Check out our new book! An intrepid search for Minnesota’s wildflower treasures in out-of-the-way places. Featuring Povo’s gorgeous photographs and Root’s finely detailed descriptions of nearly two hundred species, Chasing Wildflowers is both a handy guidebook and an entertaining chronicle of the thrills and occasional mishaps of the friends’ searches, from wading rivers and climbing rocky outcrops to getting their boots stuck in deep muck while on the run from an approaching storm. Neither botanists nor biologists, Root and Povo are wildflower enthusiasts determined to learn about native wildflowers wherever they can be found, providing readers with all the information they might need to find and identify rare and intriguing species in unexpected places. Get 30% off when you order from U of M Press with code MN94100 (good through Jan. 15, 2026)
Summer has flown by. We’ve chased flowers, talked about our new book, and suddenly it’s fall and almost all that’s left to chase are the asters. Kelly’s been working hard to learn all twenty of Minnesota’s asters while I’ve been busy with other books and other commitments, and on a bright and glorious October morning when trees are beginning to turn we drive down to Lebanon Hills Regional Park so she can catch me up on the many asters that grow there.
Sunlight sparkles on the lake alonside the winding trail and boardwalk, lighting lily pads and grasses where quacking ducks gather. Hills rise up steeply on the other side of the trail, mossy and forested, and a cool breeze follows us. Many asters grow along the trail, and although most are either past their prime or gone to seed, Kelly has learned ways to tell them apart even when they are done blooming.
Awl aster is the only aster with many tiny leaves and white flowers (or flowers gone to seed) mostly all on one side of the stems.
Arrowleaf aster likes dry places, and, true to its name, has pointed leaves with little toothed edges. It’s the only aster with heart-shaped leaves that has white flowers.
Shining aster likes wet places and has shiny hairless leaves and pale-blue-to-white flowers.
Smooth blue aster likes drier places, has long, narrow, waxy-looking hairless leaves, and blue flowers. While some upper leaves may wrap slightly around the stem, they don’t wrap completely around the stem like crooked aster’s leaves do.
Crooked aster is the only Minnesota aster where the stem pierces the leaves. It grows on the wetter side of the trail, and if the flowers were blooming they’d be mostly pale blue
Short’s aster, with its blue flowers and long lance-shaped leaves that are hairy on the underside, grows at Lebanon Hills, but it must have been planted there since it grows naturally only in the Driftless Area of Minnesota. Still, a thrill to see it here.
Blue wood aster, with its small blue flowers, also has heart-shaped leaves with jagged points around the edges and upper leaves are more lance-shaped.
Large-leaf aster (I know this one because it used to grow under the ash trees that used to grow in my yard) has large, heart-shaped basal leaves and somewhat straggly pale bluish flowers.
Calico aster has hairy stems, velvety leaves that only have hairs along the mid-vein on the underside, and smallish white flowers with stalks less than half an inch long.
Panicled aster also has hairy stems, but unlike calico aster the hairs grow in lines. Its leaves are long and narrow, and the flowers are small and white.
New England aster when it’s blooming is easily recognizable by its deeply purplish flowers. Some of its lance-shaped leaved might have rounded tips.
A few flowers and grasses remain besides asters. Sunlight silvers the seeds of little bluestem on the path down to the lake, and along the boardwalk a single blue stiff gentian blooms. Planted? Perhaps, but still a sweet blue sign of fall among the asters.
Awl asterShining asterSmooth blue asterCrooked stem asterShort’s asterNew England asterStiff gentian
Saturday evening we have an event for our new wildflower book at Drury Lane Books in Grand Marais, so we leave on Friday to get in some flower chasing on the drive up. We’re hoping to find all of the pyrolas (except perhaps state-endangered small shinleaf) in one weekend, and with any luck we might also see at least one rare wildflower we’ve been dreaming about.
Our first stop is in Duluth, where we meet up with a naturalist who has generously offered to show us floating marsh marigold, which has been on our want-to-see list for years now. Floating marsh marigold has small leaves, very small white flowers, and blooms June through August in slow-moving water and along muddy shores. (Its close kin marsh marigold has large leaves, bright yellow flowers, and blooms in April and May in streams and lakes and ditches. It’s a little hard to believe they’re related, but they are.)
On our own we might never have seen this tiny floating flower, and we’re grateful to the naturalist for showing it to us and to the flower itself for blooming when we could see it. As we drive farther north, we are floating, too, with the thrill of finally seeing this state-endangered flower.
Next stop: Tettegouche State Park, where we find pink pyrola blooming under a bridge, our first pyrola of the trip. Despite diligent searching, though, we don’t locate the one-sided pyrola that is supposed to be growing nearby.
At Temperance River State Park we connect with a fellow flower chaser to drive down roads ever more narrow, rocky, and muddy to a stream between lakes and surrounded by pines, a place that feels a little forgotten and more than a little magical. It’s also a place where state-endangered small white water-lily has been seen somewhere inside an area of 27 kilometers, according to INaturalist.
“The leaves look like Pac-man,” our friend tells us as we don muck boots for our search. And when, eventually, we spot first one single leaf, then another and another, they really do look like Pac-man, round with a deep vee. Hoping for flowers as well as leaves we wander along a nearby lake and spot one, then, two, then three plants with bright white buds almost open and more Pac-man-like leaves.
Without a nearby American white water-lily for comparison, it’s hard for a photo to show how small the flowers and leaves that we’re seeing really are. American white water-lily has flowers 3 to 6 inches and leaves 4 to 12 inches, while small white water-lily has flowers 1 1/2 to 3 inches with leaves 1 1/2 to 6 inches. These small flowers open for only a few hours each day, so either we’ve come at the wrong time of day or else the buds aren’t quite ready to flower. Several years ago we bought hip waders for just such an occasion, and we gleefully don them for their inaugural wade deeper into the lake and a little nearer these rare and diminutive plants.
Two state-endangered flowers in one day–giddy with delight we head to our rented cabin on Lake Superior for the night.
And wake to a dripping sky and an all-day forecast of rain.
But we are flower-chasers, undaunted by a little water falling on us. We’ve never yet been deterred by rain, and we don’t intend to start now.
Fog socks in the lake and blurs the road as we set out, but when we turn inland both fog and rain gradually lighten. At a gravel pit that we love to visit, we find the green-flowered pyrola that a friend has told us about and that has been on our to-see list for years. Our second pyrola of the trip, and that’s just the beginning.
Across the road we find a yellow-colored coralroot that we’ve seen here once before and puzzled over (too tall for early coralroot, way too far out of it’s range and bloom time for autumn coralroot). Now we know that it’s a yellow spotless variant of western spotted coralroot. Close by, early coralroot has gone to seed, and western spotted coralroot blooms in its usual colors. Along a nearby trail we also find ragged fringed orchid in bud, huronensis orchid in flower, and many small green wood orchids (also known as club-spur orchid) in bud.
Six orchids before nine o’clock on a rainy day when we set out to see pyrolas. You never know what might happen when you go flower chasing.
Our search for pyrola resumes when a friend sends us coordinates for a section of the Superior Hiking Trail, where he’s seen several pyrola. The overcast sky and dripping trees make this place, too, feel magical, as though we’ve somehow been transported to a bit of the west coast rain forest. A creek burbles beside us on its way downhill as we follow the trail up. And up. And up.
Along the way we find more clumps of the yellow spotless variant of western spotted coralroot bright under the pines, lots of western spotted coralroot, and a single spotted coralroot barely out of the ground. We love finding these orchids, but we’re still on the lookout for pyrola, and we find them, too: one-flowered pyrola, one-sided pyrola, shinleaf (elliptical pyrola), and green-flowered pyrola along with their near-relation, pipsissewa.
Weekend pyrola total: all the pyrolas except round-leaved pyrola and small shinleaf, which is a plant of state special concern and will most likely take a lot more looking to locate.
One last stop of the day at Icelandite Fen Scientific and Natural Area reveals a few tiny auricled twayblade, bringing the weekend orchid total to eight.
The evening event at Drury Lane Books is filled with friendly folks interested in wildflowers and in restoring the land. We end our Fourth of July weekend full of gratitude for new friends, new places, and wildflowers both new and familiar.
With so many riches, who needs fireworks?
Floating marsh marigoldPink pyrolaSmall white water-lilyGreen-flowered pyrolaYellow spotless variant of western spotted coralrootWestern spotted coralrootEarly coralrootRagged fringed orchidHuronensisSmall green wood orchidSpotted coralrootOne-flowered pyrolaOne-sided pyrolaShinleafAuricled twaybladePipsissewa
Sunrise streaks the sky pink, yellow, and grayish blue as we make a quick before-class trip back to Horseshoe Harbor. Rocks, water, wildflowers–this is quintessential Lake Superior, and we love it.
In class we study river’s-edge plants, then drive to Bete Grise Preserve and hike through the woods to eat lunch under towering white pines along the beach. This is a new habitat for us, a complex of upland sand dunes alternating with wetlands swales. Delicate bell-shaped flowers hang from lowbush blueberry and velvet-leaf blueberry along the dune edge, and flowers that we’ve only ever seen before growing in woods–bunchberry, starflower, Canada mayflower–surprise us by also growing here in deep sand. In the wetland swales behind the dunes we find leatherleaf, Labrador tea, blue flag iris, and many sedges.
The last stop of the day is a fen, a habitat that makes our hearts happy. Here we find small cranberry, bog rosemary, purple pitcher plant, rose pogonia (one in bloom, most still in bud), and clusters and clusters of sundew, both round-leaved and spoon-leaf, glistening in the sunlight.
Even though the class is over, Kelly and I haven’t quite had our fill of flower chasing. We stop briefly by a roadside to catch American cancer-root in flower, then head to Cy Clark Memorial Nature Sanctuary where we find tesselated rattlesnake plantain and giant rattlesnake plantain nestled in moss. We’ve made it our goal to see giant rattlesnake plantain in a different location each day we’re here, and we’ve succeeded. Giant rattlesnake plantain doesn’t grow in Minnesota, so we won’t see it again until we return to the Keweenaw Peninsula.
