Species Type
Plant
Wildlife (151)
View allAntelope bush, bitterbush
Aromatic aster
Arrowleaf balsamroot
Bear Grass
Lewis described bear grass on June 15, 1806, on the Lolo Trail in the Bitterroot…
Bear grass; western turkey-beard
Big sagebrush
Bigleaf maple
Biscuit root; Lewis’s lomatium
Bitterroot
The bitterroot is perhaps the most celebrated botanical discovery of the expedition. Lewis collected it…
Bitterroot; rock rose
Black cottonwood
Black hawthorn
Blanketflower; Great-flowered gaillardia
Blue bunch wheatgrass
Blue huckleberry
Brittle opuntia
Broad-leaved gum-plant
Broadleaf arrowhead
California false hellebore
Camas
The Nez Perce introduced Lewis and Clark to camas on September 20, 1805, at Weippe…
Cascara buckthorn
Chinook licorice; seashore lupine
Clustered elkweed
Common matchweed; broomweed
Cous
Cut-leaved daisy
Death camas
Douglas’ rabbitbrush; Sticky-leaf rabbitbrush
Dull Oregon grape
Elegant Mariposa lily
Engelmann’s spruce
Evergreen huckleberry
Fetid rayless goldenrod; Heavy gray rabbitbrush
Few-flowered psoralea; scurfy pea
Fourwing saltbush
Gairdner’s yampah; fennel
Gardner’s saltbush
Golden currant
Grand fir
Greasewood
Idaho fescue
Indian tobacco
Lance-leaved psoralea; lemon scurfpea
Lanceleaf springbeauty
Large monkey flower
Large-flowered clammyweed
Large-headed clover
Lewis’s blue flax
Lewis’s monkey flower
Lewis’s Monkey-flower
Lewis collected this striking pink-flowered plant on August 12, 1805, at the headwaters of the…
Lewis’s syringa, Lewis’s mockorange
Lewis’s Wild Flax
Lewis collected the first specimen of this wild flax on July 9, 1806, near the…
Linear-leaved wormwood, Tarragon
Linearleaf phacelia
Lodgepole pine
Long-leaved mugwort
Lousewort
Menzies’ larkspur
Mission bells; rice root
Missouri foxtail cactus
Missouri milk vetch
Mountain lady’s slipper
Narrow-leaved collomia
Narrow-leaved purple coneflower
Narrow-leaved skullcap
Narrowleaf cottonwood; willowleaf poplar
Needle and thread grass
Northern sun-cup
Ocean spray
Orange honeysuckle
Oregon boxwood
Oregon Grape
Lewis first described the Oregon grape on February 12, 1806, at Fort Clatsop. He compared…
Oregon sunshine
Oregon white oak
Oregon white-topped aster
Osage Orange
Lewis encountered the osage orange in March 1804 in St. Louis, before the expedition officially…
Owl’s clover; goldtongue
Pacific madrone
Pacific or Nuttall’s dogwood
Pacific popcorn flower
Pestle parsnip
Petioled wake-robin
Pin cherry
Pink cleome
Plains cottonwood
Plains pricklypear
Ponderosa Pine
Lewis and Clark wrote the first description of the ponderosa pine on May 11, 1805,…
Prairie apple, Indian breadroot
Prairie Sagebrush
Lewis and Clark collected prairie sagebrush specimens as early as September 2, 1804, near Springfield,…
Pretty Jacob’s ladder
Racoon grape
Ragged Robin
On June 1, 1806, Lewis "met with a singular plant today in blume" and collected…
Ragged robin; Beautiful clarkia
Rayless chamomile
Red alder
Red false mallow
Red flowering currant
Redstem buckbrush; Oregon-tea
Rocky Mountain Maple
Salal
Lewis collected the salal specimen on January 20, 1806, at Fort Clatsop, and wrote a…
Salmonberry
Sandburg’s bluegrass, Curly bluegrass
Saskatoon serviceberry
Scarlet gilia
Showy phlox
Shrubby beardtongue; Bush penstemon
Silky lupine
Silver buffaloberry
Silver sagebrush
Silver-leaf psoralea; silvery scurfpea
Silverberry
Silvery lupine
Sitka mountain ash
Sitka Spruce
Lewis and Clark encountered massive Sitka spruce trees along the Pacific coast in November-December 1805…
Slender toothwort
Small-flowered collinsia; Blue-eyed Mary
Small-headed clover
Spiny goldenweed, Lacy tansyaster
Sticky currant
Sticky laurel; mountain balm
Subalpine fir
Sugar bowls; leather flower
Tailed kittentails
Tassels; Prairie smoke
Thimbleberry
Tufted evening primrose
Twinberry honeysuckle
Vine maple
Virgate scorpionweed
Western blue-flag
Western columbine
Western hemlock
Western larch
Western paper birch
Western Red Cedar
Lewis and Clark encountered the western red cedar as they crossed the Bitterroot Mountains and…
Western red cedar; western arbor vitae
Western Serviceberry
Lewis was the first to collect a specimen of the western serviceberry for science. The…
Western wake-robin
Western wallflower
Western white pine
White milkwort
White sagebrush or Dark-leaved mugwort
White-margined spurge; snow-on-the-mountain
Whitebark pine
Wilcox’s penstemon
Wild Bergamot
Lewis and Clark documented wild bergamot along the Missouri River corridor during the early stages…
