Prairie turnip
Pediomelum esculentum
Also called Breadroot, Timpsila
We do not have a Blackfoot or Cree name for this one yet. Tell us the name and we will add it, with your word on where it comes from.
A starchy prairie root that was a staple food across the plains, dug in early summer, peeled, braided by its own tails and hung to dry for winter.
Speak with someone who knows this plant before you harvest it.
Take care
- Only dig pea-family roots you can positively identify. Several relatives on this prairie are poisonous.
What it is confused with
Harmful look-alikeLocoweed and milkvetch Oxytropis and Astragalus species
These have many small paired leaflets along a stalk rather than five leaflets spreading from one point, and no edible tuber.
Easily confusedSilverleaf scurfpea Pediomelum argophyllum
Silvery all over, more branched, and has no edible swollen root.
How to know it
- Leaves
- Five leaflets spreading from one point like a hand, hairy, greyish-green.
- Stem
- Densely hairy, standing about a hand-and-a-half high.
- Flowers
- A dense spike of blue to purple pea flowers in early summer.
- Root
- A swollen tuber a few inches down, brown-skinned and white-fleshed inside.
- Timing
- The top breaks off and blows away by midsummer, so it can only be found while it is still standing.
The country it grows in
- Open prairie
- Coulee slopes
Landscape types only. We do not publish where a patch is, and we are not going to.
When it is ready
- Roots June to JulyWhile the plant is still standing and flowering. Once the top blows off you will not find it.
Right now it is July. Something on this plant is in season.
What it is used for
- Food and drink
- Teaching with youth
A staple food across the plains, eaten fresh, dried whole, or pounded into flour.
Dried roots were braided together by their own root tails into long strings and hung for the winter.
How it is prepared
- Food
Peeled and eaten raw, roasted, or boiled into stew.
- Dried and stored
Peeled, braided and hung to dry. Keeps for years.
Protocol
Ask the plant first, and offer something before you take anything. Tobacco is what is most often offered here. Say who you are, and say what the medicine is for.
Harvest the mature plants and leave the small ones to grow. Never take the first plant you find, and never take all of them.
Take only what you will actually use. Medicine picked and then left to rot in a bag was taken for nothing.
Leave the ground as you found it. Put back any dirt you dug up, and return any plant material you do not use to the earth.
Do not gather beside roads, highways or trails, where the plants take up whatever has been sprayed or spilled there.
If you are not certain what a plant is, do not pick it and do not put it in your mouth. Ask someone. Being wrong in the field is how people get hurt.
Native prairie is scarce now, and so is this plant. Dig only in a large healthy stand, take few, and fill the hole.