Sego lily, the state flower of Utah

How to recognize it

The sego lily is a slender perennial that grows from an onion-like bulb, usually about 10 to 20 inches tall. Each stem carries one to a few tulip-like flowers with three broad petals and three narrower sepals. The petals are white to cream, sometimes tinged lilac, pink or magenta, with yellow at the base and a purplish band or blotch above it. The plant has just a few narrow, grass-like leaves. Its genus name, Calochortus, comes from Greek for “beautiful grass,” and its species name honors the botanist Thomas Nuttall.

Where it grows

The sego lily is native to the western United States. It grows in desert shrubland, grassland and pinyon-juniper country, blooming in spring and early summer.

Where to see it

At Arches National Park, look along the Windows road and trail, in Salt Valley and Cache Valley, and near the Delicate Arch road junction from April through June. The National Park Service also features it at Cedar Breaks National Monument.

A food in hard times

The sego lily’s bulbs are edible. The Utes, who called the plant sago, showed Mormon settlers how to eat them when food ran short, and pioneers remembered digging them during the famine years of the cricket plague.

The state flower since 1911

The Legislature declared the sego lily the state floral emblem in a law approved on March 18, 1911, after a poll of schoolchildren. Sego lilies also appear on the state seal, on either side of the beehive. Utah has no separate state wildflower.