Yampah (1090)

The Yampah found in Cascadia is a borderline food but easily confused with similar carrot family’s deadly poison and water hemlocks.  Like most native NW plants, they can in whole, or in part, make humans sick, many can kill.  ~1 in 10, with proper preparation, are consumable; even then perhaps only a part of the plant (root, stalk, leaf, or fruit) is edible.  It is a herb and a member of the Apiaceae Family and you can find it growing by Kiosk 14 along with Water Hemlock.  Pilchuck Learning Center’s sponsored Western Washington State University SAM Project extinction possibility is slight; abundant, moist and shady, also found in the Rocky Mountains with little chance of extinction.  Again, the eastern Perideridia gairdner and the Perideridia bolanderi (Indian caraway and Bolander’s yampah) are edible.  Our NW species has small roots and is/was not worth the effort for harvesting and when it was, it most likely made its gathers sick.

http://naeb.brit.org/uses/search/?string=Perideridia+montana
https://burkeherbarium.org/imagecollection/taxon.php?Taxon=Perideridia montana
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perideridia_montana
https://plants.usda.gov/core/profile?symbol=PEGAB
https://www.plc215.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Kiosk-14.pdf
http://www.burkemuseum.org/research-and-collections/botany-and-herbarium/collections/database/results.php?Genus=Perideridia&Species=montana&SourcePage=search.php&IncludeSynonyms=Y&SortBy=DESC&SortOrder=Year

Yampah and its widely used roots were/are widely used in America by Native Americans for food.  Along the Pacific Rim what records exist of its use in Cascadia?

100’s
none
1,000’s

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