They are perennial plants with basal linear leaves measuring 20 to 80 centimetres (8 to 32 in) in length, which emerge early in the spring.

The six-petaled flowers vary in color from pale lilac or white to deep purple or blue-violet.

Historically, the genus was placed in the lily family (Liliaceae), when this was very broadly defined to include most lilioid monocots.

[2] When the Liliaceae was split, in some treatments Camassia was placed in a family called Hyacinthaceae (now the subfamily Scilloideae).

[3] DNA and biochemical studies have led the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group to reassign Camassia to the family Asparagaceae, subfamily Agavoideae.

[13] Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest engaged in active management and cultivation of blue camas (Kweetla).

[17] Camassia species were an important food staple for Indigenous peoples and settlers in parts of the American Old West.

The look and taste is something like baked sweet potato, but sweeter, and with more crystalline fibers due to the presence of inulin in the bulbs.

Indigenous groups that lived in environments that suited camas production, such as the Coast Salish, developed networks of exchange in order to procure a variety of goods and foods, such as cedar bark baskets and dried halibut.

[29] In North American Indigenous cultures, trade had economic as well as diplomatic functions, with ceremonies such as the potlatch serving as a means to legitimize an individual's rule and establish their status as a provider.

[31] As indigenous land-management techniques have been theorized as having had a significant impact on the maintenance of the Garry oak ecosystem,[32] one of the primary ecosystems in which Camassia quamash grows, researchers have investigated the potentiality of anthropogenic transport through an investigation of the genetic structure of Camassia quamash.

These results imply that the degree of anthropogenic dispersal of Camassia quamash that occurred was not of such a scale as to leave a marker in the plant's genetic structure.