The great Minnesota melt of 2018 has finally arrived. On Earth Day, the second day of temperatures in the high fifties that are rapidly making the piles of snow seem like a winter dream, we head out to look for the earliest bloomers. We’ve already seen skunk cabbage several weeks ago down by Minnehaha Creek while the snow still buried the ground. Now on a steep gravelly hillside near Cannon Falls we find the first pasque flowers as well—many furry buds about to open and a scattering of pale purples flowers already blooming. In the next few days, more pasque flowers will open, and in a week or two kittentails and pussytoes and prairie smoke (whose leaves are already greening) will begin to flower as well, but the pasque flowers are the ones that make us shout with delight.
Once we see pasque flowers, we can usually be sure that snow trilliums will be blooming, too, on a different hillside, a steeply wooded one near Hastings. Could we really be lucky enough to see both pasque flowers and snow trilliums in a single outing? At Hastings the hillside is still frozen in places, but almost all of the snow cover has melted. Hepatica leaves are greening in the brown leaf cover of last year’s oak leaves, and in a corner of a cliff we find the tiniest snow trilliums I’ve ever seen, their leaves still upright enclosing a minuscule white bud not much bigger than a grain of rice. These flowers, too, will open quickly now that spring is here, and hepatica will blossom blue and purple, while Dutchman’s breeches hangs its laundry out to dry.
Snow trilliums and pasque flowers in a single sunny afternoon—our long-awaited spring is finally here. And our hearts are glad.
Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo
