This plant is so beautiful... but wait until you hear one of its common names! This is Fritillaria camschatcensis, and I've always heard it called Kamchatka lily, chocolate lily, or black lily. But another common name I learned recently is "dirty diaper" - and if you've smelled it, you'd know why! As you'd expect, smells this way because it's pollinated mostly by flies. It's also very rare and endangered where I found it, in Washington State, so I feel very lucky to have spotted it.
Apparently, the bulbs, which break into bulblets - explaining another common name, rice root - were historically (and sometimes still are today!) eaten by Indigenous and First Nations people in its native range, especially further north where it's more common, but it's bitter and usually processed beforehand.
