Biscuitroots Rediscovered

Across the West’s windswept prairies and desert foothills is a group of wild foods that make a brief appearance in early spring before vanishing from the landscape. These native plants have been staples for generations of Indigenous peoples across the prairies, desert Southwest, and Pacific Northwest, but remain curiously absent from most wild food literature.

A diverse group of mostly low-growing, perennial Carrot family plants, biscuitroots have starchy edible roots that can be dried and pounded into flour to make a bread-like food. Many are referred to as “parsleys” because their leaves are similarly divided into numerous segments. There are enough genera and species to write a book on the subject, but I will share just a few here. I use the term “biscuitroot” broadly, not restricting it to Lomatium species as some authors have done.

Most biscuitroots flower from ankle to calf height and appear rosette-like because their underground stems stop at ground-level or are very short above it. Their tiny, numerous florets range from white to yellow or purple and are held on spokes in umbrella-like clusters. The leaves are pinnately cut one to several times into smaller leaflets and lobes.

Cymopterus & close relatives

One of the best biscuitroots I’ve eaten is mountain springparsley (Vesper montanus syn. Cymopterus montanus, above), which is a funny name choice since it is commonly found in shortgrass prairie habitats. It has blue-green, frilly leaves with short, upright terminal lobes and purple flowers. Each umbellet (smaller cluster within the larger flower cluster) is surrounded by a cup of broad, white, paper-thin bracts with a dark vein down the middle. The big roots have a mild, carroty flavor and pleasing texture. There are more purple-flowering biscuitroots in the same genus, and some authors group them together as Vesper for that reason. These relatives stretch from the central prairies south to the deserts and west to the coastal states, and all can be used similarly. The leaves are edible but don’t taste good.

Plains springparsley (Cymopterus acaulis) and Fendler’s springparsley (Cymopterus fendleri) are similar to Vesper species in many ways, but their leaves are green, shiny, a bit sticky, and nearly flat, and often have elongated ultimate lobes 2 mm wide or less. Each umbellet is flanked by green (to purple), lance-shaped bracts with 1-3 points. These commonly exceed the outer flowers like bouquet greens. Wavy-winged fruits form heavy, roundish, white to pink-purple heads.

Plains springparsley (above) is mostly a plains species; it has white flower heads that often don’t extend past the leaves. Fendler’s springparsley (right), found in the Southwest deserts, has yellow flowers held above them. These traits are variable, however, leading some authors to lump them together as the same species, Cymopterus glomeratus. They are all edible, in any case. They are found from the Great Plains south to the deserts and west to Utah and Oregon. I have found tasty storage roots an inch thick on C. acaulis (pictured at the top of the post) but sometimes all you get are semi-fibrous taproots. The leaves have a pleasant taste. Many people call C. fendleri by the name chimajá, which derives from tsi’maja in Tewa (Námpiːhni).

After you see one biscuitroot, you start to see many. In the desert Southwest, I found a plant with yellow flowers accented in red; it turned out to be purple springparsley or Indian turnip (Cymopterus purpureus, above). The flower stalks are thick, purplish, and hollow, and the big umbels spread to 5.5 inches wide. Umbellet bracts are short and narrow. This species has broad, green to powder-green leaves that are often shiny. The leaflets have incised midveins and triangular tips. I dug one long root that was nearly an inch wide from wet clay in western Colorado, but several thinner ones a month later. All were carroty but somewhat fibrous cooked.

Mountain parsley (Cymopterus lemmonii, right) is unlike the others because it is a taller plant of middle to high elevations, and it flowers for most of the summer. Also called Pseudocymopterus montanus, it is widespread from the central Rocky Mountains south and west to Nevada. Plants grow to about knee height and produce tight yellow (to reddish) compound umbels. Umbellets are backed by 5-10 thin green bracts with translucent margins. The bright green leaves are cut 1-3 times into flexible, feathery lobes that are often long, linear, and pointed, but can also be short, lanceolate, and rounded, like parsley. The leaves and fruits are okay but not my favorite. Taproots are somewhat carroty but also fibrous; I like them cut into rounds. I’ve dug the best roots from newly emerged plants in May, and non-flowering plants growing in deep ponderosa pine duff in June.

The very-similar whiskbroom parsley (Harbouria trachypleura, not pictured), found only in Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, also has thin leaf divisions but they are stiff, broom-like, and aromatic. Its edible roots are sweet but fibrous; the leaves are horribly bitter, both raw and cooked.

Lomatium species

The genus Lomatium is also rich with biscuitroots. We have about 75 species in the West, many called by some variation of “desertparsley” even though they occur in prairies and mountains too. Some taste good, and others have a strong medicinal flavor. Several people have told me that Lomatium cous tastes very good. European explorers learned to eat it from Native people, and documented it in their journals under the name “cows.” It has leaves reminiscent of a springparsley and is concentrated in the Northwest. Lomatium foeniculaceum has gray-green, lacy leaves and excellent roots (Thayer, 2023); it is found in eastern Kansas and Oklahoma, as well as the Great Basin and northern plains. Both of these species have yellow flower heads that spread apart into distinct umbellets. I have yet to meet them in person.

The one I know best is salt-and-pepper (Lomatium orientale, above), named for its white, maroon-speckled flower heads. It is found in dry prairies flanking both sides of the Rockies, as well as the mountains between. Salt-and-pepper has downy leaves made gray-green by fine white hairs. Most leaves bunch at the base on short, hairy, hollow stems. They often arch along the ground in colonies. Naked, thickish flower stalks bear hairy compound umbels packed tightly with tiny white flowers with maroon anthers. Umbellets have as many as 10 narrow green bracts with white margins. Beneath the ground, short stems connect to a thin woody part that eventually widens to a rounded, bulbous tip. The thin part can turn 90 degrees, making the thick part hard to find. The flesh is soft, cream-colored, and palatable.

Poisonous Lookalikes

Although a handful of Carrot family plants are poisonous, the short, dry-land biscuitroots are rarely found with toxic lookalikes. I guess fool’s parsley (Aethusa cynapium) is a possible lookalike—this poisonous invasive has carrot-like leaves and white flowers but the stems are .7-3 feet tall; it is concentrated in the Midwest and Northeast, but I have seen it in Kansas. A short, grazed poison hemlock (Conium maculatum) could conceivably push into biscuitroot territory, but it has quite-broad leaves and normally grows to 3 feet tall or more. That said, make certain of your ID if the flowers are white, or water is near.

Digging & eating

You can dig biscuitroots anytime there are aboveground parts to mark the spot. The peak months are April and May in Colorado, as early as February further south, or into June in the mountains. I like to dig biscuitroots from open areas without tree roots. It is nearly impossible to dig them from hard, dry ground. Instead, go after a few days of soaking rain.

Keep in mind that you kill the plant when you take the root—so dig sparingly and respectfully, only from sizeable populations, spreading out your harvest and planting seeds as you go. Monitor your impact and adjust your approach accordingly. Some species may actually benefit from the disturbance, and if you’re lucky, there may be more than you thought, since biscuitroots can lay dormant for several years, producing aboveground parts only when conditions are favorable. In some areas, the right to dig biscuitroots is reserved for Indigenous peoples. Biscuitroots of our wet, eastern prairies have suffered more from habitat loss than those growing on the high plains farther west.

You can eat the roots of any species you find palatable. Scrape off the skin and eat the mild ones raw or cooked. Of all those I’ve tried, I like the springparsleys (V. montanus, C. acaulis) and salt-and-pepper (L. orientale) best. The boiled texture approaches that of a potato, and they are good briefly roasted too. If you dry and grind them into flour, you can make a dough that holds together fairly well with just water, then mold and bake into hearty, filling “biscuits.”

To dig biscuitroots is to connect into a way of seeing where a landscape too often dismissed as dry and desolate reveals itself as full of nourishment. Look for wild gifts and you shall find them—both tangible and profound.