Botanical atlas

Eastern Yampah

Perideridia americana

Perideridia americana, the eastern yampah, belongs to a genus whose small, carrot-like roots fed prairie peoples across North America for generations. Farther west, related yampah species were so central to Native diets that early explorers, including members of the Lewis and Clark expedition, recorded them as a staple root crop, dug in autumn and eaten raw, roasted, or dried for winter stores. The eastern species is less documented in the historical record, but it shares the same slender, aromatic taproot and the same quiet place in tallgrass prairie foodways. Because yampah roots so closely resemble those of deadly relatives in the carrot family, they were traditionally gathered only by those carrying generations of careful plant knowledge, passed hand to hand rather than written down.

Safety.

This carrot-family plant grows alongside two of North America's deadliest plants, water hemlock and poison hemlock, which look nearly identical to the untrained eye and have caused fatal poisonings through misidentification. It has no established history of medicinal use, so only forage it, if at all, after positive identification by an experienced botanist.