Searching for Minnesota’s Native Wildflowers – Page 6

A Flower Chaser Fall

October 11, 2024

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

Fall offers fewer and fewer blooming wildflowers to chase, so early one morning we head out to Morton Outcrops Scientific and Natural Area (SNA) to look for a different kind of color: lichens. Lichens aren’t plants—they’re a relationship between fungi, algae, and sometimes cyanobacteria, and Minnesota has as many as a thousand different kinds. For help in identification we bring along our copy of Lichens of the North Woods by Joe Walewski. We arrive just after the sun is rising and wander among granite outcrops 3.6 billions years old, some of the oldest rock on our planet. Splotches of orange, gray, brown, green and yellow dot the pink-and-gray rippled rock, and we tentatively identify yellow cobblestone lichen and rock greenshield lichen.

The year is far enough into fall that it’s possible to wander places we couldn’t get to earlier in the season without thrashing through undergrowth, and we like to avoid thrashing whenever we can. Now we can easily visit the northeastern edge of the old quarry in the SNA, where cubes of blasted rocks are piled up like a giant’s building blocks and wind ripples the water in the bottom of the quarry.

We aren’t many miles from Gneiss Outcrops SNA, so we drive on west to revisit it. In a previous summer visit we were defeated by tall, thick growth (think thrashing) and barely got past the first outcrop near the edge of the SNA. Now much of that growth has died back, and we head toward a lake on the far edge of the SNA following trampled trails in the grasses, making our way around thickets of bushes and trees. The hike is longer than it looks on the map, but at last we spot water and follow a narrow trail through thorny branches down to a small lake where a swan rests white on the water. A ridge of rocks leads up the other side of the lake, and a short climb brings us past brittle prickly pear cactus growing in rock cracks and plains prickly pear cactus sprawled across ledges. One way cactus survives our Minnesota winters is to lose water, shrinking into shriveled pads until spring when those pads swell again, and these cactuses are definitely shrinking.

It’s amazing what color you can find, even when most of the flowers have died back or gone to seed–lichen dappling rock, a few goldenrods still blooming, deep red sumac leaves and berries, flecks of quartz sparkling, little bluestem glowing red in the sunlight, trees along the road turning golden. And amazing what you might find if you just push on and even thrash a little through the undergrowth and trees–even a lake with cactuses growing on the rocks and a swan resting on the water.

Buds and Blossoms

April 20, 2024

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

No matter what sort of winter we have, we always hunger for spring. Down along Minnehaha Creek in Minneapolis below the falls, bloodroot are blooming, skunk cabbage is already spreading its cabbage-like leaves, and trillium are budding. We love this city springtime, but we wondered, too, what might be happening farther from home. So on a day so blustery we needed winter coats we headed out to see what might be blooming farther south in Minnesota.

At Whitewater State Park we found more buds than blooms, but buds make our hearts happy, too, since soon enough blossoms will follow. Because the day was overcast and chilly, many of the flowers were wrapped up tight against the gloom and cold. Bloodroot held its leaves upright around tightly closed buds, but false rue anemone braved the weather to scatter white flowers among last year’s brown leaves, and a few cutleaf toothwort flowers opened while many more budded. Dutchman’s breeches’ britches-shaped flowers swayed on their stalks, and several trout lily buds hung gracefully down among many, many trout lily leaves. Masses of mayapple rocketed through the ground like missile nose cones, a few with buds nestled between their leaves. (Like trout lilies, mayapple plants only bloom once the plant has two leaves.)

Spring beauty’s delicate pink flowers delighted, and hepatica opened pale blossoms with fuzzy bracts at the bases of the petals. Trillium leaves poked up, beginning to unfold and Canadian wild ginger flowers hid under their soft wrinkly leaves. A little creek churkled along until it encountered several beaver dams, where it pooled up behind the mud and stick structures. Beavers, it turns out, are not only excellent engineers but also help prevent the spread of forest fires and ameliorate drought by creating wetlands with their dams.

We’d set out not knowing what we might find, and despite the cold (and a smattering of snowflakes) a whole budding world awaited us.

With windy arms, spring welcomed us in.

First Flower Chasing of 2024

March 23, 2024

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

After a year of thirty thousand words, 275 photos, and 6,000 miles crisscrossing the state, we have finally finished a working draft of our next (as yet untitled) wildflower book! So what do we do to celebrate?

What else but go flower chasing?

It’s been a chancy spring after an almost snow-free winter. Snow had finally fallen on our first free weekend from working on the book, but we couldn’t resist the urge to be outside and looking for wildflowers . We’d heard about a hillside covered in snow trillium south of the cities, and even though we’ve seen snow trilliums, a flower of state special concern, in several places over the years, we are always excited to see old flower friends in new places.

The snow had mostly disappeared as we drove south, but the day was cold, and the ground on the hillside felt frozen underfoot. Still, poking up through last year’s oak leaves were undaunted trios of trillium leaves, a few plants with buds almost ready to open, others with buds smaller than a grain of rice, some with no buds at all yet. Scattered among the trilliums were tiny, reddish false rue anemone leaves and the purplish-red leaves of last year’s hepatica along with a few, very small, unfolding fronds of Dutchman’s breeches. Ephemeral or not, the early wildflowers were already hard at work.

Not far away at Kasota Prairie Preserve pasqueflowers were still blooming, so we headed over to see them, too. Some were past prime, others still a pale lavender, and a few were barely buds, all furry with soft hairs to help hold in heat. Pasqueflowers are clearly sun lovers: on cloudy days their blossoms stay closed, and on sunny days they follow the sun, a slow dance called heliotropism which helps the flowers trap the sun’s heat. Early queen bees flying from warm flower to warm flower gather pollen and warmth at the same time.

One last stop at Ottawa Bluffs Nature Conservancy site took us up a hill topped with burr oaks, past more pasqueflowers than a person could count to a panoramic view over the river valley.

We are always delighted by these first flowers and the promise of more to follow. Most of all we are delighted to be out and about again, chasing wildflowers wherever we can find them.