Minnesota Wildflowers – Flower Chasers

Back to the Big Bog

July 2026

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

It’s been twenty years this summer since we first set foot on the boardwalk into the Big Bog up by Waskish, Minnesota. I was working on a picture book that became One North Star, a counting book about some of Minnesota’s many habitats, and as I started doing research I learned that Minnesota has bogs. In fact, Minnesota’s peatlands are vast, the most of any state except Alaska. And I knew that to write about the bog I would need to go to the bog.

Kelly and I love taking road trips, so when I told her I was headed up to the Big Bog, she said, “I’ll come, too.” And we went.

The walk out on the mile-long Big Bog boardwalk took us into a landscape I had never experienced before. By the time we reached the end of the boardwalk I was in love with the bog and wanted to write a whole book about it. And Kelly had begun to take wildflower pictures, something new in her photography career. Eventually our mutual love of native wildflowers took us criss-crossing the state and creating a wildflower-chasing blog and two wildflower books.

So what could be better, twenty years later, than to head up to where it all started? When we arrived at Big Bog State Recreation Area at the camper cabin we had rented, we were worn out from the heat of the day and some serious wildflower chasing stops on our drive north. We agreed that we could better appreciate the bog and the boardwalk after a good night’s sleep and some excellent Mexican carry-out we had picked up in Bemidji.

We have always been crack-of-dawn risers, and the next morning we left early (but not before coffee, never before coffee) and drove the few miles north to the Big Bog Boardwalk. Would the magic still be there?

Yes.

As we made our way along the boardwalk, we compared what we remembered with what we were seeing. In our first wildflower book I wrote that it was one of the wildest places I had ever seen. It still is.

The tamarack and black spruce trees were still stunted, although they seemed to reach farther out into the bog along the boardwalk than we remembered. On our first trip, almost all the plants and flowers were new to us. This time we could name them — bog cranberry, wild calla lily, round-leaved sundew, leatherleaf, cottongrass — and we were able to figure out the difference between bog laurel gone to seed and bog rosemary gone to seed, something we had no clue about twenty years earlier. Near the end of the boardwalk purple pitcher plants poked their pinwheel flowers up above the many-colored mosses stretching out under an endless sky.

The biggest difference we noticed was that the bog seemed dryer than we remembered. Was this because of climate change? A dry year? Or simply that memories are chancy?

We have learned, in our wanderings, how places change. Habitats aren’t static. Flowers don’t always stay put, sometimes spreading, sometimes vanishing. Trees encroach when they can.

We have changed, too, although it’s hard to believe that we’ve changed twenty years’ worth. Surely we’re not really twenty years older? But we are, and we’re always grateful we can still be chasing flowers, in bogs or woodlands or prairies or along roadsides–wherever we find them. It’s good to come back after twenty years to a place that feels like the beginnings of our flower-chasing and find that the bog remains mysterious and vast and wild. It fills us with the same stillness, the same magic, the same otherness that we remembered.

I wonder what we’ll find when we come back twenty years from now.

We can’t wait to find out.

Out and About Again

July 3-4, 2026

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

It’s been a while since Kelly’s and my schedules aligned, but this past weekend they did, so we headed to some of our favorite places looking for orchids. And whatever else we could see, of course–it’s not that we’re just orchid fanatics. Really we’re not.

Our first orchid stop (okay, we’re a little fanatical) was an unmarked turnoff that a friend had found and shared with us. We’d been here before, the last time memorably getting our boots stuck in muck as we ran from a rainstorm. This time, although rain threatened, none fell.

This tucked-away cedar grove is one of the few places we’ve seen large round-leaved orchid (Platanthera orbiculata) with its almost ethereal looking blossoms. Under the shade of cedar trees the orchids were beginning to bloom, and among them we also found blunt-leaved orchid (Platanthera obtusata) blooming, one of the very few places we’ve ever seen it.

Diligent searching for lesser rattlesnake plantain orchid, which we’d seen there before, resulted in one tiny plant growing out of a mossy log. I called for Kelly to come see, but we had both wandered in different directions, and by the time we reconnected I had lost my bearings and couldn’t relocate the very tiny lesser rattlesnake plantain. But it was growing there, and so, along the trail into the site, were several lovely Loesel’s twayblade orchids.

By the time we reached Iron Springs Bog Scientific and Natural Area (SNA) the day had turned hot and muggy, but we didn’t care. We were in one of our very favorite flower-chasing places, and it didn’t disappoint. We saw showy lady’s- slipper orchids–far too many to count. We also saw a long-bracted frog orchid, and plenty of Platanthera huronensis and Platanthera aquilonis blooming. These two similar orchids of the Platanthera genus are the reason we felt compelled to learn the scientific names of all eleven of the Platanthera orchids that grow in Minnesota. Not only did they look similar but the various common names for them also confusingly overlap. Both have been commonly called some combination of tall northern bog orchid, northern green orchid, northern bog orchid, north wind bog orchid, northern green bog orchid. Just to be sure we knew which orchid we meant we took to calling them huronensis and aquilonis. The habit spilled over into the other Platanthera genus members. Besides, although we are not botanists, we feel rather botany-ish using scientific names.

Our hunt for white adder’s-mouth was unsuccessful, as was our hunt for tall white bog orchid (Platanthera dilatata), but we did see plenty of green adder’s- mouth (familiarly known to us as mop top–we’re not always botany-ish).
Our trip included two more orchid-seeking stops the next day. By the time we arrived at the first unmarked site, the air had turned thundery, so we donned our rain coats and made our way to where we had once seen Hooker’s orchid (Platanthera hookeri). So many trees had fallen since our last visit that we were sure they were covering up the orchids we’d seen there before and couldn’t find now.

Rain fell in torrents as we headed back to the car. Luckily we had our raincoats on, although we hadn’t bothered with rain pants. We’ll dry soon, we assured ourselves. But it’s hard for wet pants to dry when the rain keeps falling. Sitting on towels, we drove down the road to another favorite SNA, where to our delight we found a whole little patch of blunt-leaved orchid (Platanthera obtusata) just beginning to bloom in the silvery light. Luckily I use an all-weather notebook, and Kelly always brings an umbrella for me to hold over her camera in inclement weather. In the same small area we also found early coralroot, heart-leaved twayblade gone to seed, lesser round-leaved orchid gone to seed, showy lady’s-slipper, bloomed-out small yellow lady’s-slipper, and a colony of tiny rattlesnake plantain growing jubilantly over a mossy hummock. Orchid heaven for flower chasers.

By the time we were ready to head home our orchid-seeking hearts and our pants were both saturated. In our haste to put on dry clothes when no cars were driving by, I somehow left a boot behind, and Kelly’s sunshade had disappeared, although we didn’t realize either loss until we got home and unloaded my gear when Kelly dropped me at my house. If anyone comes across a single hiking book with a tick gaiter attached to it or a round nylon case containing an expandable sun shade, you know where to find us.

A boot, a gaiter, and a sunshade seem like small losses weighed against the wealth of wildflowers and orchids that we saw. Even if we’d seen nothing, it felt good to be searching again. And yes, we saw plenty of other flowers besides orchids–twinflower, bunchberry, purple pitcher plant, Canada mayflower, one-flowered pyrola, one-sided pyrola, round-leaved pyrola, pink pyrola, green-flowered pyrola, shinleaf, tufted loosestrife, and more. Even if we hadn’t seen orchids, our hearts would still be overflowing.

It’s good to be out and about, chasing flowers (and sometimes even catching them) again.

See more of what we are Seeing Now….

A Tale of Two Boardwalks

May 30, 2026

Author: Phyllis Root • Photographer: Kelly Povo

Violet season is fleeting. We’ve seen all nineteen of Minnesota’s native violets now, and we are working on definitively telling them apart. Green violet, once we found it, was unmistakable, but the others–purple, blue, white–can be baffling. Are stems sparsely hairy, partly hairy, very hairy, hairless? Are the leaf surfaces hairy only on the tops, or on both tops and bottoms, or just around the edges, which might or might not be scalloped? Is the beard (tiny hairs on the centers of petals) short? Are the hairs club-shaped? Not there at all? Visible with an electron microscope? Okay, that last is an exaggeration. We never carry an electron microscope with us. But some details are so minute that only in a photo or with a hand lens do tiny differences reveal themselves.

A 1957 article on violets mentions “the tendency of species to hybridize with their close relatives, producing a bewildered variety of intermediate forms.” No wonder the violets have bewildered us–they are busily interbreeding.

On a day promising to be blistering in the twin cities we headed north to track down several similar-looking violets–three purple/blue and three white. First stop: Magney-Snively Natural Area near Duluth where along a trail we found blue violets which we determined with close inspection to have club-shaped beard hairs. Since marsh blue violet is the only violet to have club-shaped beard hairs, and since they grew in a wet area, we could definitively say, Yep, marsh blue. Nearby we also found Carolina spring beauty, a wider-leaved relative of Virginia spring beauty, along with trillions of trillium, both large-flowered and nodding.

At Hartley Nature Center we found another of the blue violets on our list: Great Lakes violet. It helps that this violet is only found in the Arrowhead region of the state, and it helps even more that close looking revealed that the lower petal was bearded, unlike the similar-looking arrow-leaved violet.

We had one last stop to make at Sax-Zim Bog, where we both were absolutely certain we had seen kidney-leaved violet the previous year at the welcome center, just steps away from the parking lot. Either we had parallel memory lapses or the violets were already bloomed out. What we did find was a boardwalk through a poor fen, which we knew was a poor fen because last summer we learned which four plants were poor fen indicators. And there they were, all in bloom: white leatherleaf bells, white labrador tea flowers, pale pink bog rosemary bells, and deep magenta bog laurel flowers.

Though it might be classified as a poor fen, this was a habitat rich in plants. A small hummock of moss held its own little microhabitat, with creeping snowberry in bud and round-leaved sundew glistening in the light. A garter snake slithered away, then paused, perhaps thinking itself hidden, although its black and yellow stripes stood out against the greens and red of mosses. Somewhere a white-throated sparrow sang.

Along the boardwalk we met two folks and learned that, among other restoration projects, they had converted a golf course in Wisconsin into Three Waters Reserve, a restored prairie/oak savanna where purple milkweed grows. Purple milkweed, long gone from Minnesota (if it was ever here), has been on our wish list for years. We are already planning a road trip to go see it.

It was hard to take those last steps off the boardwalk, but the day was drawing down toward a long summer evening, and we wanted to make one last quick stop. At the Warren Woessner bog boardwalk we hoped to see stemless lady’s-slipper in bud, and we did, with their graceful leaves and curving stems and flowers almost ready to open. The plants along this boardwalk were more boggish, including three-leaf false Solomon’s seal and goldthread, and instead of hurrying back to the car we moseyed to the end of the boardwalk.

And there, at the very end by the viewing platform, was one white violet. Close examination revealed no beard hairs, which, along with its sparsely hairy, roundish leaves, identified it as kidney-leaf violet.

We’d set out to find violets, and we did. But we also found boardwalks across fens and bogs and met two people who work to protect and restore wild places. As one of them said while we chatted about bees and teas and butterflies and, of course, flowers: “Places like this give us hope.”

Some days that hope seems in short supply. But out among violets, bogs, fens, woods, wild birdsong, slithering snakes, bees, butterflies, and native wildflowers we did find hope and brought it home with us–as well as new clues to tell apart some of the (often happily hybridizing) violets.