Tag: @phyllisiroot

Unexpected Wonder

July 8, 2023

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

We’ve been looking for specific flowers blooming in specific places when our two different schedules allow, which only works when the flowers cooperate.  This year when bloom times seem less predictable than usual, we’ve come to expect disappointments along with successes, so this past weekend in the absence of flowers to count we started counting disappointments.

Disappointment number 1:  The roadside where we’d seen showy milkweed blooming last summer shows no signs this year of showy, or of almost any other, milkweed.  Where did they go?  We don’t know.  We only know they aren’t where we’d seen them before. 

Disappointment number 2: The tessellated rattlesnake plantain leaves and last year’s flower stalks that we’d seen in Badoura Jack Pine Woodland Scientific and Natural Area (SNA) last fall are nowhere to be found, even though we scour the area around the GPS coordinates we’d recorded and brought with us.

Disappointment number 3:  We are almost at Iron Springs Bog SNA when the low tire pressure light comes on.  Do we change plans and drive forty miles to the nearest town large enough to have a tire store, or do we fill the  tire up with air and take a chance it will hold while we explore the SNA? We take a chance, inflate the tire, and head to Iron Springs Bog.  But we’re  barely down the rutted, slippery track into the SNA and beginning our search for an adder’s mouth orchid when the sky darkens, thunder threatens, and lightning crisscrosses the clouds.  

We run for the car and make it back up the treacherous track just as rain sluices down so hard we can barely see the road. We make it to town, where we look so forlorn that the manager at Tires Plus works us into his crowded schedule and patches our tire. We find our hotel, and settle in for the night. 

The next day is sunny and fresh-washed, and so are we.  Back at Iron Springs Bog, we search for an adder’s mouth along with other orchids we’ve seen there.  Hours pass without success, but the bog is rich and green after the rain, moss is soft underfoot, and the tall slender bog orchids platanthera aquilonis* and platanthera huronensis* are plentiful. We find one showy lady’s-slipper with a single flower and the leaves of several more plants, their blossoms nipped off by whatever eats these elegant flowers. Just as we are  about to drive on we find one more orchid with a few small flowers that we identify as a blunt-leaved orchid. Not seeing any sign of the orchids we came to find might count as disappointment number 4.  But on such a splendid morning, do we care?  We do not.  

Our next stop takes us to Larix Wildlife Management Area (WMA) where we’ve heard we might see some rare flowers. We park at the corner, begin to bushwhack in through the dense undergrowth and trees, and quickly realize how easily we could get very, very lost. Luckily we’ve brought plastic marking tape so we can boldly go where no one seems to have gone in a very long time, marking our way with orange strips tied to trees.  When we finally admit that we are only getting into more unpassable bushwhacking we backtrack, taking our orange ties with us. But we agree that not getting lost counterbalances the disappointment of not really getting anywhere at all. 

Across the road lies Gully Fen SNA, looking almost as densely impenetrable as the WMA we’ve just left, but we decide to at least drive around the edges.  About halfway around we come to a gate and a sign that says, “Stay on the Trail.” 

Trail?  We park and hike easily and gleefully into the SNA where we spy wood lilies, blue flag, shrubby cinquefoil, and pink shinleaf.  We’ve barely scratched the surface of Gully Fen’s 1600 acres before it’s time to start the long drive home, but we promise to come back with much more time to explore this amazing place. 

One last turn down a road along the edge of the SNA takes us past a roadside ditch with a small stretch abloom with  wood lilies, Joe Pye weed, swamp milkweed, goldenrod, yarrow, Kalm’s lobelia, and, amazingly, many platanthera aquilonis orchids.  We’ve looked hard in many places, but this gift of a ditch feels like the richest place we’ve seen all weekend. 

Flowers may not bloom when and where we expect them to, disappointments may occur,  but always we see unlooked-for wonders that make our hearts happy and grateful. 

What more could a flowerchaser want? 

*Note:  Usually we use common names for flowers, but the similar orchids platanthera aquilonis and platanthera huronensis share so many variations of the same common names (tall, northern, bog, green) that we decided we needed to learn their scientific names to keep them straight.

Swamp milkweed
Platanthera aquilonis
Platanthera huronensis
Showy Lady’s-slipper
Platanthera obtusata
Blueflag iris
Shrubby cinquefoil
Kalm’s lobelia
Canada or Giant goldenrod
Wood lily

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Surprises

June 17, 2023

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

Because we are in the midst of another book, our wildflower chasing trips this summer have been focused mostly on specific flowers we want to include in the new book. This means heading out to particular places at times we are able to go and hoping the plants we want to see will cooperate by blooming where we can find them. Alas, not always true, but even when we don’t have total flower chasing success, we sometimes find unlooked-for surprises.  

This past weekend we headed north with a laundry list of places to stop and plants we need to see, but as we made our way up the north shore we checked off stop after stop without checking off any flowers that we needed. 

Then we came to a section of Lake Superior shoreline where we’d been told we might see arctic relicts.  We made our way down the rocks, careful of where they dropped off steeply and of the slippery places where, even in this dry year, water seeped toward the lake. In one damp spot, a splendid surprise:  Canadian tiger swallowtail butterflies puddling on the rock, flitting down to the moisture, sipping, flying away to return for another drink. 

Butterflies weren’t the only surprise.  In cracks of the rocks and in places where the water pooled we found common butterwort (so much that we understood how it got its name, since we’ve only ever seen it uncommonly in Minnesota before), bird’s-eye primrose with some flowers still blooming, three-toothed cinquefoil flowering, and round-leaved sundew gleaming redly in the moss.  We wandered from tiny habitat to tiny habitat, marveling that high on these rocks a small relict world survived.

Then back to the road and more stops.  By the end of the day we had checked off a few finds:  western spotted coralroot, small false asphodel, Canada buffaloberry.  We’d found several places we hoped to return to again when flowers might be more cooperative. We’d found a sweet little habitat of plants thriving in their own world. And we had spent the day in the presence of Lake Superior.  

We counted the day a success.

Bird’s-eye primrose
Common butterwort
Three-toothed cinquefoil
Columbine
Tufted bulrush
Canadian tiger swallowtail

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A Green Day

May 13, 2023

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

The cool, overcast morning promised rain, but spring was in full swing at last, so we packed our boots and rain gear and drove down to southern Minnesota to see what was blooming. We’d already  seen  many of this year’s spring flowers and ephemerals, but we knew, too, that some rare and lovely flowers grew along wooded ravines and creek sides in the driftless area of the state where the last glaciers never reached. 

First stop, Olmstead county along the Root River. A stream of brightly blooming marsh marigolds led us through a forest rich in flowers to where groundwater percolates down through the bluffs and flows out into a seepage. We’d been here on a previous, naturalist-led trip and been enchanted by the green, moist woods and the plants that populated this tiny wetland. Now the tiny false mermaid plants we’d seen before were tiny no more, and in leaf axils, where leaf and stem meet, minute flowers bloomed. 

Leaves of jewelweed, leafcup, and trout lily grew scattered among the rocks along with shiny bunches of sharp-lobed hepatica’s new leaves. Nearby many glorious trilliums grew, and we discussed: drooping or nodding? Nodding, we decided, but elegantly beautiful whichever they were.  

Leaves that we’d puzzled over previously on our last visit–Dutchman’s breeches or squirrel corn, two plants so similar we can’t tell them apart until they bloom–now revealed their true identities. Strings of breeches hung in lines on arching stalks while squirrel corn’s heart-shaped flowers bloomed on more upright stalks. Mayapples budded, walking fern walked itself down the side of a mossy boulder, and the pleated striped leaves of puttyroot orchid made us promise a return trip to see them in bloom. 

Frogs chirred, birds sang, woodpeckers hammered, and the woods felt alive with spring.   

But we weren’t done yet. Not too far away in Winona County more wooded ravines held their own promises. A creekside path led us past the leaves of done-blooming bloodroot, cut-leaf toothwort, and trout lilies, while spring beauty, wood phlox, false rue anemone, wood anemone, jack in the pulpit, and bellwort still boomed. Up on a hillside we found  several healthy populations of twinleaf, flowers gone but still easy to recognize by the distinctive leaves. Also on the hillside –surprise!– our first orchid of the season, showy orchis, budding hopefully.

The forecast rain arrived, but only a gentle sprinkle. Light through the new-leafed trees along the sides of the ravine shone green, and our hearts, too, were green with springtime. And with hope.

A Green Day
False mermaid
Nodding trillium
Walking fern
Squirrel corn
Twinleaf leaves
Showy orchis
Large-flowered trillium

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