Keweenaw Wildflowers – Flower Chasers

Keweenaw Adventure Day Five

Just 26, 2025

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

Read this post on our blog at flowerchasers.com

Sunrise streaks the sky pink, yellow, and grayish blue as we make a quick before-class trip back to Horseshoe Harbor. Rocks, water, wildflowers–this is quintessential Lake Superior, and we love it.

In class we study river’s-edge plants, then drive to Bete Grise Preserve and hike through the woods to eat lunch under towering white pines along the beach. This is a new habitat for us, a complex of upland sand dunes alternating with wetlands swales. Delicate bell-shaped flowers hang from lowbush blueberry and velvet-leaf blueberry along the dune edge, and flowers that we’ve only ever seen before growing in woods–bunchberry, starflower, Canada mayflower–surprise us by also growing here in deep sand. In the wetland swales behind the dunes we find leatherleaf, Labrador tea, blue flag iris, and many sedges.

The last stop of the day is a fen, a habitat that makes our hearts happy. Here we find small cranberry, bog rosemary, purple pitcher plant, rose pogonia (one in bloom, most still in bud), and clusters and clusters of sundew, both round-leaved and spoon-leaf, glistening in the sunlight.

Even though the class is over, Kelly and I haven’t quite had our fill of flower chasing. We stop briefly by a roadside to catch American cancer-root in flower, then head to Cy Clark Memorial Nature Sanctuary where we find tesselated rattlesnake plantain and giant rattlesnake plantain nestled in moss. We’ve made it our goal to see giant rattlesnake plantain in a different location each day we’re here, and we’ve succeeded. Giant rattlesnake plantain doesn’t grow in Minnesota, so we won’t see it again until we return to the Keweenaw Peninsula.

Which we definitely will.

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Keweenaw Adventure Day Four

June 25, 2025

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

The second day of our plant class on the Keweenaw begins with a hike down through boreal forest past familiar inhabitants–bunchberry, twinflower, starflower, Canada mayflower–along with a new-to-us flower, barren strawberry, a plant of special concern in Minnesota. Here its distinctive leaves and yellow flowers spread across the forest floor with nary a berry in sight. The trail ends at a wide rock beach cradled by rock ridges that form Horseshoe Harbor.

On one side of the beach common butterwort, an arctic disjunct, covers a rock wall. Arctic disjuncts are plants separated by hundreds of miles from their habitat farther north. Butterwort is rare in Minnesota and Michigan, but here the rocks are dotted with the plant’s pristine purple flowers and sticky, star-shaped yellow leaves that trap and devour small insects. Another arctic disjunct, bird’s-eye primrose, grows nearby, its small pink flowers almost done except for two that we find in cheery bloom. Dwarf raspberry bushes have found rootholds in the rock and are developing berries, and three-toothed cinquefoil with its bright white flowers is scattered along rock cracks and fractures. This is a place that makes our flower-chasing hearts beat with joy. What’s not to love about a Lake Superior beach, and this one is, well, superior.

Over lunch we learn about the geology of this area, how Isle Royale and the Keweenaw peninsula were once connected and share the same geology. We learn, too, how veins of calcium in the rocks around us help create a habitat for calcium-loving plants, which are often arctic disjuncts.

On the other side of the beach we climb onto a high rock ridge with a vast view of Lake Superior and wander past microhabitats of three-toothed cinquefoil, sedges, creeping juniper, and the occasional frog.

Safely down from the ridge, we learn more about how the layers of rock tell a geologic tale of sediment and stromatolites, which are earth’s oldest fossils. Rocks have stories, if we only know how to read them.

Today’s after-class flower chasing takes us, thanks to some shared coordinates, to a place where at least twenty-five ram’s-head lady’s-slippers grow. Most of the flowers are past their prime, but it’s still a thrill to see these delicate orchids in a new location.

We end the day with a hike near Copper Harbor where three years earlier I came across giant rattlesnake plantain for the first time. We don’t find the plants I saw then, but we do find an abundance of pink shinleaf almost ready to bloom and another population of giant rattlesnake plantain leaves nestled in the moss.

A spectacular day, and one that brings our trip total of orchids seen so far to thirteen.

What will tomorrow bring? We can hardly wait to find out.

Keweenaw Adventure Day Three

June 24, 2025

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

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.