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General Description: Perennial, parsley-like plant, 20 - 60 cm tall. Leaves glabrous, ternate to pinnately dissected, arranged more or less in one plane. Flowers are sort of salmon-yellow in color, which is most noticeable when compared side-by-side with the bright yellow flowers of sympatric Lomatium species. Prominent, naked root-crown surmounting a simple taproot (Brooks et al. 1991).
Technical Description: Taproot strongly thickened and more or less elongate, with a simple and sometimes deep-seated crown that usually is not conspicuously clothed by old leaf bases; stems or scapes solitary or several, often branched near the base, usually ascending rather than erect, often short at anthesis, mostly 2 - 6 dm tall at maturity, usually with one or more reduced leaves below the middle; herbage glabrous and apparently glaucous; leaves chiefly basal or nearly so, ternate-pinnately dissected into very numerous small and narrow ultimate segments mostly 1.5 - 5 mm long; petiolar sheaths very prominent; flowers salmon-yellow; rays of the umbel mostly 5 - 13, elongating unequally, the longer ones mostly 3 - 6 cm long at maturity; involucel of a few inconspicuous narrow bractlets, tending to be dimidate; fruit elliptic-oblong to broadly elliptic, 8 - 14 mm long, the lateral wings corky-thickened, 0.5 - 1 mm wide; dorsal ribs evident and slightly raised, narrower than the intervals; oil tubes mostly solitary in the intervals, 2 on the commissure (Hitchcock et al. 1961).
Diagnostic Characteristics: This species is often confused with the superficially similar L. grayi, from which it differs in its simple rootcrown, consistently glabrous leaves, more or less salmon-yellow flowers, and narrowly corky-winged fruit (Cronquist et al. 1961). Also, L. salmoniflorum has leaves in one plane; while L. grayi has leaves that are dissected into 100's to 1000's of ultimate segments which occupy several planes (Brooks et al. 1991). The flower color is not nearly the bright yellow color found in sympatric species, such as L. triternatum, L. grayi, L. dissectum, and L. cous. This has been described as salmon-yellow and is most obvious when the flowers are compared side-by-side, which is easy to do with L. grayi because they often grow in close proximity. Simmons (1985) observed that differences in flower color, as well as odor of crushed leaves, can be easily detected in fresh material, but fade when dried.
Infraspecific Taxa:
Similar-appearing Taxa: Similar to the rangewide look-alikes explained in Diagnostic Characteristics, Lomatium grayi is the most similar.
Identification of this Taxon in Idaho: There are at least 8 Lomatium taxa that occur in the Clearwater canyon, but Lomatium salmoniflorum flowers before all others, beginning as early as early February and continuing through March. Flowering in L. grayi and others generally begins in mid-March. So, the best time to look for L. salmoniflorum is late-February and early March. It is somewhat harder to inventory for in late March when all the species are in flower, but the distinctive color of the flowers and foliage of L. salmoniflorum are still recognizable. The fruit characteristics can be used to distinguish it from L. grayi in April, with difficulty, and it becomes nearly impossible later in the season.
Comments (Global): The extreme vegetative similarity between L. salmoniflorum and L. grayi was cited as one reason for combining the genus Leptotaenia and Lomatium (Simmons 1985). Populations of L. grayi occur sympatrically with L. salmoniflorum, but Simmons (1985) never observed evidence of hybridization between them.
Comments (Idaho):
Global: Lomatium salmoniflorum is ranked G3 by the Natural Heritage/Conservation Data Center network. In Washington, L. salmoniflorum is on the Watch list, which includes rare species less threatened in Washington than previously thought (Washington Natural Heritage Program 1997). The Oregon population is considered extirpated (Oregon Natural Heritage Program 1995). The species is ranked S2 in Idaho.
Idaho: It is a Global Priority 3 on the Idaho Native Plant Society list of rare flora in the state (Idaho Native Plant Society 1998).
Global: It is a regional endemic, occurring along about a 100-mile stretch of the Snake River and Clearwater River canyons in west-central Idaho and southeastern Washington. It is seldom collected very far from the canyon bottoms. An historical collection site exists in Wasco County, Oregon ("The Dalles"), disjunct from the Snake-Clearwater portion of its range.
Idaho: Populations are known from two disjunct areas of the Clearwater River drainage. One cluster of populations occurs in the lower canyon between Lewiston and Cherrylane, along the Clearwater River, and a contiguous segment of the Potlatch River canyon upstream to about Juliaetta, Nez Perce and Latah counties. The other cluster of populations is in the vicinity of Kooskia, Idaho County, along the Middle and South forks of the Clearwater River and in the Clear Creek drainage, a major tributary of the Middle Fork just upstream from Kooskia. This cluster has the densest number of populations per occurrence and the densest number of plants in the populations (Moseley et al. 1998).
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| Lomatium salmoniflorum habitat |
Elevation (Global): 300 to 2400 feet
Elevation (Idaho): 800 to 2300 feet
Global: Appears restricted to basalt substrates rangewide. Specific habitats are open communities on cliff faces, ledges and in coarse, stabilized talus. Surrounding vegetation is mostly canyon grasslands and shrublands, but its rocky habitats can be surrounded by ponderosa pine woodlands and mixed coniferous forests.
Idaho: Most succinctly characterized as steep, basalt cliff faces, ledges, and stabilized talus. It occurs on all aspects, but the community is always open with low cover of vascular plants, although northerly-facing populations usually have a high cover of mosses. Zonal vegetation of the surrounding canyonsides ranges from grassland, shrubland, and occasionally ponderosa pine woodlands in the lower canyon to grasslands, woodlands, and even coniferous forest dominated by western redcedar in the upper canyon (Moseley et al. 1998).
Global: L. salmoniflorum seeds are attacked by weevils that lay their eggs within developing seeds and feed as larvae on the endosperm. The larval parasites leave the seeds just before the seeds mature by cutting an exit hole through the seed coat. Smicronyx larvae and adults were the only herbivores on the population studied in Washington by Thompson and Pellmyr (1989).
Idaho: Same as the rangewide comments.
Global: It is among the earliest species to begin flowering each year, the first flowers opening in early to mid-February. Flowering individuals produce 1 - 9 umbels, each umbel with 10 to 300 flowers. Flowers are either staminate or hermaphroditic, and umbels have either exclusively staminate flowers or a combination of staminate and hermaphroditic flowers. The flowers are visited by a wide variety of solitary bees, flies, ants, and beetles. Each flower is capable of producing one schizocarp that eventually splits into two seeds (mericarps). The wind-dispersed seeds mature in April as the above-ground plant parts senesce (Thompson and Pellmyr 1989).
Idaho: Same as rangewide comments.
Phenology (Idaho): Begins flowering in early February and continues through early April. Fruiting begins on some plants in late March and continues through early May. Most fruits are dispersed by at least mid-May.
Global:
Idaho: Most habitat in Idaho occurs on private land and the populations need to be better delineated here. Many populations are traversed by state and county road rights-of-way, and activities in these areas can significantly impact the populations, although L. salmoniflorum does establish itself on roadcuts, sometimes plentifully. State endowment and Nez Perce Tribal lands also contain populations. A small portion of one occurrence is on land administered by the Idaho Transportation Department and used for maintenance and operations activities, as well as an Idaho National Guard Training area (Moseley and Lichthardt 1998). Only three populations occur on federally-managed public lands. Two are managed by the BLM and one by the Clearwater NF. These are vigorous populations and should be given special recognition (Moseley et al. 1998).
General Comments (Idaho): See Moseley et al. (1998) for detailed summary of inventories conducted for L. salmoniflorum in Idaho. A rapid survey was conducted in February and March, 1998, from roads. This thorough survey delineated the general range and abundance of the species in Idaho. More detailed surveys of individual occurrences are needed.
Inventory Needs (Idaho): Two main areas remain to be surveyed in Idaho: the Lapwai Creek drainage and the Snake River Canyon, downstream from the mouth of the Salmon River, generally known as the Craig Mountain area (Moseley et al. 1998).
Brooks, P. J., K. Urban, E. Yates, and C. G. Johnson, Jr. 1991. Sensitive plants of the Malheur, Ochoco, Umatilla, and the Wallowa-Whitman National Forests. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Region. Not paged.
Hitchcock, C. L., A. Cronquist, M. Ownbey, and J. W. Thompson. 1961. Vascular plants of the Pacific Northwest. Part 3: Saxifragaceae to Ericaceae. University of Washington Press, Seattle. 614 pp.
Idaho Native Plant Society. 1998. Results of the fourteenth annual Idaho Rare Plant Conference. Unpublished checklist. Not paged.
Moseley, R.K., J. Lichthardt, S. Walker, and K. Gray. 1998. Salmon-flower desert-parsley (Lomatium salmoniflorum) in Idaho: 1998 inventory results. Conservation Data Center, Idaho Department of Fish and Game, Boise, ID. 9 pp. plus appendices.
Moseley, R.K., and J. Lichthardt. 1998. Idaho National Guard training area inventory: Turkey Island Training Area. Conservation Data Center, Idaho Department of Fish and Game, Boise, ID. 6 pp. plus appendices.
Oregon Natural Heritage Program. 1995. Rare, threatened and endangered plants and animals of Oregon. Oregon Natural Heritage Program, Portland. 84 pp.
Simmons, K.S. 1985. Systematic studies in Lomatium (Apiaceae). Unpublished dissertation. Washington State University, Pullman, WA.
Thompson, J. N., and O. Pellmyr. 1989. Origins of variance in seed number and mass: interactions of sex expression and herbivory in Lomatium salmoniflorum. Oecologia 79(3): 395-402.
Washington National Heritage Program. 1997. Endangered, threatened and sensitive vascular plants of Washington: with working lists of rare non-vascular species. 62 pp. plus appendices.
Author: B. Moseley
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