Throughout the Corps’ more than 4,000-mile journey, Captains Lewis and Clark recorded 178 plants and 122 animals not previously known to science. Lewis recorded and pressed and preserved some 240 different plant species and brought them back to Washington, along with hundreds of animal and bird skins and skeletons. Some of the plants and animals named by members of the expedition include:

Clark's Nutcracker and Lewis's Woodpecker | Grizzly Bear | Bighorn Sheep | Animal Visitors to Washington | Cutthroat Trout | Bitterroot Flower | Chokecherry

The Bitterroot, Montana's State Flower (Click for a larger image)

Clark’s Nutcracker and Lewis’s Woodpecker
Two birds were named after the Corps’ two captains: Lewis’s Woodpecker, recorded by Lewis on July 20, 1805, and Clark’s Nutcracker, recorded by Clark on August 22, 1805.

Lewis’s Woodpecker was first observed the day after the expedition passed through the Gates of the Mountains, in what is now Lewis and Clark County, Montana. The bird, about the size of a jay, is greenish-black with a silver-gray throat and a red belly. Lewis described the coloring of the bird’s throat and belly in his journal as “a curious mixture of white and blood red which has much the apperance of having been artificially painted or stained of that color.”

Proving that Lewis and Clark never failed to make observations no matter the circumstances, Clark’s Nutcracker was spotted by Clark while he scouted a possible land route the expedition could take across Montana’s rugged Bitterroot Mountains. The bird was spotted as he crossed Lemhi Pass. “ I saw a bird of the woodpecker kind which fed on Pine burs its Bill and tale white the wings black every other part of a light brown, and about the size of a robin,” Clark wrote.

Though many landmarks are named after the famous explorers, these two birds are the only animals named after members of the Corps of Discovery, and one of the few animals that still bear the names given them by Lewis and Clark.

Grizzly Bear
Trappers and Indians warned Lewis and Clark of a great bear they would encounter, one of incredible size and ferocity. But Lewis discounted their warnings, and before he ever laid eyes on his first grizzly he penned, “The Indians may well fear this animal, equipped as they generally are with their bows and arrows or indifferent fusees, but in the hands of a skilled rifleman, they are by no means as formidable and dangersous as they have been represented.”

The party encountered its first grizzly on April 29, 1805, in what is now Montana’s Missouri River Breaks. One of the party’s hunters managed to kill it, and Lewis made as detailed a description as had ever been made. In the following weeks, Lewis’s opinion on the bears changed dramatically as they encountered even more grizzlies. Every time a hunter made an attempt to kill one, it charged him, even when badly wounded. In one account of a grizzly encounter, it took 10 shots including five to the lungs to kill the bear.

On May 6, Lewis summed up the Corp’s feelings toward the grizzly. “I find that the curiossity of our party is pretty well satisfyed with rispect to this anamal,” he wrote.

The grizzly’s reputation may well have been its demise. The bears were driven to near extinction just 100 years after the Corps first encountered one. The bears are still listed as an endangered species. Montana has the largest grizzly population of any state in the lower 48.

Bighorn Sheep
Montana’s White Cliffs region on the Missouri River near Big Sandy looks much the same as it did when Lewis and Clark passed through. It was in this area that the Corps reported seeing many bighorn sheep scaling the sandstone cliffs and rough riverbanks.

Lewis and Clark in their journals marveled at the surefootedness of the “bighorned animals” as they watched them leap from ledge to ledge and scale the steep white cliffs. “The places they generally collect to lodge is the cranies or cevices of the rocks in the face of inaccessable precepices, where the wolf nor Bear can reach them, and where indeed man himself would in maney instances find a similar deficiency; yet those animals bound from rock to rock and stand apparently in the most careless manner on the Side of precipices of maney hundred feet,” Lewis wrote on May 25, 1805.

Bighorns still make their home on the sandstone cliffs overlooking the Missouri River but are far fewer in number than when Lewis and Clark first observed them.

Animal Visitors to Washington
Two of Montana’s most common animals have the distinction of being residents in the home of the President thanks to Lewis and Clark. In collecting so many plant and animal specimens, the Corps was able to trap a prairie dog, a sharp-tailed grouse and four magpies, then send them back to President Thomas Jefferson.

Though little is mentioned about the capture of the birds, members of the party were fascinated by the little prairie dogs that lived on the banks of the Missouri. Capturing the prairie dog took nearly all of one day as members of the Corps first attempted to dig into the animal’s burrow, which turned out to be an elaborate labyrinth of tunnels. Then later, they formed a bucket brigade, to finally flood the prairie dog out of its home.

As the Corps left Fort Mandan in April 1805 for the unknown upper Missouri, a small detachment returned to St. Louis laden with plants, animals and Indian artifacts Lewis and Clark had collected. All were new scientific discoveries.

Of the six creatures, only one magpie and the prairie dog survived the trip to greet America’s third President.

Cutthroat Trout
No animal, plant, bird or fish went unnoticed by Lewis’s keen eye. At the Great Falls in Montana, members of the Corps of Discovery dined on a meal of trout, which Lewis described as similar to trout commonly found in streams in the eastern part of the United States. “But the specks on these are of a deep black … these are furnished long sharp teeth on the pallet and tongue and have generally a small dash of red on each side behind the front ventral fins,” he wrote.

That meal was the explorer’s first encounter with a modern-day flyfisher’s most prized catch--the cutthroat trout. The cutthroat was a staple on the Corps dinner table while they were in Montana, but anglers on Montana’s rivers today are more likely to practice “catch-and-release,” returning the fish to the water after a good fight.

Bitterroot
Lewis described Montana’s state flower as “naucious to my pallate,” and he likely contributed to its name: the bitterroot. The low-lying, pink-flowering plant was a staple of many Indian tribes the Corps encountered along the Missouri. Lewis might not have favored its taste, but the bitterroot went on to develop quite a following. A mountain range in western Montana and a river are named after it.

To use the Bitterroot, Indians would carefully dig out the long narrow root, dry it, then pulverize it into a fine flour to be used for food or medicine.

Chokecherry
Although Lewis was trained before the expedition in the most modern medicine of the day, he did not hesitate to experiment with Montana’s plants to discover what possible medicinal value they may have. On June 11, 1805, Lewis was struck with violent abdominal pain along with a fever. He directed his comrades to gather branches from the chokecherry bushes growing along the river. He cut up the twigs and boiled them, “untill a strong black decoction of an astringent bitter tast was produced.” Lewis drank a portion of the potion that night and by bedtime felt better.

Whether or not the strong chokecherry tea cured Lewis’ illness is debatable, but the wild chokecherry proves its value today at Montana breakfast tables as flavorful syrups and jellies.

In several Montana communities, the chokecherry is celebrated with a variety of late-summer festivals.