Flowery Fireworks

July 4 and 5, 2024

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

On the fourth of July we set off to see wildflowers blooming in some of Minnesota’s western prairies. The rain came with us, a drenching downpour with the light alternating between apocalyptic clouds and intensely saturated colors. By the time we reached Antelope Valley Scientific and Natural Area (SNA) the rain had slowed to sprinkles.

We’d been to Antelope Valley last year, too late to see showy milkweed flowering, but this year we were right on time–true to its name, showy milkweed bloomed gloriously. All of our milkweeds are beautiful, but showy really is spectacular with long pointy pink hoods that enclose the flower’s horns, which play a part in pollination. (The flower’s horns were the closest we came to seeing anything resembling an antelope in Antelope Valley, although pronghorn antelope once ranged as far east as the Mississippi River.)

Foxtail barley bent in the breeze, wild licorice bloomed among the prairie grasses, pale-spike lobelia blossomed in slender stalks of blue, and meadow blazing star and swamp milkweed budded. Thunder and lightning drove us back to the car to head to our next stop, Glynn Prairie SNA, where silverleaf scurfpea, thimbleweed, prairie phlox, and false sunflower bloomed along with larkspur, meadow blazing star, golden Alexanders, and more pale-spike lobelia.

On to Prairie Coteau SNA, where we climbed among leadplant, grey-headed coneflower, silverleaf scurfpea, hoary vervain, whorled milkweed, green milkweed, and prairie clover.

On our way to Lundblad Prairie SNA a ferocious rain storm assailed us with a rat a tat of hail that stopped by the time we reached the SNA, and we wandered among more of the usual prairie flowers we’d been seeing and also figured out how to tell the difference between common milkweed and state-threatened Sullivant’s milkweed: Sullivant’s has much narrower leaves that stick up more vertically and feel rubberier than common milkweed.

By the time we settled into the night’s hotel, we were counting up milkweeds seen so far this trip: common, swamp, curly-leaved green, whorled, showy, and Sullivant’s, a total of six of Minnesota’s thirteen known milkweed species. We love a good hunt, so why not spend part of Friday looking for as many more milkweeds in bloom as we could find?

Friday threatened more rain, but we always bring rain gear and rubber boots for wet weather and wet grasses along with bug shirts for the mosquitoes that fiercely follow the rain. We climbed up into the newest SNA, Purrington Prairie, grateful that another area has been protected for wildlife and wildflowers, then stopped at Des Moines River SNA where vivid, deep orange (almost red) butterfly-weed (milkweed number seven) dotted a hillside. We bypassed Holthe Prairie SNA when we discovered the minimum maintenance road we needed to take was maximally minimal, overgrown with high grasses and with a deep puddle of muddy water right at the turnoff. We’ll come back in drier weather.

We’d seen poke milkweed before along a forested road in Lake Louise State Park, so we made our way east across the state. Sure enough, poke milkweed’s white blossoms drooped gracefully on their umbels. Milkweed number eight.

The last stop on the way home was a Wildlife Management Area where we’d once seen state-threatened prairie milkweed in flower. Would we find the plants again? Would they be blooming? Just as we arrived, the skies opened in another drenching downpour, but we geared up, booted up, and sloshed through wet prairie grasses to where we remembered finding the flowers.

And there they were, two plants with their slender leaves and sparkly, globe-shaped blossoms almost glowing in the wet air. I held an umbrella over Kelly and her camera while she took photos, then we searched for more plants. Previously we’d seen more than fifty, and diligent searching revealed at least twenty-two this year (which we rounded up to twenty-five for the ones we most likely had missed). Milkweed number nine.

Milkweed’s flowers make their own sort of exuberant fireworks, from bright orange to white to pink to green. On two days filled with prairies, wildflowers, and many Minnesota milkweeds, finding prairie milkweed in bloom felt like a flowery grand finale.

Jubilant, we headed home.

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