One of the first things that confused me about the mariposa lily was how to tell it from a sego lily. Different people pointed out the flowers to me and told me the name. It turns out they are both the name of this flower. The scientific name is Calochortus (lily family, Liliaceae) but it is called both mariposa lily and sego lily.
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| Gunnison's mariposa lily, Calochortus gunnisonii |
Well, mariposa lily seems to be the most common common name. There are about 70 species in the genus, which is native to North American and Central America. Fifty-six or 57 of those species are found in North America, most of them only in California. The USDA plants data base calls almost all the species of
Calochortus mariposa lilies (clay mariposa lily, golden mariposa lily, Green's mariposa lily); only one,
Calochortus nuttallii, is called sego lily. A few have other common names such as fairy-lantern, yellow star-tulip, Diogenes' lantern, and beavertail grass.
This is a western group. Only Gunnison's mariposa lily gets as far east as Nebraska and South Dakota. Most have a limited range. Only five species, Gunnison's mariposa lily, the sego lily, the sagebrush mariposa lily (Calochortus macrocarpos), the pointtip mariposa lily (C. apiculatus) and Bruneau's mariposa lily (Calochortus bruneaunis), are found in more than four states or provinces. (Of 57 species).
This post is about Gunnison's mariposa lily, Calochortus gunnisonii, which is found from Montana to Arizona, South Dakota to New Mexico at 3,000' to 12,000' in elevation, in meadows, open forests and on mountain slopes.
Mariposa means "butterfly" in Spanish, alluding to its beauty and possibly the motion of the petals in a breeze. The scientific name Calochortus comes from the Greek, kalos "beautiful" and chortos "grass". Most mariposa lilies have narrow, grass-like leaves. This one is named for John Williams Gunnison (1812-1853), the surveyor on whose 1853 expedition this plant was first collected for western science. (Info on Gunnison). Sego is from a Native American name for it, siyoo in Ute, sikoo in Shoshonean, also recorded as sigwai or seego, meaning "edible bulb."
They are very beautiful flowers. In most of its range Gunnison's mariposa lily flowers are white or white tinged with purple but sometimes intensely purple. In New Mexico Calochortus gunnisonii can be yellow.
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| Gunnison's mariposa lily |
Here they are in the grass of a Rocky Mountain meadow
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Gunnison's mariposa lilies
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The whole plant is reportedly edible, but the bulb is apparently delicious. (Remember: with edible wild plants, just because it is safe to eat, doesn't make it taste good.) However, this plant is rare enough that most foraging books that mention it discourage collecting it. Rare mariposa lily species are protected in the states where they are found.
Foraging for an edible bulb, you have to kill the plant. Southwestern Colorado Wildflowers has photos of mass flowering of other mariposa lily species, where flowers are so dense you might not feel bad digging up serving (
link scroll down). Perhaps that is also the case for Gunnison's mariposa lily, but foragers like Harrington comment that gathering enough for a meal is difficult. In my photos, you'd work hard for a few bulbs. The bulbs are small (big ones 2" in diameter). They are 5-6" deep in the ground, so getting them out isn't easy. The stem readily breaks off from the bulb, making them even harder to gather. Because wild lands are so limited these days, I would say: buy them, grow them, eat the ones you grew.
(In addition, the very toxic death camas, Toxicoscordion species, death camas family Melanthiaceae, has bulbs that are nearly identical to mariposa lily bulbs. A mistake can make you very ill.)
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| Gunnison's mariposa lily |
Plants for a Future (PFAF) warns the mariposa lily bulbs should be cooked to avoid digestive upset. Other sources say they are edible raw or cooked. PFAF gives Gunnison's mariposa lily a "4" for edibility, it gives sego lily, Calochortus nuttalii, a "5". The sego lily was the plant that the Utes showed to the Mormons in 1848; eating sego lilies saved the settlers from starvation that winter. Consequently the sego lily is the State Flower of Utah. I think websites and foragers apply information about sego lily carelessly to other species of Calochortus.
The Cheyenne and Ramah Navajo reported gathering and drying the bulbs of Gunnison's mariposa lily, storing them for winter use. They also ground the dried bulbs into a powder which was added to soups and stews. Many other tribes reported eating other species of Calochortus.
Gunnison's mariposa lily was also used to treat swellings by the Western Keres and the leaf juice applied to pimples by the Ramah Navajo. The Ramah Navajo offered a decoction of the whole plant to women at childbirth to aid the delivery of the placenta.
Cheyenne riders put a bulb of Gunnison's mariposa lily into their horse's mouth just before the race started, to aid in winning.
I saw these yellow marriposa lilies in California years ago. I do not know which species they are. But you can see that they are mariposa lilies. It is an easily-recognized group of handsome flowers.
The flowers of Gunnison's mariposa lily are highly attractive to bees and hoverflies
link. Lepidoptera that use it as a larval plant have not been reported. It is a nontoxic widespread perennial so it seems to me that there would be native butterfly and moth larvae that eat it. Perhaps only generalist species include in their diet when they find a big patch, or, so far, the right person has not observed insects feeding on it. It is certainly eaten by grazing animals like deer and, on occasion, bears.
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Gunnison's mariposa lily
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Mariposa lilies are a group of really lovely wildflowers worth watching for in the western U.S. On the east side of the Rocky Mountains and in mountain, not desert, habitats, Gunnison's mariposa lily is the one you are most likely to encounter.
Comments and corrections welcome.
References
Fielder, P. L. and R. K. Zebell.
Calochortus Pursh. Flora of North America
link (Accessed 6/26/26)
Fuller, R. S., and M. E. McGlaughlin. 2019. Calochortus gunnisonii furthers evidence for the complex genetic legacy of historical climate change in the southern Rocky Mountains, American Journal of Botany. 106: 477-488
Harrington, H.D. 1967. Edible Native Plants of the Rocky Mountains. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Moerman, D. 1999. Calochortus Native American Ethnobotany database. link (accessed 6/28/26)
Schenider, A. Southwestern Colorado Wildflowers.
link (Accessed 6/26/26). Check out the photos of mass-flowering in mariposa lilies.
Utah History to Go. 1995. Sego lily
link (Accessed 6/26/26).
Please take a look at my books. For those who don't read the internet or prefer books, I gathered posts from here into actual books, for example:
NoCo Notables, Stories of Common Plants of the Colorado Front Range. Plants have cool stories, about their interactions with other plants and animals and with humans. Go beyond just having a name for the plant, learn more about it. Available from Amazon
link or from me.
And
Look Twice, containing stories of plants from western Nebraska and eastern Colorado, available from Amazon
link or from me.
New book coming soon:
Plants You Meet Everywhere. The stories of really cosmopolitan plants such as plantains, marigolds and bougainvillea.
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