Wonderful Native Monocots: What Are They?

Master Gardener Photo

What the heck is a monocot, and why should I grow native ones?

According to the California Master Gardener Handbook, a monocot (short for monocotyledon) is a flowering plant having one seed leaf (the cotyledon), parallel-veined leaves…and flower parts in multiples of three. Let’s talk about ones that are easy to grow in our area and are often prettier than a clump of grass.

To me, the first things to consider on this list of native monocots are the ones that grow from corms. A corm is a short, thickened underground storage organ, like a bulb but without papery layers.  Native corms have many advantages: beautiful, very easy to grow with limited water, don’t leave lots of ugly foliage behind (many have thin grasslike leaves that dry up and blow away or can be removed with one quick pull).

Here are a few of the great native corms found in this area:

• Pretty faces (Triteleleia ixiodes) have umbels (umbrella shaped groups) of yellow flowers with beige/brown stripes on the petals and grow 6” to 1’ in full sun or part shade. If you match where you live (high or low elevation) with what you plant, they will thrive and reseed to give you more flowers.
• Ithuriel’s Spear (Triteleia laxa) produces blue to purple star-shaped flowers on an umbel at the top of an 18”-long leafless stem in full sun.
• White Brodiaea (Triteleia hyacithina) grows to 2 feet in full sun, producing umbels of white (sometimes tinged blue) funnel shaped flowers.
• Harvest Brodiaea (Brodiaea elegans) blooms in late spring (May in Jamestown) in full sun. Its umbels of deep purple flowers with shiny petals look like polished metal.
• Fairy lantern’s delicate-looking 1” diameter flowers face downward and grow several to a stem. They come in white (Calochortus albus), pink (Calochortus albus var. rubellus) and purple (Calochortus albus var. amoenus). They only grow in the shade.
• Mariposa Lily (Calochortus leichtlinii) is common in this area. It looks a bit like a 3-petaled white tulip with a yellow center and a dark dot.  It produces one to five flowers and is up to 2 feet tall.  There are about 50 varieties of Mariposa Lilies native to California, all with the same shape flower but with different colors, heights and markings. Yellow Mariposa lily (Calochortus luteus) works well at the lower elevations around Sonora, will tolerate clay soil and is easy to grow in full sun.

Some monocots, like native flowering onions, also grow from bulbs (another underground storage structure with overlapping, fleshy layers). Cascade onion (Allium cratericola) is small (only 5” tall) but grows up to 20 small bell-shaped white or pink flowers in full sun. Scythe leaf onion (Allium falcifolium) likes sun and heavy, rocky soil to grow its dark pinkish purple flowers. Crinkled Onion (Allium crispum) grows up to 14” tall in clay soil in part shade. Its pink purple flowers require NO water in summer.

If you are interested in more information on California monocots, the Tuolumne County Library in Sonora has the book “Wild Lilies, Irises, and Grasses: Gardening with California Monocots” by Nora Harlow and Kristin Jakob.

Sources:  Sonora Rock Garden Society, Rebeccah Lance “Growing California Native Bulbs”

Nancy Piekarzcyk is a University of California Cooperative Extension Master Gardener of Tuolumne County.