May 4, 2025
Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo
Sometimes chasing native wildflowers is, well, a walk in a park. Sometimes the search involves scrambling up rocks, wading into rivers, or hummock-hopping through a swamp.
And sometimes it’s a scavenger hunt. Can we see all of the thirteen kinds of milkweed that still grow in Minnesota in a single weekend? All of the six lady’s-slipper orchids in a day? All of the goldenrods in one year? (We’re still working on telling a couple of the tricky goldenrods apart.)
This spring we are on the hunt for Minnesota’s violets. There are twenty different violets in Minnesota, including eastern green violet, a state-endangered species. Violets are mainly spring flowers, so we have a month or two at most to find them blooming. Although we’ve gotten better at recognizing some native wildflowers by their leaves, buds, or seed pods, finding them in bloom almost always makes identification easier for us.
So far our score sheet reads:
arrow-leaved violet
birdfoot violet
common blue violet (which we have seen in shades of white, fuchsia, and blue)
lance-leaved violet
marsh blue violet
northern white violet (formerly small white violet)
prairie violet
smooth yellow violet
western Canada violet
yellow prairie violet (state-threatened)
Which brings us halfway to our goal.
And because spring is exploding around us as we look, we’re seeing so much more than violets.
On a burned-over prairie we found pasqueflower rebounding, kittentails and prairie turnip blooming, and prairie smoke in bud.
In the woods at Carley State Park, while the river that runs through the park babbled and burbled below, we saw smooth yellow violet along with a bounty of Virginia bluebells, bloodroot, white trout lily, Dutchman’s breeches, bishop’s cap, cutleaf toothwort, Canadian wild ginger leaves, and Jack-in-the-pulpit.
Whitewater State Park showed us almost all of the above along with Virginia spring beauty, large-flowered bellwort, yellow trout lily, and drooping trillium beginning to open along with an enormous patch of mayapple in bud.
Magelssen Bluff Park in Rushford welcomed us with a hillside of wood betony and birdfoot violet as we turned into the park, and jeweled shooting star was budding on the rocky slopes up the road.
At Mound Prairie Scientific and Natural Area we found showy orchis leaves just beginning to open while large-flowered bellwort bloomed bright yellow above us on the wooded back of a goat prairie. On the prairie side of Mound Prairie we found more wood betony, puccoon, birdfoot violet, bastard toadflax, and plains wild indigo both in bud and in bloom while vultures rode the air overhead.
After what has felt like a slow-starting spring, everything is rushing to soak up the sun and warmth and do what flowers do. And we’ll do what flowerchasers do, this time chasing violets in our wanderings. Ten violets down, ten to go, and an explosion of spring to go chasing them in.
Stay tuned. We’ll keep you posted.
See all of what we are seeing now HERE!
