Spring comes quickly to the big woods, where flowers have a brief time to soak up the sun, grow, bloom, and set seed before deciduous trees leaf out and shade the forest floor. Some flowers–the ephemeral ones–even disappear completely until the following year. Spring comes to the prairie, too, but at a more leisurely pace. The prairie has all summer to put on a show, and the prairie takes its time.
Last Sunday we visited a native prairie in Goodhue county to see how the prairie was coming along. From a distance the hillside looks dry and brown, but as we climb the hill we see green leaves poking through last year’s dried grasses. The top of the hill reveals a few lingering American pasqueflowers still in bloom among others gone to seed, tendrils swaying gracefully in the breeze. Prairie alumroot leaves are emerging, and pussytoes and bastard toadflax have pushed up out of the ground.
Part of the prairie has been burned since we last visited, and it’s here in the burned area that we find so many springtime beginnings against a quilt of brilliant new green growth. Leaves of large beardtongue unfold. Birdfoot violet in sweeps and swoops of purple and, here and there, stand-alone plants of prairie violets bloom. Small branches of sand cherry, a plant we’ve only ever seen before on Park Point by Duluth, open delicate white flowers that will soon be abuzz with bees.
Prairie smoke is in deep magenta bud, kittentails still bloom like yellow exclamation marks, and ground plum’s delicate lilac flowers are passing their prime. Bright yellow spots of hoary puccoon and fringed (narrow-leaf) puccoon dot the hillside, and prairie blue-eyed grass is slowly opening as the sun warms the day. The leaves of starry false Solomon’s seal and golden Alexanders are making an appearance, with flowers soon to follow. We even come across the leaves and buds of plains wild indigo, a plant we’ve seen here only once before.
The prairie has all summer to dazzle us with its constantly changing palette of flowers and colors. Here, in the beginning of May, we’re delighted to find the show beginning.
Mary Oliver in her poem “Instructions for Living a Life” writes: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
What better advice could there be for chasing flowers on a springtime prairie?
If we sound intoxicated by spring, it’s because we are, giddy with the glory of flowers bursting into blissful bud and bloom.
Down in the driftless area of southeastern Minnesota where deciduous forests climb steep hills, flowers bloom early before trees leaf out fully and shade the ground. The driftless is also decidedly hilly, and as we age we find ourselves more judicious about which steep slopes we scamper up. Luckily, flowers often obligingly bloom up and down the wooded hillside, where we can wander along on flatter ground looking up into whole hillsides of spring wildflowers.
One of our goals this year is to visit places new to us as well as familiar places and flowers. This past weekend we explored just such a place, a hiking path through part of Whitewater Wildlife Management Area with a wooded hill rising on one side. Trees greened with new leaves, but plenty of sunlight still reached the forest floor, creating a hilly flower-chasing heaven visible from the path. Within a few steps we were delighting in Virginia bluebells, wild blue phlox, hepatica, and Dutchman’s breeches plants with flowers so small we called them baby breeches. Canadian wild ginger hid its flowers under fuzzy leaves, fiddlehead ferns unfurled, wood anemone and nodding trillium budded. Bloodroot was mostly bloomed out, but scads of scalloped leaves stood upright around stems topped by pointy seed pods.
And then, around a bend in the road and up a ravine, we find a hillside covered with countless Virginia spring beauty’s pink-and-white-striped blossoms. In among the pink profusion a batch of white trout lily flowers nods gracefully. Around the next bend in the road, another hillside covered in Virginia spring beauty–more than we’ve ever seen except once before on the back of a goat prairie.
Whitewater State Park is another of our springtime favorites. We head there hopeful for twinleaf, which grows in Minnesota at the edge of its range. Twinleaf looks similar to bloodroot, but while bloodroot has a single leaf, twinleaf’s two leaves surround the flower, looking almost like one bowtie-shaped leaf. Finding twinleaf is always a thrill, since the flowers last only a few days and are so fragile that the weight of a single bumblebee can cause their petals to drop. Low down on the hillside–minimal climbing required– we discover several clusters of twinleaf freshly in bloom. Our knees and backs were grateful.
And then, nearby, a fortuitous find: eleven showy orchis, their vaselike clusters of leaves barely up out of the ground. Showy orchis is Minnesota’s earliest orchids, and we’ll return to this bunch of plants in a week or two for the lovely–and showy–flowers.
We also see many of the usual springtime suspects: Eastern false rue anemone; wood anemone; rue anemone; common violets in shades of blueish white, purple, and fuchsia; cutleaf toothwort; two-leaf miterwort (aka bishop’s cap); yellow trout lily; large-flowered bellwort. Beside the trout stream burbling alongside the trail multitudes of Mayapple grow, the ones with two umbrella-like leaves hiding buds beneath.
The Driftless Area’s hills are also a home for goat prairies–dry hillside prairies so steep that, so the story goes, only goats can climb them. Spring comes early to the prairie as well as the woods, so we drive to Mound Prairie Scientific and Natural Area (SNA) to see if anything is blooming there. The hillside is dotted with color – purple clusters of birdfoot violet, yellow whirligigs of wood betony, bright yellow-orange puccoon. What can we do but climb this hillside to see what else we might find?
And we do find more flowers–small stars of blue-eyed grass and yellow star-grass, plains wild indigo under pale yellow flowers, downy painted-cup, bastard toadflax. Halfway up the hill we figure we have seen what there is to see and don’t need to climb any higher.
Then a glance up the hill reveals bright spots of magenta spilling over a rocky outcrop almost at the hill’s top. What could they be but jeweled shooting stars, a flower we find more commonly in woods? And what can we do but clamber toward them, clinging to rocks that we check first to make sure no snakes are soaking up the sun on top of them? The climb is more than worth it, a spectacular show of jeweled shooting star. The day has become brightly sunny and windy, not the best conditions for photography, but I manage to throw shade on a few blossoms without throwing myself down the hill so Kelly can get a close-up picture. Then we gingerly make our way back to the foot of the goat prairie.
Whether standing at their bases or scrambling to the top, we get high on hillsides. And we are grateful that when we need to, we can still make it to the top of a hill.
Virginia bluebellsWild blue phloxCanadian wild gingerVirginia spring beauty hillsideTwinleafShowy orchis leavesCommon blue violet, blueish whiteCommon blue violet, blueish purpleCommon blue violet fuchsiaTwo-leaf miterwortWood betony Hoary puccoonBlue-eyed grassYellow star grassPlains wild indigoDowny painted cupJeweled shooting starMound Prairie SNA on a windy, sunny spring day
Eager for spring wildflowers, we set out on an unseasonably warm day in search of at least a few hepatica blooming. Hepatica likes shade or part shade, growing in high-quality forests often alongside other native wildflowers. Here in Minnesota we are on the edge of the eastern deciduous forest, which puts us at the edge of hepatica’s western range.
You might think for hepatica we would head south to the wooded driftless area, but this year we are also in search of new places to visit. So we drive west to Fort Ridgely State Park, which lists hepatica among the wildflowers growing there. Along the way we stop at Morton Outcrops Scientific and Natural Area (SNA), some of the oldest rock on the planet. We don’t expect to find hepatica here, but other early wildflowers that delight us grow in pockets of soil among the dips and crevices of the rocks.
And there among the mosses we find our first spring wildflowers of the day–tiny western rock jasmine in bud, Northern Idaho biscuitroot blooming, Carolina anemone buds purple on the outside and yellow within, and Carolina whitlow grass beginning to bloom. Small signs of spring that warm our winter-weary hearts–so small, in fact, that we use a dime for scale in a photograph to show their miniscule size.
Our next stop is on a road alongside Cedar Mountain SNA where a short path leads down to a creek. Birds call, water gurgles, and frogs chirr. Here we find bloodroot flowers elegantly blooming and the first furry leaves of wild ginger. Still no hepatica.
Nearby Fort Ridgely State Park spans habitat from prairie to woodland and lists hepatica among its native wildflowers, so we hike hopefully along the wooded hills. Gusty winds keep us cool as the day warms to eighty degrees. Here we find the first leaves of Dutchman’s breeches and jewelweed just unfolding. Hepatica remains elusive, but leaf by leaf and flower by flower spring is unfurling itself.
We have run out of woodlands on our Sunday tour, and it’s time to turn toward home without a hepatica sighting. Then we remember that not far from our route back to the cities is High Island Creek Park, a wooded county park near Henderson. Why not make one more stop in hope of a few hepatica in bloom?
At High Island Creek Park leaves of trout lily and cut-leaf toothwort promise flowers to come. Then, on the steep wooded slopes we finally find what we’ve been looking for: hillsides with hundreds of hepatica in blue and pink and white. Blossoms bloom on the tops of fuzzy four-to-eight inch stems, swaying in those gusty breezes. Kelly waits patiently for the wind to catch its breath so she can take a picture.
Hearts hugely happy, we head home feeling healed by sunshine, breezes, blossoms, and spring. A grand finale to a glorious day.
Western rock jasmineCarolina whitlow grassCarolina whitlow grassCarolina anemoneNorthern Idaho biscuitrootCanadian wild gingerBloodrootWild leeksCutleaf toothwortSharp-lobed hepatica
