Roadside Riches

August 23, 2024

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

On an almost-end-of-August morning we headed down to Highway 56, a road in Mower county with rich roadsides if ever there was one, to see if cream gentian might be blooming in a ditch where we’d seen it last year.  Minnesota has seven species of gentian, all a deep blue except for cream gentian, a pale soft yellow.  

A white waning moon still hung in the sky as we drove along.  And there they were, a ditch full of cream gentians blooming like little bouquets of almost-closed flowers. We pulled off onto the shoulder of the road well out of the way of trucks thundering past. When we’d looked our fill at so many cream gentians that we didn’t even try to count them all,  we drove farther along the highway only to discover where all those  trucks had been headed: road construction.  In Minnesota? Who knew.

The detour around the town of Le Roy gave us a chance to head down to our favorite Iowa prairie, Hayden State Wildlife Management Area, where many flowers had already gone to fascinating seed–tuberous Indian plantain, wild quinine, milkweeds with their pointy pods.  Circling back into Minnesota, we drove down a stretch of  Highway 56 that we’d never been on before, where pale gentian-like blossoms beside the road demanded another stop along  the shoulder.  These blossoms turned out not to be gentians but white turtlehead, blooming among bright blue lobelia.

Have  you ever been so excited to see a flower that you stepped into what looked like a grassy ditch only to find out that hidden beneath the grass was water deeper than your boot tops?  I have. Luckily my go-to bag held dry clothes, and, even soaked to the knees, it was lovely to be among so many cheery white turtlehead flowers.

Our route took us close to Iron Horse Prairie Scientific and Natural Area (SNA), where we’d seen several kinds of blue gentians on past visits. If  cream gentians were blooming, could we find bottle gentians too?  We thrashed our way down the overgrown south entry path, climbed down into the SNA , and found that bottle gentians were indeed in bloom in the wetter parts of the prairie.   Bottle gentian’s blossoms are even more tightly closed than cream gentian’s, so bumblebees are the only pollinators strong enough to fight their way inside. In the more open areas of the prairie, blue asters and white asters bloomed, along with bright yellow sneezeweed and pale yellow lousewort still holding on to a few  of its whirligig petals.

Not far away at Hythecker Prairie SNA we found more bottle gentians blooming, along with spotted Joe Pye weed, marsh bellflower, marsh skullcap, smooth rattlesnake root, and plenty of goldenrods.

One more stop in search of gentians took us to Oronoco Prairie SNA, where we’d seen stiff gentian before, a surprising find in a dry prairie since all of Minnesota’s gentians except for downy gentian seem to prefer wetter places. Even though we didn’t find the stiff gentian we’d seen on previous visits the prairie delighted us with its golden grasses and goldenrods, whorled milkweed still blooming, bright purplish spires of rough blazing star, rattlesnake master’s spiky white globes, and big bluestem’s raggedy seed heads bending in the breeze. 

We started the day with rich roadsides and ended with scientific and natural areas.  Wherever we find native wildflowers, in places protected and places unexpected, they always delight.

Even when you accidentally fill your boots with water. 

See more of what we are seeing now