Category: Minnesota Wildflowers

Buds and Blossoms

April 20, 2024

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

No matter what sort of winter we have, we always hunger for spring.  Down along Minnehaha Creek in Minneapolis below the falls, bloodroot are blooming, skunk cabbage is already spreading its cabbage-like leaves, and trillium are budding.  We love this city springtime, but we wondered, too, what might be happening farther from home. So on a day so blustery we needed winter coats we headed out to see what might be blooming farther south in Minnesota.

At Whitewater State Park we found more buds than blooms, but buds make our hearts happy, too, since soon enough blossoms will follow.  Because the day was overcast and chilly, many of the flowers were wrapped up tight against the gloom and cold. Bloodroot held its leaves upright around tightly closed buds, but false rue anemone braved the weather to scatter white flowers among last year’s brown leaves, and a few cutleaf toothwort flowers opened while many more budded.  Dutchman’s breeches’ britches-shaped flowers swayed on their stalks, and several trout lily buds hung gracefully down among many, many trout lily leaves.  Masses of mayapple rocketed through the ground like missile nose cones, a few with buds nestled between their leaves.  (Like trout lilies, mayapple plants only bloom once the plant has two leaves.)

Spring beauty’s delicate pink flowers delighted, and hepatica opened pale blossoms with fuzzy bracts at the bases of the petals.  Trillium leaves poked up, beginning to unfold and Canadian wild ginger flowers hid under their soft wrinkly leaves.  A little creek churkled along until it encountered several beaver dams, where it pooled up behind the mud and stick structures.  Beavers, it turns out, are not only excellent engineers but also help prevent the spread of forest fires and ameliorate drought by creating wetlands with their dams. 

We’d set out not knowing what we might find, and despite the cold (and a smattering of snowflakes) a whole budding world awaited us. 

With windy arms, spring welcomed us in.

Bloodroot
False rue anemone
Cutleaf toothwort
Dutchman’s breeches
Trout lily
Mayapple
Spring beauty
Sharp-lobed hepatica
Canadian wild ginger
Beaver work
Beaver dam

First Flower Chasing of 2024

March 23, 2024

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

After a year of thirty thousand words, 275 photos, and 6,000 miles crisscrossing the state, we have finally finished a working draft of our next (as yet untitled) wildflower book! So what do we do to celebrate?

What else but go flower chasing?

It’s been a chancy spring after an almost snow-free winter. Snow had finally fallen on our first free weekend from working on the book, but we couldn’t resist the urge to be outside and looking for wildflowers . We’d heard about a hillside covered in snow trillium south of the cities, and even though we’ve seen snow trilliums, a flower of state special concern, in several places over the years, we are always excited to see old flower friends in new places.

The snow had mostly disappeared as we drove south, but the day was cold, and the ground on the hillside felt frozen underfoot. Still, poking up through last year’s oak leaves were undaunted trios of trillium leaves, a few plants with buds almost ready to open, others with buds smaller than a grain of rice, some with no buds at all yet. Scattered among the trilliums were tiny, reddish false rue anemone leaves and the purplish-red leaves of last year’s hepatica along with a few, very small, unfolding fronds of Dutchman’s breeches. Ephemeral or not, the early wildflowers were already hard at work.

Not far away at Kasota Prairie Preserve pasqueflowers were still blooming, so we headed over to see them, too. Some were past prime, others still a pale lavender, and a few were barely buds, all furry with soft hairs to help hold in heat. Pasqueflowers are clearly sun lovers: on cloudy days their blossoms stay closed, and on sunny days they follow the sun, a slow dance called heliotropism which helps the flowers trap the sun’s heat. Early queen bees flying from warm flower to warm flower gather pollen and warmth at the same time.

One last stop at Ottawa Bluffs Nature Conservancy site took us up a hill topped with burr oaks, past more pasqueflowers than a person could count to a panoramic view over the river valley.

We are always delighted by these first flowers and the promise of more to follow. Most of all we are delighted to be out and about again, chasing wildflowers wherever we can find them.

Snow trillium
Snow trillium
False rue anemone
Hepatica leaves
Pasqueflower
Ottawa Bluffs

Gentian Glory

September 16, 2023

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

Autumn shows its own colors–the waxy red bulbous seed pods of prickly pear cactus, the translucent seed pods of partridge pea, the purplish red of sumac and the gold of prairie grasses, the frilly blues and whites of so many kinds of asters whose names we don’t yet know. 

And the vivid blue of downy gentians.

Downy gentians open to the sun–you won’t find them blooming brightly on cloudy days, and if you wait too late on a sunny day to photograph one, you may find it closing with the waning sunlight (we know, we waited too long once). 

On a morning of late prairie splendor we go looking for downy gentians on a hillside and find  first one, then another, and then so many we quit counting them all. The plants nestle down in the grass, shaded enough that they’re still closed when we begin to spot them–but not so tightly closed that a bumblebee can’t force her way in and back out again. As the sun rises higher, the blossoms unfold until we’re surrounded by a motherlode of brilliant  gentian blue.

We wander the rest of the prairie. A snake crawls across the path.  Wind sways the grasses.  The blue sky opens overhead.

Any time is a good time to be on a prairie, but this morning is especially glorious.

Glorious with gentians.

Plains prickly pear cactus 9/16
Downy gentian 9/16


See more of Minnesota’s native gentians HERE!