A North American plant of the lily family with blue or purple flowers and edible bulbs, also spelled camassia.
From Nez Perce or other Pacific Northwest Native American languages, adopted into English in the 18th-19th century as settlers encountered the plant.
Camass was so nutritious and important that Meriwether Lewis and William Clark noted it extensively in their expedition journals—Native peoples had mastered cooking it by burying bulbs in pits for days!
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