The blue to blue-purple flowers of Ithuriel's spear can add dazzling color to the California landscape in years with good winter rainfall. The corms which can be eaten raw or cooked were a favorite food of early California Indians. Ithuriel was an angel in Milton's Paradise Lost who found Satan squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, and transformed him by a touch of his spear to his proper form.
