A banner year for beargrass in Glacier

If the low elevations are any indication, it looks like it will be a banner year for beargrass in Glacier National Park and surrounding mountain ranges this summer.

The iconic flower heads are already blooming en masse along the Going-to-the-Sun Road near the west entrance. In the backcountry at lower elevations, the flowers are also seeing robust blooms, particularly in forests and meadows that have burned over in wildfires in the past 15 years.

Bear grass really isn’t a grass and bears don’t eat it, but they have been known to use the “grass” part of the plant to line their dens. Bighorn sheep, mountain goats and deer will eat the flowers, however, and birds like pine grosbeaks eat the seeds.

Beargrass is a member of the Melanthiaceae family (recently split from the lily family). According to Glacier Park officials, the plant is native to Montana, but can also be found in subalpine meadows and coastal mountains throughout the Pacific Northwest, extending from British Columbia to northern California and eastward to Alberta and northwestern Wyoming. Beargrass can grow up to five feet in height with long and wiry, grass-like basal leaves at the base of the stalk and a cluster of small, dense white flowers at the top.

There’s a saying that beargrass blooms every seven years, but that’s not true. The last big bloom in Glacier was in 2013. The grass seems to best in wetter years with a healthy snowpack, like we’ve had this spring.

Bear grass grows from the valley floor to the alpine terrain in Glacier, blooming as the snow recedes each spring. Each flower head is made up of hundreds of individual white flowers.

A single plant may have numerous basal rosettes on a common root system. Each rosette will bloom only once. Factors for abundant plant blooming include ideal amounts of spring rainfall and moisture present in the soil. While some beargrass can be found blooming every year, park managers note that mass blossoming of beargrass typically occurs every five to 10 years in Glacier National Park. Blooming can begin in late May in lower elevations and continue into August in the high country.

The plant was first called beargrass by members of the Lewis and Clark expedition. At that time “bear grass” was a common name for yucca (commonly called soapweed today), which bears a superficial resemblance to beargrass. Native Americans have used beargrass leaves for basket weaving and roots were used to treat injuries. Other common names for this plant include bear lily, pine lily, elk grass, squaw grass, and turkeybeard.

In Glacier, it is illegal to pick the flowers or gather the grass.