Wet weather spurs profusion of wildflowers

With the wettest June on record, your plants might be wondering what's happening to them.

Are they in a desert or are have they moved to Seattle? This is one of those good news, bad news kind of questions.

If you haven't been to desert or the foothills to see the wildflowers yet, you are in for a show in some places.

Flowers are up and blooming and loving the moisture.

I'm amazed at the number of people who have never seen our state flower, the sego lily. I have lived in Utah almost my entire life, and I have never seen as many sego lilies blooming as I am seeing now.

They are blooming in dry areas along desert roadways and dry, sunny areas along the foothills. They prefer areas between 5,000 and 8,000 feet in altitude.

The flowers are beautiful, but that is not how they got to be the state flower. They are revered here because they saved the lives of many early settlers.

Native Americans, who considered the plant to be sacred, used the bulbs for food. Sego is a Shoshonean word thought to mean "edible bulb." Native American roasted them, boiled them or made them into a porridge dish.

Kate C. Snow, president of the Daughters of Utah Pioneers (1929-33), wrote in a letter on April 17, 1930, that because of food shortages that occurred after the pioneer settlers arrived — particularly in 1848-49 — people were starving.

The Mormon crickets destroyed much of the crop, and there was little to eat throughout the winter.

The pioneers learned to dig and eat sego-lily bulbs. Those who ate the bulbs became knows as "bulb-eaters." It was a title that set them apart — a badge of honor showing they were tough for having done that.

On March 18, 1911, the Utah Legislature declared the sego lily as the state floral emblem. It was selected after polling schoolchildren about their preferences for a state flower.

Botanically, the sego lily is Calochortus nuttalli. Calochortus is a genus that contains 65 species, including the sego and mariposa lilies.

The plant gets its name from Thomas Nuttall, a naturalist, who collected the sego lily in 1811 while traveling along the Missouri River.

Sego-lily flowers are typically white, but some other members of the species have lilac or yellow flowers. The plant has a single grass-like, bluish-green leaf.