Home » Plants & Animals » North American Wildflowers » Lewis and Clark: a couple of High Plains Drifters

Lewis and Clark: a couple of High Plains Drifters

© Gregg Pasterick

Lewis and Clark and their fellow explorers rode out the winter of 1804/05 in the High Plains, at Fort Mandan, in what we now know as South Dakota. During the autumn prior to, and the spring and early summer following that winter they encountered many new plant species; Lewis may have collected as many as 150 specimens, possibly more. Only about 60 of these High Plains species survived their temporary storage in Montana, where they were to be picked up during the return journey homeward, and made it back to the East Coast.

The identities of many of the lost species were inferred, deduced, and otherwise arrived at by Frederick Pursh, a German botanist, with whom Lewis left the specimens collected during that eastward trek home. In the preface of his 1814 book Flora Americae Septentrionalis (which is Latin for "Flora of North America") Pursh wrote that he had been given about 150 specimens by the explorer.

Consisting of short-grass, savanna, and sagebrush-laden habitats, the High Plains were a botanical jackpot. Familiar prairie species collected (familiar to me, that is) included Rough Blazing Star (Liatris aspera) and Tall Blazing Star (L. pycnostachya), Rigid Goldenrod (Solidago rigida), Aromatic Aster (Aster oblongifolius), Narrow-leaved Purple Coneflower (Echinacea angustifolia ), Wood Lily (Lilium philadelphicum), and Common Sunflower (Helianthus annuus).

The Legume Family (Fabaceae) was, like last week in the tallgrass prairies, well represented in the High Plains. Collected species included Pulse Milkvetch (Astragalus tenellus), Missouri Milkvetch (A. missouriiensis), Canada Milkvetch (A. canadensis), Wild Licorice (Glycyrrhiza lepidota), Rusty Lupine (Lupinus pusillus), Indian Breadroot or White Apple (Pediomelum esculentum), Narrow-leaf Scurfpea (P. agophyllum), and Slender Flowered Scurfpea (Psoralidium tenuiflorum).

Lewis described several Artemisias while camping near the mouth of the Little Missouri River: "on these hills many aromatic herbs are seen; resembling in taste, smel and appearance, the sage, hysop, wormwood, southernwood, and two other herbs which are strangers to me; the one (Big Sage Brush (A. tridentata)) resembling the camphor in taste and smell, rising to the hight of 2 or 3 feet; the other (Silver Sagebrush (A. cana)) about the same size, has a long, narrow, smooth, soft leaf of an agreeable smel and flavor; of this last the Atelope is very fond; they feed on it, and perfume the hair of their foreheads and necks with it by rubbing against it."

And then there was Indian Tobacco (Nicotiana quadrivalvis).

On October 12, 1804, Lewis wrote: "The recarres (Arikara Indians) cultivate two species of tobacco (N. quadrivalvis) and (N. rustica), for the purpose of smoking... They esteem much more the carraller (flower) dryed for the purpose of smoking ... I found it very pleasant - it does not affect the nerves in the same manner that the tobacco cultivated in the U'S. dose."

The copyright of the article Lewis and Clark: a couple of High Plains Drifters in North American Wildflowers is owned by . Permission to republish Lewis and Clark: a couple of High Plains Drifters in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.