Tag: #wildflowerwomen

A Rocky Day


October 30, 2021

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

Who knows where wildflower chasing will take us?  A trip to Minnesota’s only salt lake to check on red saltwort, a state-threatened plant, ended with us driving through one of Minnesota’s ghost towns looking at rock outcrops.

Although we’ve never caught the succulent-looking red saltwort that grows along Salt Lake’s shores actually turning red, we live in hope, and we drove west in and out of blankets of fog into a glorious October day.  When we had stopped at Salt Lake Wildlife Management Area (WMA) earlier this fall, drought had dropped the water level and the few saltwort we saw were still resolutely green.  Now the lake brimmed again, and we did find a solitary green saltwort plant with, we convinced ourselves, at least a few tinges of pink.

No matter.  This western Minnesota landscape has become one of our favorite flower-chasing places, so next year we’ll try again to catch red saltwort actually turning red.  

We had planned our drive back to stop at some of the gneiss rock outcrops strung along the Minnesota River Valley, a gift of the glaciers when glacial Lake Agassiz emptied out and glacial River Warren rushed to the sea, stripping away the earth to some of the planet’s oldest rocks. We’d been to Morton Outcrops Scientific and Natural Area (SNA) a few times, as well as Gneiss Outcrops SNA. Now was a chance to check out some of the other spots where the bones of the earth poked through.

First stop:  Blue Devil Valley SNA where we came across a crew contracted by the Department of Natural Resources to remove invasive buckthorn.  Here among gnarled oaks we clambered over rocks, finding large pockets of brittle prickly pear cactus nestled in moss as well as rock spikemoss, prairie onion gone to seed, and the leaves of Carolina cranesbill and Carolina anemone.  Many colors of lichens, including one vivid yellow-green, grew on the rocks, and ferns found a roothold in cracks.  A little river flowed below, the sky beamed blue, and we promised to come back again in the spring to see what might be flowering then.

Next on the list: Swedes Forest SNA, a huge, rounded, pink outcropping above a little lake where seven white swans swam and occasionally went bottom-up searching for food.  A few bluets bloomed in cracks, along with a few goldenrods and yarrow, and at the top of the rocks we found many clusters of brittle prickly pear cactus. This was a grander landscape, with a sweeping view from the top of the rocks at other, smaller, scattered outcrops that we’ll wander among on another visit.

Our list of rock outcrops to visit included Vicksburg County Park, but the maps on our phones kept showing us a cemetery instead of a park, so we had crossed it off our list until, driving down a back road to get to River Warren Outcrops SNA, we saw a sign:  Vicksburg County Park.  How could we not take that sharp right turn and drive past smaller outcroppings of rock, glimpsing larger ones along the edge of the Minnesota River? A sign at the park exit told the story of how this was once a thriving town until the railroad passed it by. Our phones weren’t wrong—there really is a cemetery there, and next time we are out among the rocks we’ll stop and explore more.

The day was stretching toward evening, and we had one more stop at River Warren Outcrops SNA.  In the parking area a hunter was unloading his gear, and, not wanting to be mistaken for deer, we assured him we wouldn’t be long.  We weren’t. A quick hike along a trail showed us rock outcrops that we’ll come back to explore, but it was time to head home.  The late light stretched ahead of us, setting the turning trees on fire, as we drove back east.

No red saltwort this trip, but there’s always next year.  And the next.  And the one after that.  So many places to explore, and who knows what we’ll find? We live in a place on a planet rich in possibilities.

Salt Lake WMA
Red Saltwort
Blue Devil Valley SNA
Brittle prickly pear cactus
Brittle prickly pear cactus
Moss and Lichen
Swedes Forest SNA
Yarrow
Goldenrod

They’re blooming? We’re on the way!

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

We came to the North Shore to see Hudson Bay eyebright and purple fringed orchid blooming, thanks to a helpful phone call from a master naturalist and fellow wildflower lover who told us where both were blooming.  And he was exactly right:  we drove north, turned along the road he told us, turned again, crossed the railroad tracks, made one more turn, and saw purple fringed orchid gloriously blooming up and down the roadside ditch.  Driving on up to Sugarloaf Cove on Lake Superior, we found the tiny, tiny arctic relict Hudson Bay eyebright blooming in cracks of rocks. The plants and flowers are so minute that we might never have found them without Phil’s help.

Scattered in crevices and seemingly growing right out of the rocks we found other small plants that Kelly photographed and we later identified:  white upland goldenrod, which looks like small daisies, three-tooth cinquefoil, shrubby cinquefoil.

Every fracture or dip in the rock seemed like a tiny world of its own.

On the path down to the cove spotted coral root grew.  Returning in the morning to get one more look at the eyebright, we also found beach pea in glowing blues and purples and magentas, spurred gentian, twin flowers and bunchberry blooming, early coral root, and, with the guidance of a naturalist at the Sugarloaf interpretive center, one-flowered pyrola and large leaved shinleaf.  One-flowered pyrola flowers face demurely downward until they go to seed—one group we saw going to seed had turned upward like a crowd of people staring at the sky.

We stopped so often along the road to photograph evening primrose, more purple fringed orchids, a tall northern bog orchid, smooth oxeye, and fringed loosestrife we thought we might never make it home.

We did, though, already eager for our next exploration and grateful for friends who share their enthusiasm and knowledge for the same native wildflowers we love.

Phyllis Root, Author
Kelly Povo, Photographer

 

North to Churchill, Day Eleven

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

July 11, 2018

We are driving back to the Twin Cities today and plan a few stops at places to look for flowers.  The first is Seven Sisters Prairie near Ashby.  The hills rise above the rolling landscape, and we climb the path up the first hill as the temperature climbs toward a high of 90 degrees.  Along the hilltops the prairie wind whips the grasses and flowers, a welcome relief from the hot sun, and the landscape—lake, farm, woods—stretches around us 360 degrees. Along the path that winds over the hilltops we find purple prairie clover, white prairie clover, Canadian milk vetch, stiff goldenrod, thimbleweed, harebell, fleabane, side-oats grama, hairy grama whorled milkweed, lead plant, prairie milkweed, ground cherry, prairie turnip, wild rose, wild bergamot, pale spiked lobelia, hairy false goldenaster, yellow sundrops, and green milkweed.  Bumblebees buzz, and dragonflies flit among the flowers like electric blue darning needles.  We are clearly back in the Minnesota prairie.

Then we lose the path in sumac. Is this it, we wonder.  Or this?  Or this? When we finally make our way through sumac waist-high and higher, down hills, under trees, and alongside a marsh through buckthorn to where we left the car we are both drenched in sweat and decide that perhaps we will head on home after all.  The other places we had planned to stop are well within driving distance of the twin cities, and we will come back another day soon.  We also invent a new word (or at least we think we do): shrubwhack.  Harder than bushwhacking, not as difficult as treewhacking.

As we drive through Alexandria, Minnesota, we spot Cherry Street Books, an independent bookstore, and stop for a quick look.  In the window we see our book Searching for Minnesota Wildflowers.  At our first stop on the way north at Mille Lacs State Park we also saw our book in the hands of a naturalist.  It seems auspicious that our trip is bookended by book sightings—we are already talking about doing some sort of book about Churchill and the sub-arctic wildflowers we’ve seen.

Quietly contemplative—so much to let settle in from the incredible experience we’ve just had—we drive on home.

p.s. We don’t recommend shrubwhacking, but we do recommend the Northern Studies Centre in Churchill, Manitoba.  It really is the experience of a lifetime.