This section is from the book "Field Book Of Western Wild Flowers", by Margaret Armstrong. Also available from Amazon: Field Book Of Western Wild Flowers.
This is a graceful plant, from ten to twenty inches tall, with long, rather narrow leaves and a slender stem, terminating in a long spray of about ten, rather pretty, little brownish-green or purplish flowers, each less than half an inch long. This grows in shady places.
There are several kinds of Camassia, one eastern; herbs with onion-like bulbs, long, narrow leaves and thin, dry bracts. The flowers are blue of various shades, with six, separate, somewhat spreading divisions, each with a stamen on its base, the anthers swinging, the style threadlike, with a three-cleft tip; the capsule three-lobed, with several seeds in each compartment. Varieties of Camassia have long been cultivated in European gardens. The name is derived from Quamash, the Indian name for these plants.

Stenanthella occidentalis. LILY FAMILY. Liliaceae.
 
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