Clatonia tubers

[AndrewB]

Hello, Clatonia is a new species to me. I've long heard about miners lettuce, but never encountered it. Nikki Jabour's book highly recommends it as a leaf crop that does well in winter cold frames in northern Canada.

But apparently there are at least four species in this clade that have sizable and edible tubers similar to potatoes. This would be a good clade to use in a breeding project / wild domestication project. If anyone has access to these species, please let me know.

It seems the primary tuberous ones are:
 * Claytonia lanceolata (Lanceleaf springbeauty)
 * Claytonia virginica (Virginia springbeauty)
 * Claytonia caroliniana (Carolina springbeauty)
 * Claytonia tuberosa (Tuberous spring beauty)

[Diane Whitehead]

C lanceolata grows in the interior of British Columbia and is used by indigenous people.  The flowers are pretty.

CLAYTONIA megarhiza var. nivalis pink form was on this year's seedlist of the Vancouver alpine garden club, so maybe I could get seeds of this one.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

The following species grow on my farm:


Lanceleaf Springbeauty -- Claytonia lanceolata: Grows both in sunny areas among sagebrush, and in the shade of the maple groves. Flowers in very early spring.
 


Miner's Lettuce -- Claytonia perfoliata: grows in the deep shade of the maple groves. Flowers later in the season.



Redstem Springbeauty -- Claytonia rubra: Very rare at my place. Lives on the north margin of the maple groves in the sage/maple interface.

[Mike Deyo]

I used to live in a wooded area, and Claytonia virginica was very common. I was always amazed how it seemed to thrive even though it's leaves are few and tiny, and only present from mid-March until the forest canopy leaves come all the way out. It is such a tiny plant, I imagine it would be challenging to make it into a practical cultivated crop. The corms are not very big. It is much less leafy than Joseph's Redstem spring beauty species. But maybe one of the other species is a better possibility.

[AndrewB]

Thank you everyone for the input.

This is the video with the inspiration. Apparently some get quite large.

[Mike Deyo]

That is an informative video. It is true that where I was I only saw them in the woods, not in fields, and I never saw the large clusters of flowers coming from a large tuber. Probably a shorter growing season in the forest, versus a wet meadow, full sun situation. I'm guessing it would take a number of years for the tubers to get as large as he showed, since the leaves are small and not as plentiful as something like regular potatoes. It would be interesting to see how well they grow in a garden situation that is optimized for them.