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Harmless🍽️ Edible

🔵 Camas (camas)

Camassia quamash · Asparagacées

🍁 North America
🧠 To remember it“Blue I eat, white I die.” — flower color is your only safe bet, never rely on the bulb alone.
Camas (camas) — Camassia quamash

🔍 Identify it without mistakes

A bulbous plant of Western North American wet meadows, with an erect flower stalk bearing a star-shaped cluster of bright blue-violet six-petaled flowers, and grass-like, strap-shaped basal leaves. Sometimes forms spectacular blue carpets in spring across Rocky Mountain and Pacific Northwest meadows — but easily confused in bloom AND out of bloom with the deadly death camas, which often grows in the exact same meadows.

  1. blue-violet flowers with 6 tepals, never white
  2. flower stalk 20-70 cm tall
  3. brownish-black bulb the size of a large button
  4. grows in dense carpets in wet spring meadows
Size20-70 cm in bloom
Floweringavril-juin
Habitatseasonally wet meadows, mountain clearings, soils that dry out in summer, from British Columbia to California and east to the Rockies

⚠️ Not to be confused with

Zigadène mortel / death camas (Toxicoscordion venenosum (syn. Zigadenus venenosum))mortel

To tell them apart: only the flowers can reliably tell them apart — edible camas: bright blue-violet flowers; death camas: creamy-white to greenish-white flowers. OUT OF BLOOM, the bulbs and leaves are virtually impossible to differentiate with certainty: NEVER harvest camas outside its flowering season, and mark edible plants while in bloom to dig them up later

Zigadène mortel (death camas) (Toxicoscordion venenosum)le zigadène est la plante mortelle, le camas est comestible

To tell them apart: creamy-white flower (death camas) versus bright blue-violet (camas); out of bloom, no field method allows reliable identification — you must spot and mark edible bulbs while in flower

🍽️ Eating it

Partsbulbe
Seasonrécolte après floraison, juin-août, bulbe repéré en fleurs au préalable
Tasteafter long cooking: sweet, reminiscent of baked pear, fig, or sweet potato; melting, brownish texture

Preparation : slow cooking is essential: traditionally pit-cooked for 24 to 48 hours over rock-heated pits, which converts inulin (indigestible carbohydrate) into digestible fructose, giving it a sweet taste; raw or undercooked, the bulb causes severe intestinal gas

💊 Healing with it

no significant documented traditional medicinal use; primarily a food plant

Level of evidence : traditional use — USDA NRCS Plant Guide — Camassia quamash

⚠️ never consume a bulb you haven't personally identified while in bloom: confusion with the deadly death camas is the #1 cause of fatal plant poisoning among camas foragers

🪓 Other bushcraft uses

  • major trade currency and economic resource among Western Native Nations (Nez Perce, Salish, Cree, Blackfoot)
  • camas meadows were actively managed through controlled burning to promote regrowth — one of the earliest documented forms of Indigenous agriculture in North America
Sources (4)

No entry replaces a certain identification in the field, or medical advice. When in doubt: don't eat it. If ingestion is suspected: poison control or 112/911.