May 3, 2026
Author: Phyllis Root • Photographer: Kelly Povo
Spring comes quickly to the big woods, where flowers have a brief time to soak up the sun, grow, bloom, and set seed before deciduous trees leaf out and shade the forest floor. Some flowers–the ephemeral ones–even disappear completely until the following year. Spring comes to the prairie, too, but at a more leisurely pace. The prairie has all summer to put on a show, and the prairie takes its time.
Last Sunday we visited a native prairie in Goodhue county to see how the prairie was coming along. From a distance the hillside looks dry and brown, but as we climb the hill we see green leaves poking through last year’s dried grasses. The top of the hill reveals a few lingering American pasqueflowers still in bloom among others gone to seed, tendrils swaying gracefully in the breeze. Prairie alumroot leaves are emerging, and pussytoes and bastard toadflax have pushed up out of the ground.
Part of the prairie has been burned since we last visited, and it’s here in the burned area that we find so many springtime beginnings against a quilt of brilliant new green growth. Leaves of large beardtongue unfold. Birdfoot violet in sweeps and swoops of purple and, here and there, stand-alone plants of prairie violets bloom. Small branches of sand cherry, a plant we’ve only ever seen before on Park Point by Duluth, open delicate white flowers that will soon be abuzz with bees.
Prairie smoke is in deep magenta bud, kittentails still bloom like yellow exclamation marks, and ground plum’s delicate lilac flowers are passing their prime. Bright yellow spots of hoary puccoon and fringed (narrow-leaf) puccoon dot the hillside, and prairie blue-eyed grass is slowly opening as the sun warms the day. The leaves of starry false Solomon’s seal and golden Alexanders are making an appearance, with flowers soon to follow. We even come across the leaves and buds of plains wild indigo, a plant we’ve seen here only once before.
The prairie has all summer to dazzle us with its constantly changing palette of flowers and colors. Here, in the beginning of May, we’re delighted to find the show beginning.
Mary Oliver in her poem “Instructions for Living a Life” writes:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
What better advice could there be for chasing flowers on a springtime prairie?
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