Cleomella serrulata (syns. Cleome serrulata and Peritoma serrulata), commonly known as Rocky Mountain beeplant/beeweed, stinking-clover,[3]bee spider-flower,[4]skunk weed,[5]Navajo spinach,[6] and guaco,[7] is a species of annual plant in the genus Cleomella. Many species of insects are attracted to it, especially bees, which helps in the pollination of nearby plants. It is native to southern Canada and the western and central United States. The plant has often been used for food, to make dyes for paint, and as a treatment in traditional medicine.
In 1901, Edward Lee Greene expanded Candolle's Peritoma, including this species as Peritoma serrulatum DC. and Peritoma lutem Raf. as well as two other species that he knew little about.[11] At least Peritoma serrulata has been determined to be a synonym of Cleome serrulata.[3]
Description
Cleomella serrulata is an annual plant growing to 10–150cm (4–59in) tall, with spirally arranged leaves. The leaves are trifoliate, diminutive teeth,[10] and with three slender leaflets each 1–7cm (0.5–3in) long. The flowers are reddish-purple, pink, or white, with four petals and six long stamens.[7] The fruit is a capsule3–6cm (1–2.5in) long containing several seeds.[13][14] Flowering lasts an extended period because it begins at the bottom of the stalk and works its way up. The onset of flowering and seed pods comes at the same time.[10] Cell wall elasticity is higher in specimens that live in drier climates.[15] The pollen is about 0.015 millimeters (0.00059in) in length with three furrows which have one pore each.[7]
Moisture, temperature, and time are critical in seed germination.[16] Germination occurs during summer and plants can quickly grow to 1–2 meters (3.3–6.6ft). Flowers are often covered with a variety of insects, especially bees. Elongated capsules contain the seeds, which are dark brown to black, curved, and have a wart-like appearance.[10] After the seeds are dispersed, the plants begin decomposing.[7]
Cleomella serrulata is native in southern Canada from British Columbia to Ontario and in the United States from the west coast of the United States east to Ohio and southwest to Texas.[18] It is also naturalized farther east in North America,[13][14][19] including Maine.[20] This species is often found in disturbed lands—such as roadsides, open woods, mountain foothills, and prairies.[5] The plants prefer moist alkaline soils that are light or sandy.[7][9][10] It grows in a wide range of pH levels and prefers mild shade or full sun while being drought tolerant. It is commonly found at elevations of 760–2,200 metres (2,490–7,220ft) in the northern Rocky Mountains. It is often found with the following species: Pascopyrum smithii (western wheatgrass), Pseudoroegneria spicata (bluebunch wheatgrass), Koeleria macrantha (prairie Junegrass), Poa secunda (Sandberg bluegrass), Gaillardia aristata (common gaillardia), Artemisia tridentata (big sagebrush), and Ratibida columnifera (prairie coneflower).[10]
Uses
Cleomella serrulata has been used in the southwestern United States as a food, medicine, and dye since prehistoric times and is one of very few wild foods still in use.[7] As food, its seeds can be eaten raw or cooked, or dried and ground into meal for use as a mush. The tender leaves, flowers and shoots can be cooked and eaten as a cooked vegetable[21] or added to cornmeal porridge.[7][22][23] Among the Zuni, the leaves gathered in large quantities and hung indoors to dry for winter use.[24] The young leaves are cooked with corn strongly flavored with chili peppers.[24][25] To reduce its bitter taste, pieces of iron or rust were sometimes added to the cooking pot.[7] Animals rarely feed on this plant because of its disagreeable taste and odor. Nitrate poisoning can result if too much is consumed. Birds do eat the seeds, and the plant provides good cover for land reclamation and upland birds.[10] The Tewa and other Southwestern United States tribes often included Cleome serrulata as a 'fourth sister' in the Three Sisters agriculture system because it attracts bees to help pollinate the beans and squash.[26]
In traditional Native American and frontier medicine, an infusion of the plant is used to treat stomach troubles and fevers, and poultices made from it can be used on the eyes.[7][27] As a dye, the plant can be boiled down until it is reduced to a thick, black syrup; this was used as a binder in pigments for painting black-on-white pottery at least as long ago as 900-1300 by the Ancestral Puebloans.[7][22][23] The Navajo still use it to make yellow-green dye for their rugs and blankets.[6] Plant paste is used with black mineral paint to color sticks of plume offerings to anthropic gods,[24] and the whole plant except for the root is used in pottery decorations.[24]
↑ Mogensen, Susana H. A. C.; Allen, Phil S.; Meyer, Susan E. (2001). "Prechill Temperature and Duration are Important in Determining Seed Quality for 12 Wildflowers". Seed Technology. 23 (2): 145–150. JSTOR23433047.
↑ Knight, O. W. (April 1904). "Cleome serrulata in Maine". Rhodora. New England Botanical Club, Inc. 6 (64): 79. JSTOR23293557.
↑ Freedman, Robert Louis (1976). "Native North American Food Preparation Techniques". Boletín Bibliográfico de Antropología Americana (1973-1979). Pan American Institute of Geography and History. 38 (47): 119. JSTOR43996285., s.v. Beeweed Pueblo
1 2 "Bee Weed (V. Cornell)". Paleoethnobotany Manual. Northern Arizona University. Archived from the original on March 5, 2016. Retrieved November 15, 2014.
1 2 3 4 Stevenson, Matilda Coxe (1908). "Ethnobotany of the Zuni Indians". Thirtieth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology for 1908. Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office: 69, 82, 96.
↑ Castetter, E. F. (1935). "Uncultivated Native Plants Used as Sources of Food". Ethnobiological Studies in the American Southwest I. University of New Mexico Bulletin. 4 (1): 1–44.
↑ Hemenway, Toby (2000). Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing. p.149. ISBN1-890132-52-7.
Gaillardia is a genus of flowering plants in the family Asteraceae, native to North and South America. It was named after Maître Gaillard de Charentonneau, an 18th-century French magistrate who was an enthusiastic botanist. The common name may refer to the resemblance of the inflorescence to the brightly patterned blankets made by Native Americans, or to the ability of wild taxa to blanket the ground with colonies. Many cultivars have been bred for ornamental use.
Guaco, huaco, vejuco and bejuco are terms applied to various vine-like Central American, South American, and West Indian climbing plants, reputed to have curative powers. Several species in the genus Mikania are among those referred to as guaco. Even though it is not a vine guaco is also used to refer to Cleome serrulata, the Rocky Mountain beeplant.
Monarda is a genus of flowering plants in the mint family, Lamiaceae. The genus is endemic to North America. Common names include bergamot, bee balm, horsemint, and oswego tea, the first being inspired by the fragrance of the leaves, which is reminiscent of bergamot orange. The genus was named for the Spanish botanist Nicolás Monardes, who wrote a book in 1574 describing plants of the New World.
Holodiscus discolor, commonly known as ocean spray or oceanspray, creambush, or ironwood, is a shrub of western North America.
Eriogonum fasciculatum is a species of wild buckwheat known by the common names California buckwheat and flat-topped buckwheat. Characterized by small, white and pink flower clusters that give off a cottony effect, this species grows variably from a patchy mat to a wide shrub, with the flowers turning a rusty color after blooming. This plant is of great benefit across its various habitats, providing an important food resource for a diversity of insect and mammal species. It also provides numerous ecosystem services for humans, including erosion control, post-fire mitigation, increases in crop yields when planted in hedgerows, and high habitat restoration value.
Rhus trilobata is a shrub in the sumac genus (Rhus) with the common names skunkbush sumac, sourberry, skunkbush, and three-leaf sumac. It is native to the western half of Canada and the Western United States, from the Great Plains to California and south through Arizona extending into northern Mexico. It can be found from deserts to mountain peaks up to about 7,000 feet (2,100 m) in elevation.
Ericameria nauseosa, commonly known as chamisa, rubber rabbitbrush, and gray rabbitbrush, is a shrub in the sunflower family (Aster) found in the arid regions of western North America.
Geum triflorum, commonly known as prairie smoke, old man's whiskers, torchflower, three-sisters, long-plumed purple avens, lion's beard, or three-flowered avens, is a spring-blooming perennial herbaceous plant of the Rosaceae family. It is a hemiboreal continental climate species that is widespread in colder and drier environments of western North America, although it does occur in isolated populations as far east as New York and Ontario. It is particularly known for the long feathery plumes on the seed heads that have inspired many of the regional common names and aid in wind dispersal of its seeds.
Cleomella lutea is a species of flowering plant known by the common names yellow bee plant and yellow spiderflower. This annual wildflower is native to the western United States where it is most common in desert scrub and plateau habitats. It is a sprawling plant often exceeding 1 metre in height. The erect stem can be branched and has widely spaced leaves all the way along, each leaf made up of three to five leaflets, which are smaller closer to the top of the plant. Atop the stem is a showy inflorescence of many bright yellow flowers. Each flower has four narrow sepals and four oblong petals around a cluster of six long stamens tipped with knobby anthers. As the inflorescence lengthens at the top of the stem, flowers that have opened and been pollinated drop their petals and the ovary develops into a fruit. The fruits are capsules several centimeters long containing large seeds; these develop at the base of the inflorescence and hang on pedicels. A flowering plant may have blooming flowers at the top of the stem and ripening capsules dangling off the stem further down.
Cleomella is a genus of flowering plants. It includes 22 species of native to North America, ranging from southern Mexico through the western and central United States to western and central Canada. Like their relatives, the cleomes, plants of this genus have traditionally been included in the caper family Capparaceae but have recently been moved into a new family, Cleomaceae. Cleomella are annual wildflowers native to the dry and desert regions of western North America. They are similar to cleomes in appearance. They are erect and branching with leaves divided into three leaflets and inflorescences of yellow flowers with long stamens. Cleomella species are known commonly as stinkweeds or simply cleomellas.
Gutierrezia sarothrae is a species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae known by the common names broom snakeweed, broomweed, snakeweed, and matchweed. It is a subshrub native to much of the western half of North America, from western Canada to northern Mexico, and can be found in a number of arid, grassland, and mountain habitats. It can be toxic to livestock in large quantities, due mainly to the presence of saponins.
Abronia fragrans, the sweet sand-verbena, snowball sand-verbena, prairie snowball or fragrant verbena, is a species of sand verbena.
Cleomella platycarpa is a species of flowering plant in the cleome family known by the common names golden bee plant and golden spiderflower. It is native to the western United States from northeastern California to Idaho, including the Modoc Plateau, where it grows on clay and volcanic soils in the sagebrush. It is an annual herb branching at the base into several erect stems up to about 60 centimetres (24 in) tall. The stems are green tinted with purple, coated densely in glandular hairs, and lined with many leaves. Each leaf is divided into three small leaflets. The top of each stem is occupied by a raceme of many flowers. Each flower has generally four yellow sepals and four yellow petals around a center of many yellow stamens. The fruit is a flat, hairy capsule up to 2.5 centimeters long which hangs on the long, remaining flower receptacle. Found between 800–1200m.
Cleomella oxystyloides is a species of flowering plants in the cleome family, Cleomaceae, which is known by the common name spiny caper. It is native to the Mojave Desert straddling the border between California and Nevada. It grows in rocky and sandy desert habitat, often on alkaline soils. This is an annual herb producing an erect, branching stem which may reach 1.5 meters in height. The leaf is made up of three thick, firm leaflets 2 to 6 centimeters long, borne on a stout, straight petiole. The inflorescence is a dense head of flowers clustered about the stem at the leaf axils, each flower with four small yellow petals. The fruit is a small white or purple nutlet bearing the spine-like remnant of the flower receptacle.
Ceanothus americanus is a species of Ceanothus shrub native to North America. Common names include New Jersey tea, Jersey tea ceanothus, variations of red root, mountain sweet, and wild snowball. New Jersey tea was a name coined during the American Revolution, because its leaves were used as a substitute for imported tea.
Zinnia grandiflora is a species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae known by the common names Rocky Mountain zinnia and plains zinnia. It is native to the southwestern and south-central United States and northern Mexico. Zinnia Grandiflora is used by many Native American tribes for its medicinal properties as well as for its vibrant yellow color for paint and dyes. there have also been experiments done using Zinnia Grandiflora to understand the extent of it's healing abilities.
Galearis rotundifolia is a species of flowering plants in the orchid family, Orchidaceae. It is commonly called roundleaf orchis and small round-leaved orchid. It is a succulent perennial herb native to North America, where it occurs throughout Canada, part of the northern United States, and Greenland.
Salix monticola is a species of flowering plant in the willow family known by the common names mountain willow, cherry willow, serviceberry willow, and park willow. It is native to the United States, where it occurs in the Rocky Mountains region from Wyoming to Arizona and New Mexico. It also occurs in Alaska and parts of Canada.
This is a list of plants and how they are used in Zuni culture.
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