Camassia 'Caerulea'

Very beautiful, and very useful because of its bloom time. This plant fills the gap after the usual spring bulbs are finished and before ...Read Morethe usual summer perennials begin. Also the blue-violet color is always welcome.

Very persistent (over ten years) but it has never increased for me by offsets or self-sowing. It does not usually need extra water in spring here. It performs well in dappled shade---it's much more shade tolerant than most spring bulbs. It does well with deep planting, up to a foot. The flower scapes have always been self-supporting here.

I don't find this species gets over 3' tall. Cutting the scapes to the ground when blooming is finished is the only maintenance they need. I add compost to all my beds yearly.

I find bulbs often produce 3 flower scapes in their first year, and often twice that in succeeding years. I find there are usually only 2-5 flowers open on any scape at any time, so for maximal impact, bulbs are best planted in groupings of 3-5.

The bulbs are edible and nutritious, and were staple foods of the native Americans. No part of the plant is poisonous, but where they grow in the wild they often grow together with highly poisonous bulbous species whose bulbs look very similar.

I prefer the darker blue cultivars like 'Blue Danube' to the pale blue of the species or 'Coerulea'.