This season looks to be a good camas season, plenty of moisture this winter should equate to fatter bulbs. We will see. But I was a bit put off last year when I discovered that Salem City Parks had mowed down the camas. I confronted them and they denied it. I had photo evidence and they still denied it. The city is in a habit of mowing the camas fields in mid winter , but I saw last year many signs of later mowing, camas plants with leaves cut square. Apparently, they refuse to listen to experts because of their own misconceptions of land management. I wish they would just admit it and then we can move on to planning better. Earlier this year we saw signs of a heavy truck and trailer in the park, they had left big divots in the camas field, and the tracks yet remain in the field. The trailer probably carried a mower or two.
Minto-Brown Island park looks right now like a lawn suitable for golfing, totally not what it should be at this time of the year. The grass should be up a little at least but it is not.
But as you can tell the camas is just now rising. Baby camas should be flowering in April. If it gets hot I expect the camas to begin growing dramatically. This would now be the time to collect winter camas. The Tualatin Kalapuya calendar (Gatschet 1877) states that camas can be dug before it flowers. This time of the year people may have been running out of winter stores of food and so camas would be a ready and welcome food, that could be gathered in quantities. It might not be the best quality, but when people are hungry it is good enough.
As you can see. some are pretty good size already. Note the full sun environment, which is normally how camas is described. At Bush Park in Salem we have camas that hardly ever sees the sun – yet do fine, and are in some ways doing better than the field in full sun.
Yes, that is all camas, almost no grass!, and a few oaks.
Here is the Bush Park camas, quite a full field of camas, denser that I can seen most places and always under an oak overstory, yet they are taller than the Minto-Brown camas by several inches. All these photos are taken the same day (3/17/24).
This Camas from Minto-Brown has clearly been cut by a machine.
some larger coming in
But there is plenty in the field and I am excited to see it grow.
If you get a chance go explore your own camas fields and send me photos, I can share them on the blog.
Qa’pai!