Is that snow?

Is that snow?

Up ahead in an open space among the sagebrush and rabbitbrush we saw what looked like a clump of snow. Of course in this 90° F heat, it was not. It was the delicate flowering of snow buckwheat, Eriogonum niveum.

Snow Buckwheat blooms from June to September, and by September they have often formed a clump over one foot tall and wide, looking like a pile of snow in the sagebrush desert. It grows east of the Cascades in sagebrush desert and openings of Ponderosa Pine forests.

The over 1/2 inch oblong leaves narrow to a point and cover the clump’s base. Woolly on both sides, the leaves appear a pale green to me.  

The stems branch out with whorls of flowers of six tepals. This species has leafy bracts below the flowers. As you can see, they small tepals are so very tiny.

Okanagan-Colville Native Americans used the plant for colds and for washing cuts.

Some Native American children played a game with the small branches.  The broke off a branch, then the main stem to leave a hook shape. Putting the hook shapes together, they pulled. The child whose stem did not break was the winner.

And so, a poem — a limerick — for Sunday:

Snowy September

On the sandy path we tread,
a pile of snow we spot ahead-
in the heat
we laugh, agreed—
It’s snow buckwheat instead.

SHERI EDWARDS
SUNDAY POETRY/PHOTOGRAPHY
09.08.2024

Also found at https://sheri42.net/2024/09/08/snowy-september/ -- which includes more photos of snow buckwheat.

Sources:

• Burke Herbarium
• Turner, Nancy J., R. Bouchard and Dorothy I.D. Kennedy, 1980, Ethnobotany of the Okanagan-Colville Indians of British Columbia and Washington, Victoria. British Columbia Provincial Museum, page 112

 

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