''Perideridia'' is a genus of plants in the family

Apiaceae Apiaceae () or Umbelliferae is a family of mostly aromatic flowering plants named after the type genus ''Apium,'' and commonly known as the celery, carrot, or parsley family, or simply as umbellifers. It is the 16th-largest family of flowering p ...

. Plants in this genus are known generally as yampah or yampa. They are native to western North America. Similar in appearance to other plants of the family

, they have

umbel UMBEL (Upper Mapping and Binding Exchange Layer) is a logically organized knowledge graph of 34,000 concepts and entity types that can be used in information science for relating information from disparate sources to one another. It was retired ...

s of white flowers.

Name

The genus is based on the

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

word ''perideri'', meaning 'necklace'.

Description

The plants have a unique appearance for members of the

parsley Parsley, or garden parsley (''Petroselinum crispum''), is a species of flowering plant in the family Apiaceae that is native to Greece, Morocco and the former Yugoslavia. It has been introduced and naturalisation (biology), naturalized in Eur ...

family, and are tall (1–3 feet) and grasslike, with threadlike leaves 1–6 inches long that resemble blades of grass. The plants effectively mimic tall grass and are virtually invisible until they flower, since they tend to grow in grassy meadows, and prefer full sunlight. Like most members of the parsley family, yampah produces umbels of white flowers. The small roots of yampah are about the size of a large unshelled peanut.

Distribution and habitat

The plants are widely distributed in moist open meadows and hillsides up to across Western North America.

Uses

Plains Indians Plains Indians or Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies are the Native American tribes and First Nations peoples who have historically lived on the Interior Plains (the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies) of North ...

named the plant 'Yampah' and consumed its starchy bulbs, some of which taste like carrots. '' Perideridia gairdneri'' was an important staple crop of Native Americans in Western North America. The nutlike roots of the plant are crunchy and mildly sweet, and resemble water chestnuts in texture and flavor. Yampah roots were either baked or steamed, and were reported to have excellent flavor and nutritional qualities. The seeds of yampah were used as a seasoning and resemble caraway seeds in flavor. Yampah roots contain rapidly assimilatable carbohydrates, and were used by hunters and runners as a high energy food to enhance physical endurance. Uncooked yampah roots are a gentle laxative if consumed in excess and were used medicinally for this purpose. It resembles the highly toxic poison hemlock and water hemlock.

Species

References

External links

USDA Plants ProfileJepson Manual Treatment
{{Authority control Apioideae genera Edible Apiaceae