Finally I have some pictures of this plant's flowers. They're only open in the late afternoon through one night (hence
pomeridianum from post meridium, aka p.m.), a time of day when we don't usually hike. Shown in the second picture at the base of the green flower stalk are the dried leaves, although I don't think they always dry up by the time this plant blooms. True to the common name, when the
rosette leaves are green, they can have a distinctive wavy margin. Also, it's named soap plant for a reason. The best site I've found that talks about its many historical uses is
Wayne's Word.
STRONG WORDS OF CAUTION: As Wayne points out, make sure you're positive of the ID before using soap plant. You'd think no one would mistake
death camas for soap plant, but many do, including myself in retrospect. I've seen both plants growing within a couple feet of each other (Jack's Peak
death camas /
soap plant,
Wilder Ranch
death camas /
soap plant, and Rocky Creek
death camas), and the leaves can look somewhat similar when the variation and extent of waviness is in question. This can be an issue if you dig up the bulb in winter when only the green leaves are visible. As I was looking up information for this post, I found a couple blogs and professional-looking sites with incorrect photo IDs, e.g.,
Plants of California, a Guide to Useful, Edible and Medicinal Plants shows death camas flowers, not soap plant! This is why I try to be as diligent as possible when posting IDs, because I know Nature ID gets picked up by search engines. While I do make mistakes, I also do not claim to be an expert, especially on edible or medicinal plants. It basically comes down to being smart about what we read online.
As a last note, I should mention the lush green stuff in the background is
poison-oak. Funnily enough one of the reported uses of soap plant is to
treat poison-oak rash. While there are many generic "obviously copied from somewhere else" notations of this online, I discovered
Plants for a Future actually includes original references.
ps 01/23/12 - For a soap plant recipe, check out the comments on this
tulipsinthewoods.com blog post.
