Minnesota Wildflowers – Page 2

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.

Keweenaw Adventure Day Two

June 24, 2025

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

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.