Traditional Uses of Foothills Flora

Soon, spring and summer will be here. Long days filled with bright sunshine, brilliant blue sky, and puffs of cloud. As you know, the Foothills transform entirely, brimming with insects, flowers, and grasses. Native peoples across the Southwest used, and to some extent still use, many of these plants in a variety of ways. 

Arrowleaf Balsamroot, those large yellow blooms, blanket the sun-soaked slopes. Their tough, fibrous leaves shelter grasshoppers in the fall. Arrowleaf Balsamroot is a pioneer species found in places most other plants can’t grow. Indigenous tribes fermented the plant’s large taproot in heated pits for several days and ate it as emergency food in difficult times. The seeds were dried or roasted and ground into flour. Roots and leaves were crushed and made into a poultice to reduce swelling and bruising.

A more inconspicuous plant, at least in the Salt Lake area, is the Prickly Pear Cactus. Prickly pear fruit (tuna) and leaves (nopales) are still commonly eaten today. For the Native peoples, prickly pear was a staple. They ate the fruit raw, dried, mashed into sauce, or as candy. They used sand to rub the spines from the leaves and then boiled the flesh. Spines were used as needles and the juice was used as dye. Prickly pear also had a variety of medicinal uses and is still used to treat diabetes, obesity, and high cholesterol. Back then, the leaves were split and pressed on open wounds to speed recovery, or cooked and used to treat rheumatism, mumps, and to reduce swelling. 

Sagebrush species are common throughout Utah and grow in patches in the Foothills. Most people know that sagebrush was (and still is) burned to purify or cleanse a living space, but it also had many other uses. Leaves were cooked or steeped to make tea and seeds were eaten raw or roasted. Tinctures were used to treat bronchitis, pneumonia, and other respiratory conditions, and poultices were used to prevent the infection of open wounds and to stop internal bleeding. 

These are three examples of the crucial role plants played in the history of humanity. Why not take some time this coming spring to marvel at the incredible flora in the Foothills?

By Maria Goller