Heading North

July 4-5, 2025

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

Saturday evening we have an event for our new wildflower book at Drury Lane Books in Grand Marais, so we leave on  Friday to get in some flower chasing on the drive up. We’re hoping to find all of the pyrolas (except perhaps state-endangered small shinleaf) in one weekend, and with any luck we might also see at least one rare wildflower we’ve been dreaming about.

Our first stop is in Duluth, where we meet up with a naturalist who has generously offered to show us floating marsh marigold, which has been on our want-to-see list for years now. Floating marsh marigold  has small leaves, very small white flowers, and blooms June through August in slow-moving water and along muddy shores.  (Its close kin marsh marigold has large leaves, bright yellow flowers, and blooms in April and May in streams and lakes and ditches. It’s a little hard to believe they’re related, but they are.)  

On our own we might never have seen this tiny floating flower, and we’re grateful to  the naturalist for showing it to us and to the flower itself for blooming when we could see it. As we drive farther north, we are floating, too, with the thrill of finally seeing this state-endangered flower.

Next stop: Tettegouche State Park, where we find pink pyrola blooming under a bridge, our first pyrola of the trip. Despite diligent searching, though, we don’t locate the one-sided pyrola that is supposed to be growing nearby.

At Temperance River State Park we connect with a fellow flower chaser to drive down roads ever more narrow, rocky, and muddy to a stream between lakes and surrounded by pines, a place that feels a little forgotten and more than a little magical.  It’s also a place where state-endangered small white water-lily has been seen somewhere inside an area of 27 kilometers, according to INaturalist.

“The leaves look like Pac-man,” our friend tells us as we don muck boots for our search.  And when, eventually,  we spot first one single leaf, then another and another, they really do look like Pac-man, round with a deep vee. Hoping for flowers as well as leaves we wander along a nearby lake and spot one, then, two, then three plants with bright white buds almost open and more Pac-man-like leaves.  

Without a nearby American white water-lily for comparison, it’s hard for a photo to show how small the flowers and leaves that we’re seeing really are. American white water-lily has flowers 3 to 6 inches and leaves  4 to 12 inches, while small white water-lily has flowers 1 1/2 to 3 inches with  leaves 1 1/2 to 6 inches. These small flowers open for only a few hours each day, so either we’ve come at the wrong time of day or else the buds aren’t quite ready to flower. Several years ago we bought hip waders for just such an occasion, and we gleefully don them for their inaugural wade deeper into the lake and a little nearer these rare and diminutive plants.

Two state-endangered flowers in one day–giddy with delight we head to our rented cabin on Lake Superior for the night.

And wake to a dripping sky and an all-day forecast of rain.

But we are flower-chasers, undaunted by a little water falling on us. We’ve never yet been deterred by rain, and we don’t intend to start  now. 

Fog socks in the lake and blurs the road as we set out, but when we turn inland both fog and rain gradually lighten.  At a gravel pit that we love to visit, we find the green-flowered pyrola that a friend has told us about and that has been on our to-see list for years. Our second pyrola of the trip, and that’s just the beginning. 

Across the road we find a yellow-colored coralroot that we’ve seen here once before and puzzled over (too tall for early coralroot, way too far out of it’s range and bloom time for autumn coralroot). Now we know that it’s a yellow spotless variant of western spotted coralroot.  Close by, early coralroot has gone to seed, and western spotted coralroot blooms in its usual colors. Along a nearby trail we also find ragged fringed orchid in bud, huronensis orchid in flower, and many small green wood orchids (also known as club-spur orchid) in bud.  

Six orchids before nine o’clock on a rainy day when we set out to see pyrolas.  You never know what might happen when you go flower chasing. 

Our search for pyrola resumes when a friend sends us coordinates for a section of the Superior Hiking Trail, where he’s seen several pyrola. The overcast sky and dripping  trees make this place, too, feel magical, as though we’ve somehow been transported to a bit of  the west coast rain forest. A creek burbles beside us on its way downhill as we  follow the trail up.  And up.  And up.  

Along the way we find more clumps of the yellow spotless variant of western spotted coralroot bright under the pines, lots of western spotted coralroot, and a single spotted coralroot barely out of the ground. We love finding these orchids, but we’re still on the lookout for pyrola, and we find them, too:  one-flowered pyrola, one-sided pyrola, shinleaf (elliptical pyrola),  and green-flowered pyrola along with their near-relation, pipsissewa. 

Weekend pyrola total: all the pyrolas except round-leaved pyrola and small shinleaf, which is a plant of state special concern and will most likely take a lot more looking to locate.

One last stop of the day at Icelandite Fen Scientific and Natural Area reveals a few tiny auricled twayblade, bringing the weekend orchid total to eight. 

The evening event at Drury Lane Books is filled with friendly folks interested in wildflowers and in restoring the land. We end our Fourth of July weekend full of gratitude for new friends, new places, and wildflowers both new and familiar.

With so many riches, who needs fireworks?

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