@kellypovo – Flower Chasers

Unexpected Wonder

May 22, 2026

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

On a day meant mostly for moseying, we set out for the Driftless Area hoping to find large yellow lady’s-slipper in bloom in Hayden Prairie near Lime Springs, Iowa where we’d once seen more of them in bud than I could count. We find them again easily enough–some in bud but none in flower, although the prairie shooting star were merrily blooming.

We aren’t far in our travels from where, last spring, we searched diligently (and disappointingly) for green violet, the only one of the state’s nineteen native violet species we had yet to find. This state-endangered wildflower looks nothing like its violet relatives–it can grow up to three feet tall, and its small greenish-white flowers grow on stalks from the leaf axils. If not for the name, we wouldn’t know it was a violet.

Since we’re passing through the area where we’d searched before without any luck, why not take one more look? So we do, following a trail through a depressing abundance of garlic mustard, past marsh marigolds and wild geraniums in bloom, around downed trees, steadying each other across a little creek until we come to where we had searched last year.

This time, however, we widen our search a bit. And before long, the cry goes up. Green violet!!! Two robust clusters of plants with delicate greenish-white flowers dangling from leaf axils. Celebration (and photographs) ensue.

Giddy with green violet joy, we decide to follow the trail on the other side of the creek back to the road. In high spirits we wade the creek, careful not to slip on mossy rocks, then follow the narrow bit of land between steep hillside and mucky streambed, ducking under or scrabbling over a few downed trees. When the path leads uphill we start climbing until we realize it leads straight uphill and directly away from the creek and the car to who knows where–clearly we don’t. Nothing to do but backtrack, so down the hillside we go, over and under the downed trees, across the slippery mossy rocks, past green violet (pausing for one last reverential look), around downed trees, along trail spurs that dead-end in thick brush, and back to the creek that we’re convinced has suddenly altered course when we can’t find the narrow place where we’d crossed before. Eventually, though, we find another narrow place and teeter across, coming at last to the car.

The rest of the day is fine wildflower chasing with showy orchis in bloom, green milkweed budding, plains wild indigo flowering. Wonderful as these wildflowers are, they blur together in the glow of finally finding green violet, a glow that keeps us smiling all the way back home.

How rare is green violet? Minnesota has only five known populations, all in the Driftless Area. In Iowa green violet is endangered. In Wisconsin, where green violet was thought to have disappeared completely, one population has recently been found. All of which makes it even more of a wonder that, thanks to directions from a knowledgeable friend, we actually found the rare and delicate flowers.

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Spring Exploding

April 17, 2026

Author: Phyllis Root • Photographer: Kelly Povo

In just a few days it seems as though spring has burst upon us. Trees are greening, flowers rush to open–clearly it’s time to head down to our favorite Rustic Road, where a wealth of spring wildflowers blooms on wooded hillsides.

Wisconsin has over 700 miles of designated rustic roads that meander and mosey through scenic countryside. Some rustic roads travel in a loop, which explains why once, when we’d been driving on a rustic road, we were overjoyed to see a sign ahead promising another rustic road. A rustic road double header! Then we realized we had looped around and were back at the beginning of the one we’d just travelled. So we drove it again, just for the breathtaking beauty.

Rustic Road 51, just south of Maiden Rock, Wisconsin, wanders between steeply wooded hillsides where spring wildflowers bloom in abundance. We drive the road several different times each spring to see all it has to offer as flowers open according to their own internal calendars. This visit, though, we saw in a few hours almost everything we usually see over the course of several visits– some flowers just budding, some in riotous bloom. I love to count flowers, but there’s no way to count the wealth of wildflowers around us. Here’s what we saw in a single amazing morning.

Virginia spring beauty’s small pink striped flowers covering whole hillsides.

Eastern false rue anemone in bud and in bloom. Anemone means windflower, and these delicate white blossoms obligingly sway in the breeze.

Wood anemone, in the same family as eastern false rue anemone, blooming with its single white flower per plant.

Hepatica, joyful in shades of blue and purple and white

Canadian wild ginger, some with flower buds and some with the reddish flowers open but almost hidden under fuzzy leaves.

Bloodroot with its elegant white blossoms, leaves wrapping around their stems like scalloped shawls.

Dutchman’s breeches, many with stalks of flowers still upright, some with stalks bent like laundry lines holding–what else?–tiny breeches.

And in among the Dutchman’s breeches a few squirrel corn with tiny, tiny buds. The leaves of squirrel corn and Dutchman’s breeches are so similar we often have to wait until squirrel corn blooms just slightly later than Ductchman’s breeches to tell the difference, but this time we’re sure that the clusters of buds are squirrel corn.

Trout lilies, many white and a few yellow, their flowers hanging gracefully down.

Pennsylvania sedge in bloom with shaggy heads that give off a dust of pollen when we tap them.

And everywhere up and down the hillsides ramps running rampant.

We also find the leaves of Jacob’s ladder, wood phlox, and Virginia waterleaf along with trillium leaves unfolding to reveal their buds. We don’t find any clue of Mayflower poking up, though, and no sign of elusive twinleaf, so clearly we’ll need to come back in a week or two to continue the search.

Here and there a solitary bumblebee buzzes and small flies investigate flowers. A woodpecker hammers, birds call, a barred owl asked who cooks for you.

We’ve been coming to Rustic Road 51 for years, and it never disappoints. This might be the first visit, though, where we’ve seen it overflowing with such flowery glory, soothing and delighting our winter-worn selves.

Throughout the morning, air has felt increasingly like rain, so when thunder rumbles we head for home. But we know in a few days we’ll be back again. You can count on it.

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Heading North

July 4-5, 2025

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

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?

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Tag: @kellypovo

Unexpected Wonder

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Spring Exploding

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Heading North

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