Author: Phyllis Root and Kelly Povo, flowerchasers.com
Phyllis Root is the author of fifty books for children and has won numerous awards. Kelly Povo, a professional photographer for over thirty years, has exhibited in galleries and art shows across the country. She and Phyllis Root have collaborated on several books. This is their first book on Minnesota's Native Wildflowers.
Today is the official beginning of our Keweenaw Plant I.D. Workshop, and we’re eager to learn all we can. The workshop is packed with information on plants of the Keweenaw Peninsula as we hike through a coniferous forest, along a bog boardwalk, and down to a beaver pond. Many of the flowers we see along the trails are familiar to us from Minnesota’s woods and rocky shores– three-toothed cinquefoil, gaywings, twinflower more deeply pink than we’ve ever seen it –but there are surprises as well. We come across another population of giant rattlesnake plantain (the only one of the four species of rattlesnake plantain orchid that doesn’t grow in Minnesota), and we also spot spotted coralroot, bringing our total of orchids seen so far this trip to twelve.
The day’s workshop ends with a stop to see the bright yellow composite flowers and perfoliate leaves of heart-leaved arnica, a new-to-us species that doesn’t grow in Minnesota. The class ends for the day, but we aren’t quite ready yet to quit chasing flowers, and daylight lingers long this far north and so soon after solstice. So Kelly and I drive to an old mining site where she’s seen striped coralroot on a previous visit. Despite diligent searching in the oak woods next to the site we don’t find the coralroot. What we do find are the leaves and buds of numerous elliptical shinleaf plants and many, many parasitic American cancer- root plants spookily poking out of the ground like yellowish pine cones, another new-to-us plant.
After a long and flower-filled day we return to our motel. The lake lies silvery calm outside our window, and fall asleep wondering what amazing finds tomorrow might bring.
Last night we fell asleep lulled by the sound of Lake Superior’s waves, and we wake to the same water music. Today we are moseying toward Copper Harbor with a list of places to visit along the way.
Our first stop is Black Creek Nature Sanctuary, where we follow a trail through conifer and hardwood forest past starflower, bunchberry, Canada mayflower with its foamy white flowers, bearberry, pipsissewa, false Solomon’s seal, and a plethora of stemless lady’s-slipper in various stages of bloom. Thimbleberry blossoms promise berries later in the season, and fly honeysuckle flowers sweeten the air. Where a bridge crosses a little stream Canada anemone bloom white among the grasses. A bird calls, and wind rustles the needles of pine trees. A holy sort of silence permeates the air.
On our way to our next stop we spy a roadside ditch crowded with blueflag iris, yellow pond lily, and flat-leaved bladderwort all in bright bloom, a colorful micro-habitat we’ve never seen before. We’ve learned in our wanderings that sometimes the roadsides we’re driving by are the real riches, and this begins to turn into a roadside sort of day.
Farther along we stop at a nameless fen where last August Kelly found hooded ladies-tresses blooming. Now at the end of June we’re way too early for the ladies-tresses, but we do find water avens, meadow buttercup, and four platanthera huronensis orchids. We’ll return in August (if we can) in hopes of seeing the spectacular spectacle of hundreds of hooded ladies’-tresses in full flower.
Our next roadside stop is a side-of-the-highway sand blowout with more beach heather than we’ve ever seen before in bright yellow flower. It’s also when I discover that I can’t find my notebook where I record everything we see throughout the year–flowers, weather, sights, sounds, and GPS coordinates.
Panic ensues. We tear the car apart without finding the notebook and try to remember the last time I wrote in it. Before lunch? After the fen stop? We retrace our route back to the fen, and there we spy the notebook by the side of the road, where it must had fallen when I got out to eat my soup. Clearly it’s a day for roadside finds.
Jubilant, we drive on to our last flower chasing stop of the day, a parking lot at Great Sand Bay where wind blasts across the lake, and kite surfers skim over the water. Along a trail heading into George Hite Dunes and Marshes Preserve we find giant rattlesnake plantain and tesselated rattlesnake plantain, both in bud, for a total of three more orchids seen so far on the trip.
We end the day at our motel in Copper Harbor, home for the next few nights. Outside our room the lake lies placid now, but all day we have felt its wild energy. Tomorrow our class on wildflowers of the Keweenaw Peninsula begins, and we can hardly wait to learn more about this rich and amazing place.
It’s been a while since we’ve gone on a flower-chasing adventure, and we’re excited to be heading out for one this week in Copper Harbor, Michigan. Two years ago, I took an incredible wildflower class with the same instructor on Isle Royale, and we’re excited now to learn more about the flora of the Keweenaw peninsula. Flowers don’t stop at borders, and neither do we.
Our class starts on Tuesday, but we’ve left on Sunday for some pre-game wildflower chasing. First stop: Falls Creek Scientific and Natural Area (SNA) where we do a quick search for two orchids we’ve seen there in the past. Just off the trail we find lily-leaved twayblade in fresh bloom, and a little farther along we come across the distinctive patterned leaves of downy rattlesnake plantain, a native orchid that blooms later in the season. Two orchids before nine-thirty in the morning–we are off to a good start.
Our planned route takes us past Kissick Swamp Wildlife Area near Hayward, Wisconsin, a State Natural Area with over one hundred native plants, including fourteen species of orchid. (On previous visits we managed, with help from a knowledgeable friend, to see thirteen of them.) The heart of the swamp for us is a ten-acre lake with a bog mat around the edges. We are barely down the hill into the swamp when we come across a friendly fellow swamp explorer and decide to trek along together beside the lake.
The bog holds the usual boggish suspects: pitcher plant, tufted loosestrife, bog rosemary, small cranberry, round-leaved sundew, three-leaf false Solomon’s-seal, bog buckbean, and mosses in reds and greens that squish soggily underfoot.
What we’ve come for, though, are the orchids, and we find them–scatterings of rose pogonia, dragon’s mouth, and tuberous grass-pink. Stemless lady’s-slipper seems to be everywhere, from fresh blooms to flowers fading away, and at least one showy lady’s slipper is in delicate pale pink bud. While I’m trying to hold the sunshade for Kelly to photograph a rose pogonia alongside the water, the edge of the bog mat gives way under my foot, plunging my leg into the lake up to my hip. In the 91-degree Fahrenheit heat, it’s possible my fellow flower chasers are slightly envious of my sudden refreshment.
Along the trail we come across the carcass of a turtle, mostly shell now, where red-spotted admiral and northern crescent butterflies are puddling. We’ve seen butterflies puddle before in mud, sipping up the salts and minerals that the males need to help with reproductive success. According to an internet search they also sip from decaying animals for the same reason–which reminds us of how everything is connected, even if we don’t always know how.
Almost at the end of the small lake we come upon the grand finale of orchids–a mossy and watery bit of habitat where, among many rose pogonia, tuberous grass-pink, and dragon’s mouth orchids, tall white bog orchid spires make an elegant and regal appearance.
It would have been easy for us to decide to bypass Kissick Swamp in the fairly ferocious heat and drive on in air-conditioned comfort, but we are so glad we didn’t (although next time we’ll work even harder to stay hydrated). Even in places we’ve visited before we never know who we’ll meet or what we’ll find among familiar flower faces.
Our goal for the night is a motel in Silver City, Michigan, and after miles of driving along forested roads and through small towns we come suddenly to Lake Superior in all its waving wonder. Lakeside, the temperature is seventy-one degrees, and from our room we can see and hear the waves rolling in.
A splendid end to a splendid day. And a sweet way to fall asleep to the sound of Lake Superior.
