Allan Taylor wrote re. Lomatium cous:
I just did some more research on the origin of this word, and it appears to me that it is from Nez Perce qaaws, which is their name for the root when dried. I happen to have a Nez Perce dictionary here at home, and the term occurs in other Sahaptian languages as well. Lewis and Clark did contact the Nez Perce tribe, which lived in Central Idaho. This could have been their first contact with people who ate this plant, although it was used all over the interior of the Northwest, including Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Allan Taylor
The plant is still dug for food by Native people on the Columbia Plateau, where speakers of several different languages (and indeed different language families) were concentrated by being forced onto single reservations, and they use the Sahaptian name but pronounce it "kush" (u as Eng oo in "boot"). I suppose the q>k under the influence of English, the current first language there. I think it's mostly eaten during ceremonial gatherings nowadays.
Lomatium is a genus largely unexplored by rock gardeners, possibly because it's hard to acquire viable seed -- the large seeds are often eaten by insects before they mature. The only one I grow is L. minus, a Columbia Plateau endemic. I had it in my old bulb frames for years but had to set it, mesh pot and all, out in a sand pile when I moved this fall, and it's tolerating the western Oregon winter so far. Because the Lomatium seed-eating insects aren't present here, it did produce viable seed and some seedlings came up in the frame. I even found one growing in a pile of discarded bulb potting soil that I brough here to use as fill in the new rock garden, and have carefully shielded it with some rocks. I hope to establish some other species once I get the rock garden built and also a raised sand bed. The smaller Lomatium species are also good trough subjects. Most of them have yellow flowers (a few, like L. minus and the showy L. columbianum, have purple ones), and they go dormant around midsummer.
Jane McGary Portland, OR, USA
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