@phyllisiroot – Page 2 – Flower Chasers

Keweenaw Adventure Day Four

June 25, 2025

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

The second day of our plant class on the Keweenaw begins with a hike down through boreal forest past familiar inhabitants–bunchberry, twinflower, starflower, Canada mayflower–along with a new-to-us flower, barren strawberry, a plant of special concern in Minnesota. Here its distinctive leaves and yellow flowers spread across the forest floor with nary a berry in sight. The trail ends at a wide rock beach cradled by rock ridges that form Horseshoe Harbor.

On one side of the beach common butterwort, an arctic disjunct, covers a rock wall. Arctic disjuncts are plants separated by hundreds of miles from their habitat farther north. Butterwort is rare in Minnesota and Michigan, but here the rocks are dotted with the plant’s pristine purple flowers and sticky, star-shaped yellow leaves that trap and devour small insects. Another arctic disjunct, bird’s-eye primrose, grows nearby, its small pink flowers almost done except for two that we find in cheery bloom. Dwarf raspberry bushes have found rootholds in the rock and are developing berries, and three-toothed cinquefoil with its bright white flowers is scattered along rock cracks and fractures. This is a place that makes our flower-chasing hearts beat with joy. What’s not to love about a Lake Superior beach, and this one is, well, superior.

Over lunch we learn about the geology of this area, how Isle Royale and the Keweenaw peninsula were once connected and share the same geology. We learn, too, how veins of calcium in the rocks around us help create a habitat for calcium-loving plants, which are often arctic disjuncts.

On the other side of the beach we climb onto a high rock ridge with a vast view of Lake Superior and wander past microhabitats of three-toothed cinquefoil, sedges, creeping juniper, and the occasional frog.

Safely down from the ridge, we learn more about how the layers of rock tell a geologic tale of sediment and stromatolites, which are earth’s oldest fossils. Rocks have stories, if we only know how to read them.

Today’s after-class flower chasing takes us, thanks to some shared coordinates, to a place where at least twenty-five ram’s-head lady’s-slippers grow. Most of the flowers are past their prime, but it’s still a thrill to see these delicate orchids in a new location.

We end the day with a hike near Copper Harbor where three years earlier I came across giant rattlesnake plantain for the first time. We don’t find the plants I saw then, but we do find an abundance of pink shinleaf almost ready to bloom and another population of giant rattlesnake plantain leaves nestled in the moss.

A spectacular day, and one that brings our trip total of orchids seen so far to thirteen.

What will tomorrow bring? We can hardly wait to find out.

Keweenaw Adventure Day Three

June 24, 2025

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

Today is the official beginning of our Keweenaw Plant I.D. Workshop, and we’re eager to learn all we can. The workshop is packed with information on plants of the Keweenaw Peninsula as we hike through a coniferous forest, along a bog boardwalk, and down to a beaver pond. Many of the flowers we see along the trails are familiar to us from Minnesota’s woods and rocky shores– three-toothed cinquefoil, gaywings, twinflower more deeply pink than we’ve ever seen it –but there are surprises as well. We come across another population of giant rattlesnake plantain (the only one of the four species of rattlesnake plantain orchid that doesn’t grow in Minnesota), and we also spot spotted coralroot, bringing our total of orchids seen so far this trip to twelve.

The day’s workshop ends with a stop to see the bright yellow composite flowers and perfoliate leaves of heart-leaved arnica, a new-to-us species that doesn’t grow in Minnesota. The class ends for the day, but we aren’t quite ready yet to quit chasing flowers, and daylight lingers long this far north and so soon after solstice. So Kelly and I drive to an old mining site where she’s seen striped coralroot on a previous visit. Despite diligent searching in the oak woods next to the site we don’t find the coralroot. What we do find are the leaves and buds of numerous elliptical shinleaf plants and many, many parasitic American cancer- root plants spookily poking out of the ground like yellowish pine cones, another new-to-us plant.

After a long and flower-filled day we return to our motel. The lake lies silvery calm outside our window, and fall asleep wondering what amazing finds tomorrow might bring.

Violets Revisited

May 26, 2025

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

The time for violet chasing is short, and we’ve been on the hunt this spring to see all of Minnesota’s eighteen violets while they’re blooming. Which is a correction from our last violet blog, when we wrote that there were twenty different Minnesota violets. A reclassification of Minnesota violets in 2023 took the number down to eighteen members of the genus viola plus green violet which belongs to the genus cubelium instead of viola, is state-endangered, and whose picture looks, to our non-botanist eyes, nothing much like the other violets. And which, despite diligent searching, we have yet to see.

When we wrote the last post we’d managed to see ten viola violets –arrow-leaved, birdfoot, common blue, lance-leaved, marsh, northern white, prairie, smooth yellow, western Canada, and yellow prairie (state-threatened).

We are happy to report that we have now seen the other eight viola violets. Here’s how it happened.

Two weekends ago we headed up to Duluth for a joint event with Zenith Books and The Tasting Room, stopping along the way at Magney-Snively Natural Area where we found Carolina spring beauty (which we’d also been chasing this spring). After book-and-tea time with fellow wildflower enthusiasts we visited nearby Hartley Nature Center where we came across Great Lakes violet and sweet white violet– numbers eleven and twelve. At Stony Point, our next stop, we found violet number thirteen–great spurred violet.

After visits with family and friends we headed back to the cities, still on the hunt for violets.

First stop: Stub Trail at Fall Lake Campground in the Superior National Forest, where dog violet grew along a trail–violet number fourteen. Then off to Sax Zim Bog where we found violet number fifteen, kidney-leaved violet, growing near a bog boardwalk. At Jay Cooke State Park we clambered down along uptilted rocks by the river to find sand violet–number sixteen.

This past weekend we set out to finish the list with the last two violets. In an Anoka sandplain wetland we found an abundance of primrose-leaved violets–violet number seventeen. One to go: northern bog violet. But despite scouring trails in southeastern Minnesota we saw barely any violets at all, although we did see our first blooming orchid of the year, showy orchis.

Thanks to a friend telling us about a site closer to home we did find northern bog violet blooming cheerily along with a few small yellow lady’s-slipper and small white lady’s slipper nearby. Violet number eighteen and blooming orchids two and three. (Can you tell I like to count?)

A violet-filled springtime of chasing down all Minnesota’s viola violets and a chance to see the world awakening to spring. Next year, who knows? We might actually find green violet.

As a bonus, we’ve come up with a slogan for our next protest sign:

Violets, not violence.