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Saturday with 200,000 people we marched for justice in Saint Paul. Sunday just the two of us hiked hillsides hoping for early spring wildflowers.
We’ve had enough warm weather and signs of spring that snow trillium, hepatica, and pasqueflower might be making their way into the sunshine, so we drive to Hastings Scientific and Natural Area (SNA) where a population of endangered snow trillium grows on a steep and rocky hillside. We find small green triplets of leaves poking up and one flower working at opening, but the full blooming display is still at least a few days away. Sharp-lobed hepatica leaves reveal furry little flower buds just emerging from the ground, and a scarlet elfcup makes a tiny splash of color among last year’s brown leaves. Sun shines, breezes blow. Somewhere a sandhill crane clacks through the sky. A glorious day to be chasing wildflowers, and we don’t want to stop.
From Hastings we head to Grey Cloud Dunes SNA near Cottage Grove where on past visits we’ve seen pasqueflowers along a sandy trail. This time, though, we can’t even find the dried clumps of last year’s leaves, but we do see the leaves of large beardtongue promising future flowers. Farther along the trail we come across the hopeful greening leaves of birdfoot violet.
We’re still yearning for pasqueflowers, and our favorite pasqueflower hillside at River Terrace Prairie SNA has seldom disappointed. Flower chasing never happens in a straight line–we head back the way we came through Hastings to River Terrace Prairie outside of Cannon Falls and climb yet another hillside where we find delicate purple pasqueflowers opening to the sun. Furry little buds just emerging hint at more flowers to come.
We still have hopes to see snow trillium blooming, so we make one last stop and hike down a hill. As we come to where the trail turns upward to where we have seen snow trilliums in past years, a biker barrels down the hill alarmingly close to where the flowers grow. After the biker has blown past, we hurry up the trail to find that clusters of snow trillium are indeed blooming, some with a bike tire tread so close in the dirt that the biker missed them by no more than an inch.
These past months have reminded us that life can be precarious. On a sunny Sunday we go looking for signs of spring, signs of hope, and we find them on the hillsides. Marching for justice and hiking for hope remind us that we need to protect precious things–our rights, our neighbors, and the native wildflowers that sometimes grow perilously underfoot.
Love your neighbors, love our world, go out looking for wildflowers if, like us, it gives you hope and makes your heart happy.
And work for justice. For all.
Snow trillium Snow trillium Snow trillium Sharp-lobed hepatica Scarlet elfcup Large beardtongue Birdfoot violet and Seaside three-awn Pasqueflower
While federal ICE agents still lurk in Minnesota, a warm spell has melted most of the other ice and snow here in the twin cities, which means it’s time to go looking for skunk cabbage. For years now we’ve gone down along Minnehaha Creek or Nine Mile Creek to see these first wildflowers emerge, melting their way up out of the ground by generating their own heat.
This year we wanted to find a new-to-us location, so after research on I-Naturalist, we head out for Spring Lake Regional Park. The map of the park shows trails among the trees, but, as sometimes happens, maps and reality don’t always agree. We follow the trails we can find, but the one we want that should take us to the skunk cabbage doesn’t appear anywhere on the ground. Time to bushwhack.
Bushwhacking is usually not our favorite way to get where we want to go. This time, though, the ground is unusually open and looks as though a giant maw has chewed its way through downed trees and branches and bushes, leaving splintered remnants behind. (Later in the day a conversation reveals that it was probably the work of a machine called a masticator.)
Skunk cabbage likes wet places–in the past we’ve seen it growing in little runoffs and rivulets, and we’re hopeful that we’ll find some in a little inlet past a beaver lodge where the land slopes down to the lake. We don’t hope in vain. In a narrow water track, partly covered with soft ice and partly muddy, we find the first small shoots of skunk cabbage, some no higher than an inch out of the ground. A few shoots look nipped at the tips, whether from brush clearing or perhaps from a hungry critter, but we know soon their maroon flowers will emerge, followed by cabbage-like leaves.
Mossy rocks dot the ground with green, and the air smells of wet wood, damp leaves, and spring unfolding around us. Somewhere a gaggle of geese gabbles. We are almost giddy to be out among trees and by water with our first wildflower sighting of the year. Who could go home when we’re close (as flower chasing goes) to Hastings Scientific and Natural Area where another early bloomer, snow trillium, grows? We head over to Hastings, and although it turns our we’re too early for even the first tiny buds of snow trillium, we do find last year’s sharp-lobed hepatica leaves and the first miniscule sprouts of this year’s growth. In a week or two we’ll come back for the delicate pale flowers, after which last year’s leaves will die and this year’s leaves will come in, and perhaps snow trillium will have made its elegant appearance.
We are pretty sure winter isn’t done with us yet, and we know ICE agents aren’t done, either. We’ll continue the work we’ve been doing for justice, helping to keep our neighbors and community safe. But we’ll also be on the lookout for spring unfolding, and seeing these early flowers makes joy sprout in our flower-chasing hearts.
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
