Chocolate Lilies
With each venture into the forest, wildflowers, shrubs, and fungi are there to be seen. For some of these there is only a 2 week showcase window, but a variety of environments, altitudes, and competition, we can expect to predictably observe a species on a selected trail. On a trip to Mt. Embleton in mid-June, we hoped to see the chocolate lilies in bloom.
Chocolate lilies are a perennial and at maturity stand about 80cm tall. They grow from small, scaly bulbs. The flowers are bell-shaped, brown or purple with mottled green or yellow, down-facing, with an unbranched leafy stalk. It is one of several showy fritarillies (ie yellow bells). It has an unpleasing smell that attracts flies, which help it pollinate. As the flowers pass, the stalk straightens and the seed heads become winged. They are a traditional food of the First Nations people, who dug up the roots and boiled or roasted them.
Chocolate lilies can be found in grasslands and meadows, and sometimes in open forests. We have spotted them in the Upper Grasslands of Lac du Bois, on Mount Embleton and in open areas in the forest plateau south of Kamloops.