Darmera peltata (Umbrella Plant / Indian Rhubarb)

Umbrella Plant (Darmera peltata), also known as Indian Rhubarb, is one of the great signature natives of the Klamath / Siskiyou / southern Cascades region of southwestern Oregon and northern California. The genus Darmera is monotypic, a single Pacific Northwest species with no close relatives anywhere else, and the plant is found wild only along cold mountain streams and seeps in this corner of the country.

Its name comes from the dramatic peltate leaves, big rounded green discs up to two feet across that emerge mid-spring on tall petioles attached at the center, holding the leaf out like an umbrella. Before the leaves arrive, in March and into April, naked three to five foot flower stalks shoot up from the rhizome carrying flat clusters of pale pink flowers. The bloom-before-leaves habit is a striking feature in the early-spring stream garden, and an important early-season nectar and pollen source for bumblebee queens and emerging native bees.

Indigenous food use recorded in NAEB centers on the Karok and Miwok peoples of the Klamath River and Sierra Nevada foothills, who used the young petioles as a vegetable and as a cooking agent. The plant's local common name 'Indian rhubarb' reflects this culinary tradition.

Plant in part shade in moisture-retentive to wet soil. This is a streamside, bog-garden, and pond-edge plant; do not let it dry out in summer. Tolerates standing water at the edge of slow-moving streams. Not a coastal-bluff plant; site away from salt spray and persistent ocean wind. Spreads slowly by stout rhizomes to form a colony over time. Bronze-red fall foliage is a bonus before the plant goes fully dormant for winter.

USDA Zone 5 to 9. Deer-resistant. Pairs naturally with Asarum caudatum, Tellima grandiflora, Tiarella trifoliata, Athyrium filix-femina, and Mimulus guttatus for a Cascade or Siskiyou stream-edge planting.