STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Pyramid-shaped, cream colored death camas waved in the breeze sparked by a passing shower as 18 Wood River Valley residents trekked across the hillside in Bellevue’s Slaughterhouse Canyon.

Group leader Kristin Fletcher, a longtime member of the Wood River Chapter of the Idaho Native Plant Society, pointed out a yellow nine-leaf biscuitroot which, she said, really does have nine leaves, she said.

Nearby, they passed a purple low penstemon and a white woodland star, also known as a prairie star.

Columbia puccoon can be seen along numerous hiking trails south of Ketchum right now.

She turned and looked back towards the town of Bellevue, noting that the town had 2,000 people in 1882, along with nine saloons, seven attorneys, a number of hotels and other businesses.

Toddy it is home to 3,000 people, its residents drawn here not by the silver and ore that  earlier settlers chased but by the proximity to public outdoor spaces like the one they were standing in.

“Bellevue grew to 3,000 by 1887, then crashed to 900 because of the Silver Depression of 1990,” she said. “Then we had between one and two million sheep, as Ketchum and Hill City shipped more sheep than any other city in the United States. If this area burned, you would be able to see sheep trails criss-crossing the land.”

Slaughterhouse Canyon east of Bellevue is an ocean of sagebrush, some of which can grow 12 feet tall. It arrived 2.5 million years ago from Asia via the Bering Land Bridge. The sagebrush gradually made its way to the Great Basin via glaciers that moved forward, then receded, then moved forward again.

Old mining tailings in Slaughterhouse Canyon reflect the black slate that miners looked for.

“This Great Basin is more adaptable to rocky conditions and heat and cold. And it’s drought tolerant. It’s been a major shrub here for 3,000 years,” Fletcher said.

The group stopped to look at a rubbery looking round medusa gall that hung from a sagebrush branch. A couple flies have adapted to sagebrush, Fletcher said. They deposit their eggs on it and in the fall the eggs hatch into larvae. As they chew a section of the plant, a growth hormone emits from their mouth, which stimulates the plants to grow tumor-like sponge and medusa galls.

The group made their way past a Columbia puccoon, also known as stone seed.  Native Americans dried used dried power from the roots to paint their faces.  And they used the seeds to treat bladder stones.

“I’ve heard that they used it in a contraceptive tea,” said Fletcher.

There are a variety of parsleys, including this desert parsley. They can be detected by their umbrella-like formation.

Fletcher noted the leaves of what would later bloom into a chocolate lily. Already in bloom: tiny blue-eyed Marys the size of a pinhead, and little yellow violets known as nutall violets or valley violets.

A desert parsley—a reddish umbrella-like plant—stood next to them.

“It smells like talcum bath powder!” exclaimed one of the women.

“Some parsleys are toxic; others are edible,” Fletcher said.

It’s unusual to see trees like these growing on hillsides like that in Slaughterhouse Canyon.

Antelope bitterbrush was just beginning to sport its yellow flowers.

“The bitterbrush is a member of the rose family. So, when it blooms, it smells divine,” said Fletcher. “It’s 14 percent protein so it’s super important for deer and other animals.”

She stopped to listen to a Western meadowlark.

“Meadowlarks like to nest on the ground and feed on grass,” she said. “This male here is declaring its territory.”

About 550 million years ago, mountain building in what is now Nevada shook up an extensive inland sea to the east of the Wood River Valley, Fletcher told the group. Mountains eroded sediments into the basin, which settled and turned into a black slate-like stone that can be seen in the black sands of the Triumph mine area.

The North American plate hit the island. And the continental crust, being lighter, jutted up.

“The Western coast then was the western border of Idaho today. As the oceanic crust went down, molten lava bubbled up. And, as it hit, the crust began sluffing off, which created what today is known as the Idaho Bathlolith. It fractured into slate,” Fletcher said.

The Challis volcanic area is colored orange yellow, purple and blue. And, as more fracturing occurred, magma fluid went into cracks and as it melted it pulled out minerals.

“If you dig into black slate you find veins of lead and silver. That’s why miners would look for this black slate.”

She paused and looked at a clump of cottonwood and aspen on the hillside across the valley.

“It’s unusual to see that. That’s where the earth fractured. And today there’s water there that can provide sustenance for the trees.

COMING UP:

The Wood River Chapter of the Idaho Native Plant Society will staff an information booth and offer a plant identification walk during the Silver Creek Opening Day BBQ at the Silver Creek Preserve Visitor Center from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, May 24. The walk will start at 1:30 p.m.

To learn about other outings, go to
https://idahonativeplants.org/wood-river/.