Author: kellypovo

Kelly Povo, a professional photographer for over thirty years, has exhibited in galleries and art shows across the country. Her cards, gift books, and calendars have been sold internationally. She and Phyllis Root have collaborated on several books. This is her first book on Minnesota's Native Wildflowers.

1871: Mary Hedges, botany professor, goes to the root of the matter!

December 16, 2019

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

Some cultures have stories of the miraculous blooming of flowers in the snow at Christmas time, but Minnesota’s native flowers are locked up tight in the frozen ground. Snow trilliums, pasque flowers, and hepatica might bloom in early spring even through a late snowfall, but for now, all our native flowers are memories.

One of the earlier native wildflowers we’ll go hunting once spring thaw unlocks the ground is the dwarf trout lily, Minnesota’s one endemic wildflower, which only grows in three counties in Minnesota and nowhere else in the world and is listed as endangered both in Minnesota and federally.  Dwarf trout lily blooms for such a brief time and in so few known locations (as well as being really tiny—flowers are 1/3” across) that many years we miss it.

Continue reading “1871: Mary Hedges, botany professor, goes to the root of the matter!”

Gratitude

snowmanC

December 1, 2019

Snow has fallen and fallen again. Winter has arrived, and we’re thinking about what we’re grateful for in the past year.  Some of what we appreciate:

Searching for native wildflowers and sometimes even finding them

People who help protect native wildflowers and the places they grow

People who share their knowledge with us (you might not even know who you are, but thank you)

Being able to share our (non-botanist) knowledge with others

Talking about our wildflower adventures on Minnesota Public Radio

Seeing narrow-leaved milkweed for the first time

Discovering dragon’s mouth orchids all around the edge of Long Lake

Finding yellow gentianin a city park close to home

Being surprised by white turtlehead

Delighting in lots and lots and lots of whorled milkweed

Driving Wisconsin rustic roads and finding robin’s plantain

Scaling a goat prairie and finding cylindrical blazing star

Almost seeing ball cactus in bloom

Taking a class in Churchill (okay, that was last year, but we’re still grateful)

The chance to do it all again next year, as soon as the flowers start blooming!

Join us!
Annual Holiday Art Show!
December 6, 4-7 p.m.
December 7, 10 a.m. – 3 p.m.

Meet Kelly and Phyllis in Kelly’s studio for her Annual Holiday Art Show! Books and photographs available. All are welcome!

 

 

Summer Unwinding

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

We are closing in on the end of September, close to the end of wildflower searching season, but the prairie is far from done.  On a glorious afternoon we headed down to Hyland Lake Park Reserve to see what was still in bloom from a visit a few weeks ago and found a brilliance of asters–pink, purple, white, blue all abuzz with bees. Goldenrod, too, some plumes with a dozen or more pollinators on them:  bumblebees, honeybees, butterflies.

Along the path through the prairie Indian grass and big bluestem waved golden in the prairie breeze, a cloud of dragonflies rose up in front of us, and down in the grasses we discovered both  bottle gentians and also yellow gentians, almost done blooming. Although we didn’t see any bumblebees fighting their way into these gentians, the bees are these flowers’  primary pollinators:  no other bees are big enough to pry their way in and out of the closed blossoms.

The flowers we’d seen blooming a few weeks before—monarda, coneflower, spotted Joe-pye weed, prairie onion, butterfly-weed, great blue lobelia, round-headed bush clover– were mostly gone to seed. Fall is ahead, and winter follows, but there are still plenty of days worth of wildflower watching to do.  The bees and butterflies appreciate the late-season blooms.

And so do we.

Asters
Goldenrod

 

Under Umbrellas

September 1, 2019

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

We couldn’t stand not to do more wildflower searching on this long holiday weekend, and a chance encounter with an I–naturalist posting led us to Hyland Lake Park Reserve in search of yellow gentian.  We hoped to beat the rain that threatened, but we and the rain arrived at the park at the same time.  Undeterred and under umbrellas, we hunted for the gentian and found it exactly where I-naturalist had marked it.

The rain came down harder, but Kelly had rain gear in her car, including rubber boots and an extra coat for me (who had forgotten everything in my excitement to go find another new-to-us flower), and we followed a trail into the restored prairie area where we saw aster, monarda, goldenrod,  spotted Joe-pye weed, black-eyed Susan, big bluestem, blazing star (one sheltering a monarch waiting out the rain), prairie onion, butterfly-weed, and round-headed bush clover. Making our way back through the tall grass (my pants soaked to my knees and beyond), we came across another yellow gentian, then another, and another and another—maybe fifty different plants in all.  Among plants around the nature center we saw ironweed, obedient plant, and turtlehead, and under a thistle blossom a cluster of three bumblebees waited for drier weather.

Soaked but beaming, we headed toward home in search of dry clothes and coffee just as the rain stopped.

Yellow Gentian
Blazing Star
Ironweed
Obedient Plant

 

 

New Places, New Plants

August 31, 2019

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

We left before sunrise and reached Blaine Wetlands Sanctuary just as a spectacular red sunrise lit up the sky and turned ridges of clouds a deep, glowing rose. As the day lightened, we followed a boardwalk into the sanctuary past vervain, goldenrod, boneset, jewelweed, fleabane, aster, and the rich, subtle colors of fall grasses.  We were in search of a spot that a wildflower expert had told us about where we hoped to see some rare plants, and a trail away from the boardwalk led us in the right direction.  The ground underneath our feet felt spongy and soft, covered in places with moss. Overhead two sandhill cranes flapped and glided, conversing in clacking calls.

Kelly spotted a deer, I saw a frog, we both spied a snake.  Tiny bugs buzzed, and grasshoppers flung themselves through the air. When we came to our destination, we found pink blossoms of field milkwort among grass-leaved goldenrod, aster, meadowsweet, spotted Joe-pye weed, and blue vervain, along with other flowers we have yet to identify. (More information on the Blaine Wetlands Sanctuary)

Our next stop (recommended by the same expert) was Wollans Park, a restored wetland where sandhill cranes glided down to disappear in the grasses.  What had once been mostly reed canary grass and buckthorn was now a rich mix of  boneset, spotted Joe-pye weed, goldenrod, hoary vervain, blue vervain, grass-leaved goldenrod, meadowsweet, arrowhead, and aster as well as purple false foxglove and slender-leaved false foxglove, two new-to-us species. Many narrow leaves hinted at an abundance of lance-leaved violets, a state threatened species, and when spring comes again we’ll come back to see them in bloom.  Many thanks to the people who brought back this wetland rich in native plants and sandhill cranes.

Continue reading “New Places, New Plants”