Sisyrinchium littorale

Family / Families: Iridaceae
Scientific Name(s): Sisyrinchium littorale Greene
Location(s): Yakoun Lake, Yaaguun Suu Heritage Site/Conservancy, Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, Canada
Entry Author(s): Daniel Mosquin
Copyright Holder(s): Daniel Mosquin
Image License: Creative Commons License
Tags: Asparagales, British Columbia, Canada, Iridaceae, Photo by Daniel

Flower of Sisyrinchium littorale

A relative of irises, Sisyrinchium is composed of about 80 species primarily (and perhaps exclusively) native to the Americas and Hawaii. The Flora of North America entry for Sisyrinchium explains the name as follows: [Greek] sys, pig, and rynchos, snout, alluding to swine grubbing the roots for food.

Littorale refers to a shore of an ocean or lake. That is indeed where this flower of a Sisyrinchium littorale plant was photographed 5 years ago, on the shores of Yakoun Lake in the Yaaguun Suu Heritage Site/Conservancy of Haida Gwaii. We encountered this species again when revisiting the lakeshore a couple weeks ago, as well as numerous other occasions during Botany BC, including the sedge meadow estuary of the Kumdis Slough and the dunes en route to Rose Spit. It is pleasing to note that this species is not in any apparent decline on Haida Gwaii. From James A. Calder’s and Roy L. Taylor’s Flora of the Queen Charlotte Islands [now Haida Gwaii] Vol. 1 (1968, PDF):

In 1899 Greene described S. littorale based on material collected by Gorman and Howell from Yes Bay in the Alaska panhandle. From his description and our familiarity with plant distributions along the British Columbia coast this is almost certainly the plant that is widely distributed in the Queen Charlotte Islands and along the adjacent coast at least as far south as Victoria on Vancouver Island. In the same year that Greene described S. littorale, Bicknell (1899, p. 456) cited a number of collections of this species from the Alaska coast and in the following year he also reported (1900, p. 245) it from Oak Bay near Victoria on the basis of a Macoun collection. We have seen many collections of S. littorale from Vancouver Island, and we suspect its presence along the adjacent Washington coast. It is quite distinct from all other British Columbia collections of Sisyrinchium from east of the Coast and Cascade mountains, including plants determined as S. idahoense Bickn. and S. montanum Greene, in having broader leaves, darker purplish flowers and larger capsules. All the collections we have seen from the west coast of Vancouver Island can be referred to S. littorale. However, in the interior of the island and along its east coast plants of this genus are extremely variable, and there are narrow-leaved and small-flowered plants that are much like those from the drier interior parts of the province. The blue-flowered types of Sisyrinchium are in need of a thorough revision and until the many species proposed by Bicknell and others are carefully evaluated we are referring all broad-leaved, large-flowered coastal plants to S. littorale. This species usually has scapose stems with a single terminal spathe, but occasional plants have stems with one leaf-bearing node and thus appear to be related to S. helium S. Wats, of California. There are many records of S. littorale from the Queen Charlotte Islands, but it is rarely a common or conspicuous element of the vegetation. It occurs in many coastal habitats such as marshes, sedge meadows, cliff crevices and on sand beaches, river flats, and rock bluffs. Although essentially coastal it is found inland along the shores of Yakoun, Mosquito, and Moresby lakes, and in a number of places on the shorelines of Masset Inlet.

The Flora of North America entry for Sisyrinchium littorale affirms its presence in western Washington state, so the range of shore blue-eyed grass (or Alaska blue-eyed grass) stretches along the entire British Columbia coastline (and Haida Gwaii) south into Washington and north into southeastern Alaska.