JACKSON, Wyo. — September means Fireweed is going to seed throughout the valley, and its prolific seed production is helping spread a uniquely resilient plant with a diverse range of uses.
Fireweed, a member of the Evening Primrose family, is named for its ability to colonize quickly after a fire burn, blooming from June to September. It can be visible in vast quantities around the valley due to a single plant producing an average of 80,000 seeds, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). For comparison, Michigan State University says a single dandelion produces an average of 15,000 seeds.
Kevin Taylor, lead faculty with Wildlife Expeditions of Teton Science Schools, points out that despite the inclusion of the word weed in the name, which can be associated with the concept of invasive species, Fireweed is a long-lived perennial native to Jackson Hole.
“It’s native, but it does have a weedy growth in the sense that it does really well in pioneering habitats,” Taylor tells Buckrail. “Ecologically, a weed can be something native or non-native that does really well in disturbed habitat, like after a fire.”
Because of this ability to respond successfully in areas affected by wildfire, Taylor suggests that one could extrapolate how Fireweed might be uniquely resilient in the face of climate change; as wildfires become even more prevalent, Fireweed will be able to increase its prolificness.
Taylor points to how Fireweed is thriving in areas burned by the 2016 Berry Fire, which the National Park Service says is the largest wildfire in Grand Teton National Park’s history, all the way through the John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Memorial Parkway. While shorter fire return intervals may prevent lodgepole pines from being able to fully mature and produce sufficient amounts of cones to advantageously spread their seed, Taylor says there’s a hypothesis that the slow regeneration of the local forest could result in a landscape shift to favor Fireweed.
“The thinking is that increasing fire return intervals might make it such that the lodgepole pine will be too young to produce large amounts of serotinous cones,” Taylor says. “With a very slow regeneration of that forest, one would predict those areas would become meadows, occupied likely by Fireweed.”
But the resiliency and expansion of Fireweed isn’t a bad thing. Fireweed supports a diverse range of pollinators, as plants with bright, big, open flowers oftentimes tend to be generalists; this means lots of animals are able to access them for pollination. Taylor contrasts this with Orchids and Snapdragons, which have more tubular, intricate flowers catered to a more specific species shape.
Fireweed is also an important food source for bears, deer and elk, in addition to being an edible food for humans. According to Taylor, both the leaves and flowers are edible raw. The leaves can also be dried out to make a nutritious tea that provides a natural source of quercetin, the National Institute of Health confirms, which was a synthesized compound shown in case-control clinical studies to have efficacy in inhibiting COVID-19. Taylor says the compound is also naturally found in Goldenrod.
At his own home, Taylor tells Buckrail that he and his family drink Fireweed tea whenever they feel a cold or sickness coming on. And based on his communication with legendary local Wyoming biologist John Mionczynski, Taylor says members of the Newe (Shoshone) tribe traditionally and currently eat the raw roots as a high energy food during activities like hunting.
For those interested in trying to harvest and consume Fireweed, it’s very important to keep in mind that no wild plant should be eaten unless you’re certain it’s the plant you think it is.
“It’s critical that you be 500 percent sure of your identification because there are poisonous plants out here,” Taylor emphasizes.
Being wrong about the edibility of a plant could have fatal consequences. Luckily, Taylor says Fireweed can be very recognizable even without the flowers. Fireweed has a distinctive stalk with lots of leaves spiraled along the stem, and a distinctively white mid-vein along the leaves.
The USDA notes the leaf veins are circular and do not terminate at the leaf edges, and each plant grows four to six feet high on average while potentially reaching a towering nine feet.
