Edible Vancouver Island March/April 2024

chocolate lilies Consider planting some of these pretty, dark-purple flowers in your garden this year

WORDS SABRINA CURRIE

i love obscure, wild and unusual edible plants. (In fact, I have planted many native species of edible wild plants, bulbs and mushrooms in my kitchen garden at home and in my forest garden at the cottage.) And chocolate lilies fit right into this category. A LILY BY MANY OTHER NAMES Chocolate lily is a common name for up to three varieties of Fritillaria. (Of note: they are a completely different species than the small plant, Dichopogon strictus from Australia that shares the common name, chocolate lily.) Other common names are wild rice, northern rice root, rice root fritillary, Kamchatka fritillary, checker lily (actually a closely related species) and mission bells. Fritillaria camschatcensis and Fritillaria lanceolata are the most common on the coast, with Fritillaria affinis more often found in the interior of B.C. Chocolate lilies get their name more from the colour of their flower petals than their scent–Fritillaria flowers tend to have a smell closer to doo-doo than cocoa. The flowers are a dark purple with brown or yellow, giving this nodding lily it’s mottled or snakeskin type pattern, and six petals or tepals. All three types found in B.C. bloom in early spring on 20-50 cm tall green stems with elegant, thin leaves and feature small white (and sometimes purple) bulbs that grow many small offshoot bulbs that look like grains of rice. TASTE OF LOCAL HISTORY These sweet, dark lilies are natural to the Pacific Northwest and were a regular part of Coast and Interior Salish people’s

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10 MAR/APR 2024 EDIBLE VANCOUVER ISLAND