Wildflowers
Tiptoeing through the toothwort
With their cameras, nature-lovers try to capture the fleeting joys of spring.
Nothing is more exhilarating than the first days of spring, when the air practically vibrates with the pent-up vigor of growing things.
Warm sunlight filters down through budding forests, and the rich smell of humus wafts up from their floors. Then, amid the decaying leaves and grasses, we find the first spring ephemerals.
They gladden our hearts, those brave little blooms. But they come, and then they go.
Wildflowers of the North Shore
On the shores of Lake Superior, delicate blooms mark the return of warmth.
In spring, not that many people go to the North Shore to see the flowers.
They’re small, and the rest of the scenery is big and distracting — roaring waterfalls, jagged cliffs and that mesmerizing inland sea that fills the horizon.
If you do look down, you’ll find them huddled in cracks on lava flows, tucked along hiking trails and in boggy patches along streams. They’re dainty, but many are fairly unusual — butterwort as well as bluebells, rock clematis along with columbine.
Stalking summer wildflowers
Blooms paint the landscape in every color under the sun.
In summer, you don’t have to hunt wildflowers.
They’re big and splashy, blooming by the thousands on prairie, along bicycle trails and anywhere there’s sun. When everything else is green, they give us pops of color: the purple of bottle gentian, the orange of hawkweed, the yellow of tansy.
Do you like Monet’s paintings of Giverny? Then you’ll love the meadows of blue vervain and Queen Anne’s lace on the southwestern Minnesota prairie, the swaths of pearly everlasting and red bunchberry on the Keweenaw Peninsula and the fields of sunflower and blazing star along the Waters of the Dancing Sky scenic byway in northern Minnesota.
Out of the forest and into the frying pan
As days get warmer, mushroom hunters get ready to root out the wily morel.
Deep down, every morel hunter believes in divine providence.
There's nothing so providential as baskets overflowing with morels, and the taste is so divine hunters dream about it all winter. In spring, they offer a fervent prayer to the mushroom gods: May the fungus be among us.
Morels do taste heavenly. But it's the hunt that's so addictive, not the mushroom itself. For one thing, it's fun to find something for free that's so expensive in stores and restaurants, and it's fun to beat the odds by finding something so notoriously elusive.
Outdoors in the Kickapoo Valley
In Wisconsin's coulee country, a green zone is known for morels, apples, wildflowers and a winding river.
In the coulees of southwest Wisconsin, a lush green zone draws anyone who craves a heady dose of nature.
It starts in spring, when trilliums bloom along Rustic Roads, morel mushrooms pop out on hillsides and water rushes down the crooked Kickapoo River.
It's not close to any city, but people find their way. Norwegians were first to be drawn to its deep, narrow valleys, like miniature fjords.
Chasing spring wildflowers
When the Mississippi River Valley erupts into blooms, devotees rush to see them all.
In May, the woods are full of people on the hunt.
Some are stalking morel mushrooms. Others are trying to bag a turkey or spot a rare warbler.
The rest of us are content to chase wildflowers. For one thing, we’re guaranteed success.
Spring in Door County
On this Wisconsin peninsula, a vast array of wildflowers rewards those weary of winter.
Goldthread and gaywings. Bogbean and trailing arbutus. In Wisconsin's Door County, it's enough to make a naturalist hyperventilate.
Cherry blossoms and daffodils are the showiest spring flowers on this tourist playground between Lake Michigan and Green Bay. But it's the wildflowers, many of them rare, that provide the most joyous proof that spring has arrived.
On sandy ridges, the first flower spotted often is the once-common trailing arbutus, whose waxy white blossoms emerge in April.
Where to find spring wildflowers
Some can be seen everywhere; others are more elusive.
Here are just a few of the best places to look for wildflowers.
Minnesota's scientific and natural areas (SNAs) also are very good
places to find unusual flowers, as are Wisconsin's state natural
areas. For more, see Spring in full glory.
Nature Conservancy sites host many interesting plants. Wildlife refuges, nature preserves and environmental learning centers also are good places to look.
Spring in full glory
For a piece of quiet, visit a state natural area.
One spring, I hit the nature-lover's jackpot, almost without trying.
Exploring a septet of Minnesota's scientific and natural areas, or SNAs, I found more pasque flowers in bloom than I'd ever
expected to see in a lifetime.
I saw a panorama of the Mississippi as the Dakota would have seen it 200 years ago. I walked under the budding canopies of old-growth forests and listened to choruses of courting frogs.
Spring in western Wisconsin
Near Menomonie, a log house is headquarters for hiking, mushroom-hunting and bicycling.
Every year, the wily morel eludes me.
Living in the city doesn’t help. So one May, I rented a house on 160 acres in western Wisconsin and brought four pairs of eyes to help me look.
We’d just arrived at the Log House in the Forest near Spring Valley and were sitting on the patio when a man emerged from the forest and presented us with two fat morels. It was owner Tom Genz, so we quizzed him on technique.
Itching for spring
It's coming, in all its glorious bounty. Here's what to watch for and where to go.
When the snow is gone, the fun begins.
Most of us would be happy to see something, anything, that’s green. But there’s no reason to wait for that before going outdoors.
This is the best time to hunt for agates on Great Lakes beaches, where winter storms have tossed up a new batch of rocks. If you wait until July, when most tourists arrive, they’ll be picked over.
© Beth Gauper, 2007 - 2012 all rights reserved
