Phyllis Root and Kelly Povo, flowerchasers.com

Violets Revisited

May 26, 2025

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

The time for violet chasing is short, and we’ve been on the hunt this spring to see all of Minnesota’s eighteen violets while they’re blooming. Which is a correction from our last violet blog, when we wrote that there were twenty different Minnesota violets. A reclassification of Minnesota violets in 2023 took the number down to eighteen members of the genus viola plus green violet which belongs to the genus cubelium instead of viola, is state-endangered, and whose picture looks, to our non-botanist eyes, nothing much like the other violets. And which, despite diligent searching, we have yet to see.

When we wrote the last post we’d managed to see ten viola violets –arrow-leaved, birdfoot, common blue, lance-leaved, marsh, northern white, prairie, smooth yellow, western Canada, and yellow prairie (state-threatened).

We are happy to report that we have now seen the other eight viola violets. Here’s how it happened.

Two weekends ago we headed up to Duluth for a joint event with Zenith Books and The Tasting Room, stopping along the way at Magney-Snively Natural Area where we found Carolina spring beauty (which we’d also been chasing this spring). After book-and-tea time with fellow wildflower enthusiasts we visited nearby Hartley Nature Center where we came across Great Lakes violet and sweet white violet– numbers eleven and twelve. At Stony Point, our next stop, we found violet number thirteen–great spurred violet.

After visits with family and friends we headed back to the cities, still on the hunt for violets.

First stop: Stub Trail at Fall Lake Campground in the Superior National Forest, where dog violet grew along a trail–violet number fourteen. Then off to Sax Zim Bog where we found violet number fifteen, kidney-leaved violet, growing near a bog boardwalk. At Jay Cooke State Park we clambered down along uptilted rocks by the river to find sand violet–number sixteen.

This past weekend we set out to finish the list with the last two violets. In an Anoka sandplain wetland we found an abundance of primrose-leaved violets–violet number seventeen. One to go: northern bog violet. But despite scouring trails in southeastern Minnesota we saw barely any violets at all, although we did see our first blooming orchid of the year, showy orchis.

Thanks to a friend telling us about a site closer to home we did find northern bog violet blooming cheerily along with a few small yellow lady’s-slipper and small white lady’s slipper nearby. Violet number eighteen and blooming orchids two and three. (Can you tell I like to count?)

A violet-filled springtime of chasing down all Minnesota’s viola violets and a chance to see the world awakening to spring. Next year, who knows? We might actually find green violet.

As a bonus, we’ve come up with a slogan for our next protest sign:

Violets, not violence.

See more of what we are Seeing Now….

Counting (Shooting) Stars

May 10, 2025

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

In our continuing search for all of Minnesota’s twenty violets, we set out last weekend to try to find state-endangered eastern green violet, one of the rarest flowers in the state, known in only a few places.

We scaled steep ravines, slipped and slid down dry rocky creek beds, wandered alongside (and got our hiking boots wet in) still-running creeks.
Did we find eastern green violet?

We did not. But we saw plenty of common blue violet along with cutleaf toothwort, eastern false rue anemone, Jack-in-the-pulpit, trout lily, Canadian wild ginger, mayapple in bud, Virginia spring beauty, drooping trillium, wild geranium, wild blue phlox, and marsh marigolds in brilliant yellow bloom.

We were close enough to Maglessen Bluff Park for a quick trip to see if the jeweled shooting stars, in bud last weekend, were blooming now. They were, their bright magenta petals folding back, so we decided on a different quest. We would try to see all of Minnesota’s shooting stars in a day instead.

All two of them.

Jeweled shooting star blooms April to May on limestone cliffs in hardwood forests and occasionally in goat prairies. Flowers are almost always a rosy purple-to-pink, very rarely white.

Prairie shooting star blooms April to June in open prairies and savannas with flowers that look very much like jeweled shooting star except that they are almost always pale or white. In Minnesota, though, habitat for prairie shooting star has been reduced so much that only a single known population in a roadside ditch remains. We don’t want to stress this last remnant in any way, even with a quick visit, so we headed down instead across the Iowa border to Hayden Prairie just a few miles from Lime Springs, Iowa. This 240-acre state preserve is considered one of Iowa’s best prairie remnants, a place where on previous visits we’ve seen abundant blooms of the same prairie shooting star that grows in Minnesota.

As we neared the prairie we saw a scene that’s become familiar to us: burned-over land. Prescribed fire burns away dried grasses and returns nutrients to the soil, but we’re never sure what we’ll see when a site has been recently burned. Would prairie shooting star still bloom after the fire?

The answer was yes. An abundance of plants was growing in places where we’d never noticed them before. Most plants were still in bud, but a few had pale flowers open. So our quest was complete: all two shooting stars in one day. Check.

We did see a violet, too, one that we’ve seen before–prairie violet. So our count of violets seen is still ten out of twenty. We’ll continue our search for as many violets as we can find, but we’ll come back to Hayden Prairie, too, to see the prairie responding after the fire.

See more of what we are SEEING NOW

Counting Violets

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.