What Montana's First Peoples Knew About These Plants

You can buy all five of these plants at a nursery this spring. Camas, serviceberry, chokecherry, wild bergamot, yarrow. They are garden plants now, listed in wildflower catalogues and recommended for pollinators and low-water beds, and one of them may already be in your yard.

But they were known and used here long before they were garden plants. Before the nurseries, before the cultivar names, before anybody drew a USDA hardiness map. The people who lived on this land knew which bulb was food and which bulb would kill you, which berry ripened first and which one had to be dried before it was worth storing, which leaf made a tea and which one drew bees, and they kept that knowledge alive across generations by passing it down. That knowledge is older than the gardens.

This post is about the plants, and about carrying that depth of knowledge into the yard with some respect for where it came from.

One thing about how this is written. Specific practices belong to specific peoples, and those practices are theirs to tell in their own terms. Where the public ethnobotanical record is clear, this post states it plainly. Where it isn't, it stays general rather than guessing. Nothing in this post is a how-to for harvesting on land that isn't yours. What it is, is a longer view of five plants you can grow, and why they were never really "new."

Why these five, and why they matter in a Montana garden

Two things are true about all five of these plants at once.

First, they evolved here. They are adapted to Montana's cold, its short and erratic seasons, its alkaline soils and its dry air, and that is exactly why they survive in Montana yards when so much else fails. A plant that has been growing here for thousands of years does not need to be coddled the way an import does.

Second, they were known here in depth. No garden writer discovered them. No catalogue introduced them. They were named, harvested, cooked, stored, and understood at a level of detail that took generations to build. MSU Extension's native-plant guidance makes the modern version of the same point: native plants support specialist pollinators. They serve as larval hosts for butterflies and moths whose caterpillars feed birds. A plant that belongs here feeds a whole web that a plant from somewhere else cannot. So the garden case and the historical case point the same direction.

These are good plants, and they are old plants.

And they are still here.

This is not a story about a lost past. Camas still blooms blue in wet meadows, serviceberry still ripens in early summer, yarrow still grows along the fenceline. The plants themselves never went anywhere. What changed is only who tends them, and why.

Camas

What it is. Camas (Camassia quamash and its relatives) is a bulb wildflower of moist meadows, sending up a spike of blue-violet star flowers in late spring. For a few weeks it turns a wet meadow blue, then it sets seed and vanishes underground by midsummer.

The bulb is the whole story.

What was known. The camas bulb is food, a staple food across the Plateau country and parts of the Rockies, gathered in early summer as the flowers fade and the bulb is at its largest. And here is the detail that shows how deep the knowledge ran: a raw camas bulb is rich in inulin, a starch the human body can't digest. Eaten raw, it offers the body very little. Handled the right way, cooked slowly for a long time and traditionally in pit ovens, the inulin breaks down into something the body can use. The long, slow cooking is not a flavour preference. It is the difference between a storehouse of calories and a stomachache. That is a technique someone had to work out, and then pass down, and then keep passing down.

The danger, and the modern lesson. Growing in the same meadows, blooming at the same time, is death camas, a plant so toxic that eating a bulb can kill an adult. Its flowers are cream-white rather than blue, but the bulbs are dangerously similar, and the two plants live side by side. The knowledge that separated them was, quite literally, a matter of life and death, and it was not optional. The modern rule follows directly: do not wild-harvest camas. Even experienced foragers treat it as a plant to leave alone.

If you want it, buy it.

In the modern garden. Camas makes an excellent native spring bulb, the tulip niche filled by a plant that belongs here. Plant bulbs in fall. It blooms in late spring, then goes dormant by midsummer. The one cultural requirement is moisture timing: camas wants ground that is wet in spring and dry by mid-summer, which makes it a natural for a low meadow spot or the damp end of a garden, and a poor fit for a bone-dry xeric bed. Given that, it naturalises and comes back year after year.

Serviceberry

What it is. Serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia, zone 2–7) is a shrub to small tree that blooms in the very first weeks of spring, white flowers before most anything else is awake, and ripens small, sweet, dark-purple fruit in early summer. The old common name "juneberry" is a harvest date in a single word.

What was known. Serviceberry is the first real fruit of the year, and across the plains and the mountains it was gathered heavily and dried for winter. Fully ripe, it is sweet and good. The fruit on a single bush ripens unevenly over weeks, so it was picked in passes rather than all at once. Anyone who has watched a bush turn purple a berry at a time already knows why. Dried, it stored.

In the modern garden. Serviceberry may be the single best all-around native shrub for a Montana yard, and it earns that in four seasons at once: early bloom for pollinators when little else is available, edible berries in early summer, some of the best fall colour of any native shrub, and food for birds and wildlife. It works as a specimen, a hedge, or a small understory tree. In the wild, that is what it wants to be. MSU's native-plant guide lists it as hardy to zone 2. One honest note: the birds usually find the fruit before you do. Plant two if you want a harvest.

Chokecherry

What it is. Chokecherry (Prunus virginiana, zone 2–7) is a shrub or small tree in the cherry family, with spikes of small white flowers in spring and tiny dark fruit in late summer. The fruit is astringent fresh, and the name is honest about it. It is better once processed.

What was known. Chokecherry fruit was gathered widely and dried, one of the most commonly stored wild fruits of the region. The work was in the handling: the same astringency that makes it sharp fresh is what makes it keep, and drying turned a brief late-summer crop into winter food.

The botanical caution. The fruit flesh is the part that's used. The leaves and the pits contain cyanogenic compounds and should not be eaten. This is not a Montana-specific fact. It is true of chokecherry wherever it grows, and it is the reason the fruit is processed and the rest of the plant is left alone.

In the modern garden. Chokecherry is tough, adaptable, alkaline-tolerant and cold-hardy, and it makes a fine hedgerow, screen or wildlife thicket. The honest caveat is the one the wild plant already shows: chokecherry spreads aggressively, colonising by suckers and root sprouts to form thickets. Plant it where an expanding thicket is welcome, in a hedgerow, a screen along a property line, or a corner you don't intend to keep tidy, and not in a formal bed you'll spend years fighting. Deer browse it, so it belongs on the tougher side of your yard.

Wild bergamot

What it is. Wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa, zone 3–8) is a native mint with whorls of lavender-pink tubular flowers through midsummer and fragrant foliage. Crush a leaf and the whole plant announces itself.

What was known. The aromatic leaves of native mints, including bergamot, found use in teas. The fragrance is the through-line. Aromatic plants were used for scent and flavour as much as for food, and a plant that smells like that did not go unnoticed.

In the modern garden. Wild bergamot is a pollinator powerhouse. The tubular flowers are built for long-tongued insects, and they draw bees, butterflies and hummingbirds across a long bloom season. It is drought-tolerant once established, and, like most mints, deer leave it alone. Give it room, because it spreads by rhizomes the way mints do. One caution for the west side of the state: powdery mildew can spot the foliage in humid, crowded plantings, though Montana's dry air spares it in most years. It's a natural for a pollinator border and for the middle of a sunny, low-water bed.

Yarrow

What it is. Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) is a native perennial with finely feathered, aromatic leaves and flat heads of small white flowers through the summer. It grows across Montana and much of the Northern Hemisphere, and that range is itself the clue to its history.

What was known. Yarrow is one of the most widely used medicinal plants on earth, documented across many Native peoples of North America and, independently, across Europe and Asia. Because its use is so broad and so old, it is better described as pan-cultural than as any one people's plant, and that is exactly why this post won't pin it to a single tradition. The uses, as a wound herb, a tea, a medicine, are among the most commonly recorded of any plant in the ethnobotanical literature.

In the modern garden. Yarrow is extraordinarily cold-hardy, drought-tolerant and long-blooming, and it's a reliable draw for beneficial insects and pollinators. Its one drawback is also its nature: it spreads by rhizomes and can be vigorous to the point of weedy. That makes it a workhorse for a tough, dry, sunny slope, and a nuisance in a precious, tightly planted bed. One choice worth making deliberately: the native white species is the pollinator plant; many garden selections have showier colours but offer insects less.

What the five have in common

Put the five side by side and the pattern is not that they were "used." It's that they were understood: how to cook a bulb so it feeds you instead of sickening you, which fruit to dry, which plant to leave alone, which leaf to steep. That is knowledge built on a landscape over a very long time, and it is a different thing from reading a plant tag. There is a practical consequence for how you garden, and it comes straight from MSU Extension's native-plant guidance:

• Never wild-dig. Source native plants from reputable suppliers, not from roadsides, meadows or public land. Wild-digging damages the very stands that made this knowledge possible, and on much land it is also illegal without permission.
• Water them while they establish. The most common mistake with natives is assuming they don't need water. Trees and shrubs take a full season or more to root in.
• Late-fall seeding is optimal for many native forbs and grasses. Cold stratification is part of their life cycle, not an obstacle to it.

Plant these five and you are planting what was already here. That's the whole idea behind Montana native plants for landscaping, and it's the thread that runs through the history of how plants got to Montana too, the long story of which plants belong to this ground, and which ones arrived as imports and never quite fit.

Frequently asked questions

Were these plants farmed, or gathered from the wild?

Mostly gathered from natural stands rather than planted in fields. But "gathered" understates it. Some stands were tended and managed, and camas meadows in particular were sometimes maintained with low-intensity fire to keep them productive. That is a form of stewardship, not a passive harvest.

Can I grow these in a Montana yard?

Yes. All five are cold-hardy and adapted to the region. Serviceberry, chokecherry and the mints clear zone 3 or lower, and camas is grown as a spring bulb in Montana gardens. The key is matching each to the right spot: camas to spring-moist ground, chokecherry where it can spread, yarrow where vigour is welcome.

Why shouldn't I harvest camas myself?

Because death camas grows in the same meadows, blooms at the same time, and is lethal, and its bulb looks like the edible one. The knowledge that separates them is real and old, and the safest modern response is to buy camas rather than dig it. Never wild-dig regardless.

Do native plants really support more wildlife?

MSU Extension's guidance says yes: natives support specialist pollinators and act as larval hosts for the caterpillars that feed birds. Exotic ornamentals often provide neither. It's one of the strongest practical arguments for choosing plants that belong here.

Why does yarrow have so many traditional uses?

Because it grows across an enormous range. The same species occurs in North America, Europe and Asia, and its uses were recorded independently on each continent, which makes it unusually well documented, and unusually pan-cultural.

A longer view of the yard

Montana gardens are usually described in terms of what will survive here: the frost, the wind, the alkaline soil, the short season. That framing is true, and it's the reason this site exists. But there is a longer view behind it. The plants that survive here best, the ones that shrug off a Montana winter and a Montana August without help, are largely plants that were already here, and were already known here, in detail it took generations to accumulate.

Planting them is not nostalgia. It's using the knowledge twice: the knowledge of how they grow, and the knowledge that they were grown, and gathered, and understood, long before any of us called it gardening.

Want to see which of these fit your ground? Find your Montana growing region or browse the plant database for natives selected by zone, water use and soil. If you'd rather have natives worked into a real plan, find a vetted Montana pro.