Looking Back: A Sure Sign of Spring

Catkins and crocuses aside, there is one sure sign that Spring is here in the foothills. When the south facing mountainside slopes, like those above the Frank Slide trail, are filled with spectacular yellow bouquets, that is when you see the “reason for the season”. Reproduction is happening everywhere as plant life erupts with showy blooms rigged with pistils and stamens looking to carry on their legacies. Those prolific perennial yellow bouquets on the Frank trail are known as Balsamorhiza sagitatta or arrowleaf balsamroot.  

Balsamroot is a member of the sunflower family that has an unusual flower configuration in that it has two types of florets; the tiny center ones being called  “disc” florets and the larger petal ones called  “ray” florets.  Wow, I didn’t realize that that special arrangement existed with this hillside bit of sunshine, until I took a real close look. The center of a balsam root flower is a world unto itself with each of those hundred or so tubular miniature disc florets having its own individual pistil and stamen. So just a personal opinion here but I have always felt that the “pistil” (ahem) should be the male part of this reproduction equation but it’s not, it’s the female part. So the male part is the stamen (stay men).. I get it now.

Parts aside, there is a lot of independent reproduction going on here which is a good thing. Each floret has the potential to produce, when pollinated, a single seed. The seed is described as being a glabrous achene which in this case means a small, dry, hairless single-seeded fruit  with a smooth surface. Why don’t they just say a fruit that is smooth and hairless with a seed inside it instead of this glabrous achene bafflegab?

The center flower disc itself is about the size of a silver dollar. Remember them, the all-silver coin with the two guys in the canoe on the back . The silver dollar coin disappeared from general circulation in 1968 but boy did one ever feel good in the pocket. But I digress.

Like the rest of the sunflower family, balsam root “flowers” are actually inflorescences, flowers that exist on one single stem.  There are no soft velvety leaves on the stem itself.  Once again I had to look closely to see that hidden origin of these stems, camouflaged  under the long soft arrow shaped leaves.  It is in fact a giant fleshy taproot that goes underground as deep as six feet . What?? And here I was thinking I might pull a couple up to create my own balsamroot garden on the hillside above my house. Maybe with a backhoe I could? Perhaps I should gather some of those glabrous achene for planting?

For us locals the balsam presents an eye pleasing yellow carpet on the hillsides in spring but this plant has a way more important indigenous story that predates our invasion of this country.  First Nations peoples here in Alberta and over in BC used this plant extensively for a variety of reasons.  It is almost like it was designed perfectly for them to cover a whole litany of uses.  But in fact it undoubtedly was a long journey of experimentation that led them to discover its uses. 

First off, it is a great food source, and was considered a staple food that provided nutrition and energy, especially when food was scarce. They had ways of roasting or steaming the tap root to make it more digestible and palatable.  And if those roots are as big as they say they are, well that’s a lot of staple. The young leaves can be eaten raw or steamed and those achene seeds can be roasted, eaten or ground into flour.  

It should come as no surprise that First Nations found all kinds of medicinal uses for this plant also. The sticky sap (found that out real quick) can be used as a topical antiseptic for “minor wounds”, so it has anti-bacterial properties. A cut would seem to imply an accident; a minor wound, well, that seems to go more towards things like being grazed by an arrow.  I find it fascinating that First Nations, through the centuries, developed such diverse uses for the plants that were growing around them or that they encountered and tested.  How they discovered some of this usefulness must make for some very interesting reading. There is an awful lot we can  learn from their cultures.

Apparently, burning the roots can be used to treat headaches or to fumigate a room.  Balsamroot was also used for a whole variety of other things medicinal, like pain relief, recovery from colds, and treating burns and insect bites.  My goodness, the deeper you go into the chemistry of balsamroot the more interesting it gets. 

So the roots are high in dietary fibre like fructans (aka fructose) which is reduced to a more digestible sugar by traditional cooking. They also contain volatile oils which sounds nasty, but in fact is essentially essential oils. The roots have a terebinthinate odour because of the volatile oils which is just another big bafflegab word for turpentine smell. 

I became so enamoured with a hillside full of them that I found out near Burmis Lake the other day, that I thought I would try creating a bouquet of flowers with some of those silky spear shaped leaves blended in for effect.  It came out quite lovely, so I took the arrangement to Irene Filafilo at Peaks to Pines in order to bring a bit of spring to a dear friend who can’t go where I go and see what I see.  Thus inspired I went back for more bouquets the next day and this time blended saskatoon blossom branches into the mix for effect. But apparently there is this thing with saskatoon blooms that normally smell very sweet and it is that they develop an unpleasant odour if they are overripe.  As a certified ADHD’er I get hyperfocused and apparently I developed a case of temporary anosmia, because somehow I didn’t notice that they were quite overripe.

So later on I am sitting in my dining room with four bouquets of balsam and Saskatoon arranged as potential gifts and my olfactory senses are saying that something is really, really not right here. Now what? Well, sometimes yah gotta just push past the bad stuff to appreciate the good stuff, so there they sit, lovely arrangements that Peppy Le Pew would be delighted to have. He undoubtedly would say,  “Sacré bleu. It is luv at first smell”