Foothills. Woodlands, openings. Spring, early summer.
Near Dolores, Colorado in San Juan National Forest, June, 13, 2006.

The only Colorado population of this lovely Onion was found in 1998 by San Juan National Forest employee Charlotte Thompson while she was doing wildlife surveys.  She recognized the plant as unusual and brought it to co-worker Mary Kemp who remembered seeing it when she lived in Oregon.  It was finally a third San Juan National Forest employee, Leslie Stewart, who keyed it out and realized that it was a plant found nowhere else in Colorado and that it was, in fact, hundreds of miles from its nearest relatives in northern Utah.  Cara Gildar, also of San Juan National Forest, is continuing the search for more populations of Triteleia grandiflora.  If you would like to assist in the search, call her at (970) 882-7296.

Click to read the United States Forest Service Triteleia grandiflora species assessment.

Triteleia grandiflora is also found in Idaho, far eastern Oregon and Washington, and far western Montana and Wyoming.  How it got to southern Colorado, no one knows, but one guess is that Native Americans (probably Utes) carried it here to plant and eat.

Triteleia grandiflora grows from eight to twenty-eight inches tall with flowers about an inch long in clusters of up to a dozen.  The one or two, long, thin leaves (shown to the right of the ruler) can be taller than the flower stalk.  Because the bulb is up to 8 inches below the ground, the plant manages to grow nicely even in extreme drought conditions (such as occurred in the winter and spring of 2005-2006).

Foothills. Woodlands, openings. Spring, early summer.
Near Dolores, Colorado in San Juan National Forest, June, 13, 2006.

The Triteleia genus was named by David Douglas (of Douglas Fir fame) after he found this species in "North-west America".  Douglas first published the genus name in 1830 with John Lindley, who named this species.

Triteleia is from the Greek "trios" and "teleios", "three" and "complete", referring, in the words of Intermountain Flora, "to the minutely lobed stigma which seems entire ["complete"] on dried specimens".

Foothills. Woodlands, openings. Spring, early summer.
Near Dolores, Colorado in San Juan National Forest, June, 13, 2006.

Foothills. Woodlands, openings. Spring, early summer.
Near Dolores, Colorado in San Juan National Forest, June, 13, 2006.