The first time I saw Lewisia rediviva, common name of bitterroot, I was convinced I was hallucinating. I was working as a seasonal botanist in the shrub steppe, it was late May, and I was on the top ...

Members of Lewis and Clark's expedition first identified the bitterroot, or Lewisia rediviva, as the group crossed the West in the early 1800s.

As I was admiring a clump of our native yellow bells in my rock garden recently, I wondered how they came by their name. The common name is obvious, since the flowers are yellow and bell-shaped. But ...

Just for the record, Meriwether Lewis didn’t name Montana’s state flower after himself. The bitterroot was called Lewisia rediviva by a German-American botanist named Frederick Pursh after the Lewis ...

As I was admiring a clump of our native yellow bells in my rock garden recently, I wondered how they came by their name. The common name is obvious, since the flowers are yellow and bell-shaped. But ...