Minnesota Wildflowers – Page 41

It Really Does Bloom!

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

August 5, 2018
For years we’ve been convinced that if downy rattlesnake plantain orchid really does bloom (and not just go directly from bud to seed pod), it must do so between 12 a.m. and 12:03 a.m. on a single night in alternate leap years. Maybe.

A few summers ago, determined to catch it flowering, we made frequent trips north to Falls Creek Scientific and Natural Area where we’d seen the distinctive leaves of this orchid. Our searches went something like this:
Buds
Buds
Buds
Buds
Seeds

Then we saw a post online with an actual photo of downy rattlesnake plantain at a different location blooming. Sure, we thought, it might bloom there, but the ones we’ve been watching don’t bloom. Ever. But we live in hope, and it was a lovely day for a walk in the woods, so we headed north to Falls Creek.

Rain had fallen the night before, but the sun was out, and the light fell green through the trees, with pockets of sun piercing the canopy. Even the air smelled green and fresh. As we hiked, we noted the leaves of many spring flowers—starflower, bloodroot, Solomon’s seal, Jack-in-the-pulpit, Canadian wild ginger– and promised ourselves to come back in the spring. As we hiked farther from where we had parked the traffic noise fell away, and we heard the sweet sound of the creek below us, where mist rose from the water like a mystical, magical morning of another world.

And there, along the path, we saw what we had thought might be a botanical myth: downy rattlesnake plantain in full bloom, a single bright spike with small white flowers along its length. As we continued down the path, we saw another, and another, and another. Indian pipe, a plant with no chlorophyll of its own, shone white on the forest floor.

South of Falls Creek, we stopped at Afton State Park for a walk in the restored prairie, where compass plant, wild bergamot, prairie ironweed, coneflower, blue vervain, milkweed, spotted Joe-pye weed, rattlesnake master, stiff goldenrod, prairie onion, and rough blazing star were in full bloom. Yellow seeds on Indian grass quivered in the breeze like rows of tiny flags flying. And there, on a wild bergamot flower, we saw an unfamiliar butterfly with a wingspan as wide as my hand. Later we learned that it was a giant swallowtail. We also read on an interpretive sign the best definition we’ve seen yet of native plants: “native plants naturally occur in the place where they evolved.”

A day filled with native flowers in forest and prairie, with lesser rattlesnake plantain orchid in bloom, and with a giant swallowtail butterfly. A good day to be out.

Phyllis Root, author
Kelly Povo, photographer

Happy International Bog Day!

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

International Bog Day, July 29, 2018

We love bogs. From my first glimpse of the Big Bog up by Waskish, Minnesota, I fell in love with these wild and strange-to-me places—the mosses, the unusual plant inhabitants, the soft-needled tamarack trees, the great silence as though the deep peat soaks up sound. Since then we’ve visited many bogs and many kinds of bogs, and we love them all.

Bogs are circumpolar, most of them occurring around the globe in the northern half of the earth. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources defines a bog as occurring “only on deep saturated peat… isolated from ground water and from water that flows from mineral soil…[which] makes bog water very low in mineral nutrients and very acidic so only very specialized plant species can survive these conditions.” Another way to think of a bog is as a bowl—water doesn’t really flow in or out. Cold acidic water, harsh growing conditions: bog plants are tough survivors.

This post is a tribute to some of the best bog visits we’ve had so far.

Lake Bemidji State Park Bog Boardwalk leads to the edge of a small lake and back. Along the way signs point out some of the features. With and without the help of signs we’ve seen, at various times, purple pitcher plant, Labrador tea, bog rosemary, stemless lady’s-slipper, grass pink orchid, buckbean, early coral root, three-leaf goldthread, and tiny insect-eating sundew.

At Long Lake bug shirts and raincoats were the fashion statement of the day. The lake is slowly filling in at the edges, a floating bog best seen from the water. Canoeing around the edge of the lake we found many rose pogonia and grass pink orchids, along with sundew, bog cranberry, cottongrass, common bladderwort, and purple pitcher plant. Even on a fallen log tiny little communities of plants grew.

Pennington Bog Scientific and Natural Area is an undisturbed forested bog so easily damaged that written permission from the Department of Natural Resources is needed to enter. In the green light under white cedar, balsam fir, and black spruce trees calypso orchids (fittingly called fairy slippers) grow, along with lesser rattlesnake plantain, buckbean, gaywings, three-leaf goldthread, showy lady’s-slipper, and yellow lady’s-slipper. A magically mysterious place.

Quaking Bog at Theodore Wirth Park in north Minneapolis is an urban remnant of a much larger bog, but even with a freeway nearby the atmosphere feels hushed. Here on various visits we’ve seen leatherleaf (the only place we’ve ever seen it blooming), buckbean, starflower, wild calla, Canada mayflower, and purple pitcher plant.

Iron Springs Bog Scientific and Natural Area up near Itasca State Park is a bog so big you’ll want a GPS to help you find your way back out again. Here is where we first saw small round-leaved orchid, affectionately called (by us) polka-dotted orchid. We also saw three-leaf goldthread, showy lady’s-slipper, Canada anemone, early coral root, purple pitcher plant, green bog orchid, sundew, Labrador tea, and tiny lesser rattlesnake plantain (although since finally seeing Hudson Bay eyebright we’ve redefined the meaning of “tiny”).

Minnesota has many more bogs and bog boardwalks—Sax Zim Bog, Hayes Lake State Park boardwalk–including one state park that once had a bog boardwalk until, the park ranger told us, “The bog ate it.” And even though we know that all landscapes change, that bogs at lake edges are slowly filling in, that bogs do eat boardwalks and that the bogs we know are only as old as the last ice age, we say long live bogs, big and small. We love them all.

Happy International Bog Day!

Phyllis Root, Author
Kelly Povo, Photographer

They’re blooming? We’re on the way!

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

We came to the North Shore to see Hudson Bay eyebright and purple fringed orchid blooming, thanks to a helpful phone call from a master naturalist and fellow wildflower lover who told us where both were blooming. And he was exactly right: we drove north, turned along the road he told us, turned again, crossed the railroad tracks, made one more turn, and saw purple fringed orchid gloriously blooming up and down the roadside ditch. Driving on up to Sugarloaf Cove on Lake Superior, we found the tiny, tiny arctic relict Hudson Bay eyebright blooming in cracks of rocks. The plants and flowers are so minute that we might never have found them without Phil’s help.

Scattered in crevices and seemingly growing right out of the rocks we found other small plants that Kelly photographed and we later identified: white upland goldenrod, which looks like small daisies, three-tooth cinquefoil, shrubby cinquefoil.

Every fracture or dip in the rock seemed like a tiny world of its own.

On the path down to the cove spotted coral root grew. Returning in the morning to get one more look at the eyebright, we also found beach pea in glowing blues and purples and magentas, spurred gentian, twin flowers and bunchberry blooming, early coral root, and, with the guidance of a naturalist at the Sugarloaf interpretive center, one-flowered pyrola and large leaved shinleaf. One-flowered pyrola flowers face demurely downward until they go to seed—one group we saw going to seed had turned upward like a crowd of people staring at the sky.

We stopped so often along the road to photograph evening primrose, more purple fringed orchids, a tall northern bog orchid, smooth oxeye, and fringed loosestrife we thought we might never make it home.

We did, though, already eager for our next exploration and grateful for friends who share their enthusiasm and knowledge for the same native wildflowers we love.