The hills are alive

The saying goes that April showers bring May flowers, and that’s certainly true especially on the usually dry hillsides of the Okanagan Valley. I found this field of Spring Sunflowers on Secrest Hill Road above the town of Oliver. Though Kelowna has claimed this sunflower as their city’s official flower, (they call it the Okanagan Sunflower) the sandy hills and benches all around Oliver are filled with these strikingly beautiful wild flowers. Like many native plants it has numerous names including the most common, Arrowleaf Balsamroot. Officially it’s called a Balsamorhiza sagittata and is a member of the sunflower tribe, part of the large Asteraceae family.

Most of the plant is edible, from its roots to its seeds, which is likely why you don’t find these early spring flowers where cattle are grazed. With light silvery green leaves covered in fine woolly hairs each plant can have as many as a dozen bright yellow blossoms set atop each stem. Its long tap root goes deep into the earth seeking and storing moisture for the plant. Though I’ve never dug one up, I’ve read that its root can grow to 10 cm (4 inches) across and can reach up to an astonishing 2.7 m (8.8 feet) deep. However, on most of the plants their taproots are closer to the size of a carrots’. It’s a long lived perennial and can spend its first three or more years just developing the roots and leaves before it sends out any flowers.

In April and May these sunflowers put on an incredible display, but come June and July the flowers go to seed and the leaves and stems die back until you’d hardly know they were there. The roots remain dormant until next year when warmer weather and spring rains bring them back to bloom again.

A good source of photos and info on flowers native to BC can be found at E-FloraBC

http://www.geog.ubc.ca/biodiversity/eflora/

For more detailed info on the Spring Sunflower or Arrowleaf Balsamroot: http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/forb/balsag/all.html