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
Saturday evening we have an event for our new wildflower book at Drury Lane Books in Grand Marais, so we leave on Friday to get in some flower chasing on the drive up. We’re hoping to find all of the pyrolas (except perhaps state-endangered small shinleaf) in one weekend, and with any luck we might also see at least one rare wildflower we’ve been dreaming about.
Our first stop is in Duluth, where we meet up with a naturalist who has generously offered to show us floating marsh marigold, which has been on our want-to-see list for years now. Floating marsh marigold has small leaves, very small white flowers, and blooms June through August in slow-moving water and along muddy shores. (Its close kin marsh marigold has large leaves, bright yellow flowers, and blooms in April and May in streams and lakes and ditches. It’s a little hard to believe they’re related, but they are.)
On our own we might never have seen this tiny floating flower, and we’re grateful to the naturalist for showing it to us and to the flower itself for blooming when we could see it. As we drive farther north, we are floating, too, with the thrill of finally seeing this state-endangered flower.
Next stop: Tettegouche State Park, where we find pink pyrola blooming under a bridge, our first pyrola of the trip. Despite diligent searching, though, we don’t locate the one-sided pyrola that is supposed to be growing nearby.
At Temperance River State Park we connect with a fellow flower chaser to drive down roads ever more narrow, rocky, and muddy to a stream between lakes and surrounded by pines, a place that feels a little forgotten and more than a little magical. It’s also a place where state-endangered small white water-lily has been seen somewhere inside an area of 27 kilometers, according to INaturalist.
“The leaves look like Pac-man,” our friend tells us as we don muck boots for our search. And when, eventually, we spot first one single leaf, then another and another, they really do look like Pac-man, round with a deep vee. Hoping for flowers as well as leaves we wander along a nearby lake and spot one, then, two, then three plants with bright white buds almost open and more Pac-man-like leaves.
Without a nearby American white water-lily for comparison, it’s hard for a photo to show how small the flowers and leaves that we’re seeing really are. American white water-lily has flowers 3 to 6 inches and leaves 4 to 12 inches, while small white water-lily has flowers 1 1/2 to 3 inches with leaves 1 1/2 to 6 inches. These small flowers open for only a few hours each day, so either we’ve come at the wrong time of day or else the buds aren’t quite ready to flower. Several years ago we bought hip waders for just such an occasion, and we gleefully don them for their inaugural wade deeper into the lake and a little nearer these rare and diminutive plants.
Two state-endangered flowers in one day–giddy with delight we head to our rented cabin on Lake Superior for the night.
And wake to a dripping sky and an all-day forecast of rain.
But we are flower-chasers, undaunted by a little water falling on us. We’ve never yet been deterred by rain, and we don’t intend to start now.
Fog socks in the lake and blurs the road as we set out, but when we turn inland both fog and rain gradually lighten. At a gravel pit that we love to visit, we find the green-flowered pyrola that a friend has told us about and that has been on our to-see list for years. Our second pyrola of the trip, and that’s just the beginning.
Across the road we find a yellow-colored coralroot that we’ve seen here once before and puzzled over (too tall for early coralroot, way too far out of it’s range and bloom time for autumn coralroot). Now we know that it’s a yellow spotless variant of western spotted coralroot. Close by, early coralroot has gone to seed, and western spotted coralroot blooms in its usual colors. Along a nearby trail we also find ragged fringed orchid in bud, huronensis orchid in flower, and many small green wood orchids (also known as club-spur orchid) in bud.
Six orchids before nine o’clock on a rainy day when we set out to see pyrolas. You never know what might happen when you go flower chasing.
Our search for pyrola resumes when a friend sends us coordinates for a section of the Superior Hiking Trail, where he’s seen several pyrola. The overcast sky and dripping trees make this place, too, feel magical, as though we’ve somehow been transported to a bit of the west coast rain forest. A creek burbles beside us on its way downhill as we follow the trail up. And up. And up.
Along the way we find more clumps of the yellow spotless variant of western spotted coralroot bright under the pines, lots of western spotted coralroot, and a single spotted coralroot barely out of the ground. We love finding these orchids, but we’re still on the lookout for pyrola, and we find them, too: one-flowered pyrola, one-sided pyrola, shinleaf (elliptical pyrola), and green-flowered pyrola along with their near-relation, pipsissewa.
Weekend pyrola total: all the pyrolas except round-leaved pyrola and small shinleaf, which is a plant of state special concern and will most likely take a lot more looking to locate.
One last stop of the day at Icelandite Fen Scientific and Natural Area reveals a few tiny auricled twayblade, bringing the weekend orchid total to eight.
The evening event at Drury Lane Books is filled with friendly folks interested in wildflowers and in restoring the land. We end our Fourth of July weekend full of gratitude for new friends, new places, and wildflowers both new and familiar.
With so many riches, who needs fireworks?
Floating marsh marigoldPink pyrolaSmall white water-lilyGreen-flowered pyrolaYellow spotless variant of western spotted coralrootWestern spotted coralrootEarly coralrootRagged fringed orchidHuronensisSmall green wood orchidSpotted coralrootOne-flowered pyrolaOne-sided pyrolaShinleafAuricled twaybladePipsissewa
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.
