veratrum (which has Veratrum nigrum the black false hellebore which is also a sweet plant). Other familiar genera include Paris and the Trilliums. The Toxicoscordion genus is mainly distributed in the midwestern US and western North America. Toxicoscordion has been moved out of Zigadenus because of those crazy crazy molecular phylogenetic scientists throwing down on science. Only about 8 accepted species here, tis a small genus. Quite small.
Description: Distinguished from other members of it's tribe by the presence of narrow, clawed tepals with a single, conspicuous, rounded gland. Hmmm..bet that's fun to look for...
T. venenosum is a perennial bulb that grows up to 70 cm tall with grass like leaves. The bulbs are oval and while they may look a little bit like onions, they DO NOT smell like onions. Sometimes these are confused with wild onions...with deadly results. I always say use your nose people, it's good for these things, maybe we even evolved a purpose similar to that when we were hunters and gatherers? Flowers are cream colored to yellowish. Bulbs are geophytes, fun word to describe a plant that spends part of its life cycle underground, just chillin, waiting for the right time to resume life. Anyways, flowers form in a simple, terminal, spike-like cluster. There are 6 tepals...that claw I mentioned...very lacking to as much as one whole mm long. Gar. That gland is yellowish-green, oval and usually broader than long. Flowers between April and July.
Habitat: Widespread throughout much of the western United States, Canada, and northern Baja California. It grows in dry meadows, dry hillsides, sagebrush slopes, and montane forests.
Propagation: Needs a cold-moist stratification of anywhere from 40 to 90 days. I missed getting my seed into cold stratification and no germination occurred for several weeks. After 2 months with no germination I threw them into a 5C fridge and forgot about them for awhile. About 3 months later they were germinating in their cells still in the fridge. No light requirement for germination but if you sow them deeply they will not germinate (according to some source I forget). And ...they will germinate at 5C or so, which is neat and makes sense as they put on growth in the spring and go dormant during hot summer temps. Shoot for a late fall/early winter stratification to have them ready for cooler spring temperatures for growth as hot temps can prematurely force them into dormancy. Learning the cycles of dormant plants has been a fun challenge. Plants are good teachers, often cruel, but always good. I don't think they are particularly picky about media but go for something well drained.
Fun stuffs: It is quite poisonous, do not eat it. Even if you feel you're pretty metal and enjoy the name deathcamas, do try to refrain. You might die, and that is so not metal. They contain neurotoxic alkaloids like zygacine and esters of zygadenine. Just those names sound bad. Yeesh. Zygadenine is possibly more potent than strychnine...so yeah, gonna want to watch out for that. ONE bulb ingested can be fatal. It basically just stops your heart, complete and total failure. Again, don't eat it you silly humans. Reportedly some memebers of the Lewis and Clark expedition became ill from eating the bulb, because eating random bulbs in the middle of the wilderness is survival tip number 1? Humans... After they were ill...they ate their dogs to sustain them on the rest of the trip. Things you don't learn in school.
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