Attention, attention: Okanagan sunflowers are starting to bloom

As my wife and I and our dog jogged through the park this weekend, there they were.

The brave and beautiful first yellow blooms of the Okanagan sunflower along the Sunnyside Trail in Kalamoir Regional Park in West Kelowna.

The inaugural burst of colour, like clockwork, is a sure sign the weather is warming, the sun is shining longer and all is good in nature.

While we were witness to the earliest, tentative blooms, we know that in just a couple of weeks, the Okanagan sunflowers will be out in their full glory.

Mountainsides and meadows will be ablaze with their yellow splendor.

The season for the Okanagan Sunflower is short and intense, lasting only a couple of months.

The timeline makes us even more appreciative of the harbinger of spring, the inevitability of summer and the dazzling cycle of the natural world.

So, over the next few weeks as you hike and cycle through nature, and even drive the highway (the Dilworth Mountain slope facing Highway 97 will be sunflower dense), admire the flora and take a moment to reflect on the significance of the bloom.

The Okanagan sunflower is of the sunflower tribe of the much larger aster family, which is made up of 3,200 other flowers, including the common and instantly recognized white shasta daisy.

In fact, the Okanagan flower resembles a daisy, but yellow, and unlike a sunflower doesn't grow singularly, but in a cluster like a bouquet of a dozen or more blooms, only adding to its appeal.

In 2000, the City of Kelowna proclaimed the Okanagan sunflower our official flower and emblem.

It's recognition that the bloom is not beautiful and prolific and appreciated by citizens, but it's somewhat unique to the Okanagan.

The range for the this flower, which is called arrowleaf balsamroot elsewhere and, if you want to get technical, is balsamorhiza sagittata in Latin, is only the south of BC east of the Coast and Cascade mountains and into Alberta a bit and south to Washington State, South Dakota, Colorado and northern California.

But, it's the Thompson Okanagan where it particularly thrives in dry, well-drained soil on mountainsides, in meadows and any little clearing in a conifer forest.

The arrowleaf balsamroot name is aptly descriptive, because the leaves are infact shaped like elongated greeny-silver arrowheads and the hearty taproot has a resin that has a balsam fragrance and taste.

Speaking of taste, deer, bighorn sheep, elk, gophers, mice and a variety of birds enjoy Okanagan sunflower as spring food.

It was also an important fibre and energy food source for Indigenous peoples who peeled and ate the raw tender inner portion of young flower stems, ate the leaves raw or boiled and roasted the seeds and taproom to grind into a flour to make yet more food.

The root was also used as an immune-stimulating substance and its sap is a natural disinfectant.