Category: Minnesota Wildflowers

May 4, 2025

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

Sometimes chasing native wildflowers is, well, a walk in a park. Sometimes the search involves scrambling up rocks, wading into rivers, or hummock-hopping through a swamp.

And sometimes it’s a scavenger hunt. Can we see all of the thirteen kinds of milkweed that still grow in Minnesota in a single weekend? All of the six lady’s-slipper orchids in a day? All of the goldenrods in one year? (We’re still working on telling a couple of the tricky goldenrods apart.)

This spring we are on the hunt for Minnesota’s violets. There are twenty different violets in Minnesota, including eastern green violet, a state-endangered species. Violets are mainly spring flowers, so we have a month or two at most to find them blooming. Although we’ve gotten better at recognizing some native wildflowers by their leaves, buds, or seed pods, finding them in bloom almost always makes identification easier for us.

 So far our score sheet reads:
arrow-leaved violet
birdfoot violet
common blue violet (which we have seen in shades of white, fuchsia, and blue)
lance-leaved violet
marsh blue violet
northern white violet (formerly small white violet)
prairie violet
smooth yellow violet
western Canada violet
yellow prairie violet (state-threatened)

Which brings us halfway to our goal.  

And because spring is exploding around us as we look, we’re seeing so much more than violets.

On a burned-over prairie we found pasqueflower rebounding, kittentails and prairie turnip blooming, and prairie smoke in bud.

In the woods at Carley State Park, while the river that runs through the park babbled and burbled below, we saw smooth yellow violet along with a bounty of Virginia bluebells, bloodroot, white trout lily, Dutchman’s breeches, bishop’s cap, cutleaf toothwort, Canadian wild ginger leaves, and Jack-in-the-pulpit.
Whitewater State Park showed us almost all of the above along with Virginia spring beauty, large-flowered bellwort, yellow trout lily, and drooping trillium beginning to open along with an enormous patch of mayapple in bud.

Magelssen Bluff Park in Rushford welcomed us with a hillside of wood betony and birdfoot violet as we turned into the park, and jeweled shooting star was budding on the rocky slopes up the road.

At Mound Prairie Scientific and Natural Area we found showy orchis leaves just beginning to open while large-flowered bellwort bloomed bright yellow above us on the wooded back of a goat prairie. On the prairie side of Mound Prairie we found more wood betony, puccoon, birdfoot violet, bastard toadflax, and plains wild indigo both in bud and in bloom while vultures rode the air overhead.

After what has felt like a slow-starting spring, everything is rushing to soak up the sun and warmth and do what flowers do. And we’ll do what flowerchasers do, this time chasing violets in our wanderings. Ten violets down, ten to go, and an explosion of spring to go chasing them in.

Stay tuned. We’ll keep you posted.

See all of what we are seeing now HERE!

April 21, 2025

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

Barely across the border from southeastern Minnesota into Wisconsin, a rustic dirt road winds along, the land sloping steeply up on one side and flattening out on the other. Here springtime native wildflowers bloom in so much diversity and abundance that we make several trips each spring just to see them unfolding.

The Monday after Easter was one of those trips on a chilly, breezy morning after a night of rain that made the damp moss on boulders almost glow. Ramps greened the hillsides. Hepatica bloomed, some purple, some white, all cheerful. Birds trilled. A stream emerged from a spring, forming a pool on one side of the road to rush away on the other side.

The hillsides were all posted No Trespassing, but even from the road we had our fill of flower chasing, wandering slowly along, soaking up the fresh air, buds, and blossoms. Pink Virginia spring beauty flowers sprinkled among last year’s dried leaves, waiting for sun to fully open. Bloodroot leaves still wrapped around their stems, several trout lily buds were close to blooming, and a few Dutchman’s breeches had already hung out their pantaloons out. Wild ginger leaves unfolded, at least one plant with a dark red velvety blossom. Mayapples were appearing, some barely poking out of the ground like white dots at the ends of tightly wound cylinders, others a few inches tall and beginning to spread their umbrellas of leaves. Sometimes the day seemed so steeped in stillness it was as though we could hear the flowers and trees and mosses growing.

We wandered blissfully along the road, spotting familiar flower faces and at least one new-to-us plant with thready yellow flowers that we identified as plantain leaved sedge (also called seersucker sedge). No matter how many times we’ve come down to this rustic road, we always see something new.

What we didn’t find was any sign yet of the many, many trillium flowers we’ve seen here before, so abundant that local people call this the valley of a trillion trilliums. (See note below about the upcoming Trillium Festival in the area.)

On the way home we crossed back into Minnesota to visit Kellogg Weaver Dunes where, scattered among last year’s dried grasses, the small white cheery flowers of lyre-leaved rock cress bloomed. A low-growing flower with a shiny yellow sheen turned out to be prairie buttercup, another new-to-us flower. Puccoon leaves were emerging, some still tiny nubs in the ground. Pasqueflowers, some past their prime, a few still fresh-looking, unfurled soft pale purple petals.

A richness of roadsides, a prairie beginning its bloom–wherever we find flowers, we are grateful for wild places. Flowers don’t stop at borders, and neither do we.

The second weekend in May the Rustic Road area will hold its annual Trillium Festival with trillium viewing, a native plant sale, maple syrup tasting, nature trails, and a ticketed event on Friday May 9 with guest speaker Douglas Tallamy, author of Nature’s Best Hope and Bringing Nature Home. For more information visit TRILLIUMFESTIVAL.ORG.