I've recently been reminded again how few people actually know what our State flower is. To be fair, I think most people know it is the sego lily. (Except for the person I heard about recently who thought it was Indian paintbrush. As a side note, they didn't know what paintbrush was either; they were pointing at a globemallow, but that is a different story.) The trouble is, it seems like very few people know what a sego lily looks like. And probably even fewer have actually seen one, or would recognize it if they did. So, I thought I would do a little educating.

Before I go into a description of sego lilies, let's get a quick reminder about the parts of a flower.

This diagram shows pretty well the parts of a typical flower. Note, the "pistil" is the female organ of a flower and is composed of three parts: the ovary (which contains the egg [ovule] and when fertilized develops into a fruit), the style, and the stigma (the sticky part that receives the pollen). The male organs are known as stamens and contain two parts, the filament and the anther (the expanded part on top of the filament which produces pollen).

Everyone knows what the petals are but not as many are familiar with the "sepals." They are the (sometimes) leafy looking things just below the petals. On some flowers, the sepals and petals are pretty much indistinguishable (think tulips) and are referred to collectively as "tepals."

A couple more important notes. For flower identification, it is often important to notice the position of the ovary. If the ovary sits on top of where the petals arise, we say the ovary is "superior." If the ovary sits below where the petals arise, we say the ovary is "inferior."

One more thing about plants in general. Plants are typically broken down into two groups: vascular plants and non-vascular plants. The non-vascular stuff are mosses, lichens and so forth. Pretty much everything else is vascular. The vascular plants are again broken into two groups: Gymnosperms and Angiosperms. The technical difference is that angiosperms have an ovary surrounding the seed -- gymnosperms don't. Gymnosperms include coniferous trees (pines, spruces, firs) as well as cycads and Ephedra. Pretty much everything else is an angiosperm. The big difference here is that angiosperms have flowers. Granted, sometimes the flower consists only of the pistil or stamen (grasses) but it's still considered a flower. The angiosperms are then generally divided into two more groups: monocots and dicots. Generally, monocots have tepals in multiples of three and dicots have tepals in multiples of four or five (I often wondered what it would be with twelve, but then I found out plant taxonomists never count that high). Monocots also generally have parallel veination - that is, the veins in the leaves run parallel to each other. Dicots typically have some sort of more complicated, branching or net-like veination. Monocots include grasses, and stuff that has leaves that look like grases - like tulips, daffodils, irises, and lilies.

Sego lilies are then, monocots. They have linear, grass-like leaves with parallel veination with three petals and three sepals. As seen below.
Other important things to note are: the ovary is superior, that is, it sits above where the petals arise. There are six stamens, and the stigma is divided into three parts (it actually has three ovaries, but they are fused). Other important markers are the colorful glands at the base of the petals. These glands also have lots of little "hairs" on them, but you can't see that from this picture.

Typically, you won't see sego lilies quite this open. They are usually closed up a little more, like this:

Also, if you look at it from the side, you can see that the flower is a sort of a cup shape, with the tips of the petals curled over:

If you look really closely, you just might be able to make out a couple leaves in the above photo, but probably not - they really don't have much by way of leaves. It's mostly just the flower. Generally there is only one flower per plant, but you will fairly frequently see two flowers per plant. Last week in Brown's Park I found a patch that consistently had three and four flowers per plant, but usually they only have one or two.

Most of the time, sego lilies are white, but they do come in a sort of pinkish form:


I'm not sure what plants are most often confused with sego lilies. They are pretty distinct and if you know what you are looking for they should be unmistakable. However, a few years ago at a ward campout I was with a small group of young men. Another adult pointed out the following flower, and told them it was a sego lily, and that if they were ever in an emergency they could dig up the root and eat it.

This is an evening primrose. Notice the four petals and non-parallel veination. The stigma also has four branches. This is obviously a dicot. Also note that the ovary is inferior, nor does the evening primrose have the colorful glands at the base of the petals. If you were to dig up the root, you would find that it looks like a typical root. A sego lily has a bulb, like an onion or garlic. The only explanation I can come up with for people confusing an evening primrose with a sego lily is that they just don't know what either one of them really is. But now you do.


EDIT:
I should have noted that there are several other closely related Mariposa lilies (genus Calochortus) that could easily be confused with sego lilies (Calochortus nutallii). The only other one I have seen is the Gunnison Mariposa lily (Calochortus gunnisonii). The only place we have it around here is on the higher elevations of the book cliffs, where it is quite common. It has a purplish tint to the petals and a large purple band above the gland in the middle of the petals. It is also a fair bit bigger than the sego lily.