By an act of the Utah State Legislature, approved on March 18, 1911, the sego lily was declared to be the State floral emblem (Utah Code). Kate C. Snow, President of the Daughters of Utah Pioneers, in a letter dated April 17, 1930, says that “between 1840 and 1851” food became very scarce in Utah due to a crop-devouring plague of crickets, and that “the families were put on rations, and during this time they learned to dig for and to eat the soft, bulbous root of the sego lily. The memory of this use, quite as much as the natural beauty of the flower, caused it to be selected after years by the Legislature as the floral emblem of the State.”

Latter-day Saint pioneers learned from local Indians that the bulb of the plant they called sego was edible. According to Jedediah Strong Smith’s account, the Paiutes ate roots—probably a variety of the parsnip or sego lily—that they baked in pits under a bed of coals, then mashed for consumption or storage for winter (Rethinking Jedediah S. Smith’s Southwestern Expeditions, Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 84, Number 4, Fall 2016, page 280 [print], page 10 [digital]).

The sego lily was made the official state flower after a census was taken of the state’s school children as to their preference for a state flower.

In 1897 the Woman’s Exponent published a prize-winning poem by Utah author and historian Orson F. Whitney for a statehood poetry contest. The Sego Lily: Utah’s State Flower (Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 63, Number 1, 1995, Page 169)

They wedded in the wilderness,—
The Lily and the Bee;
And men maintain ’twas then God gave
The Land to Industry;—
Gave Utah to the Pioneer
Whose patient valor won
Our land to law and liberty,
For patriot sire and son.
Her golden wedding day has dawned;
Ring out a happy chime,
And welcome here the wedding guest
From every coast and clime . . .
Come frigid North, come fervid South,
Come generous West and East,
And grace at Utah’s bounteous board
The Lily’s marriage feast!

The sego lily, Calochortus nuttalli, has white, lilac, or yellow flowers and grows six to eight inches high on open grass and sage rangelands in the Great Basin during the late spring and early summer months. The USDA symbol is CANU3.

Sego Lily Scientific Classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Monocots
Order: Liliales
Family: Liliaceae
Genus: Calochortus
Species: C. nuttallii
Binomial name: Calochortus nuttallii