A Ten-Foot Tall Giant in the Prairie – Pale Indian Plantain

Pale Indian Plantain - Tallgrass Prairie Flower

Pale Indian Plantain – Tallgrass Prairie ©2014 Bo Mackison

Pale Indian Plantain, these tallgrass
prairie flowers rival the prairie’s grasses.
Tall and thick, its stem the deepest red like rhubarb stalks.

Leaves large as a father’s weathered hand hang low on the stem,
rough and ragged. Midway, the leaves are mother-sized hands,
reaching towards the sky and the cluster of
child-sized leaves high on the stalk.
This family of leaves. Orderly.

I stand on the earth, side by side with the Pale Plantain.
It towers above me, statuesque,
hovering over the other prairie flowers,
with an occasional compass plant its only rival.

Its whorl of yellow-green florets gives way to shriveled fibers
signaling another turn of the seasonal cycle.
And late summer drifts towards autumn.

Overflowing with Color, There is Nothing Planned or Tidy about the Prairie

July Prairie Flowers

July Prairie Flowers © 2014 Bo Mackison

…In early stages of its growth, the grass is interspersed with little flowers, the violet, the strawberry blossom and others of the most delicate structure. When the grass grows higher, these disappear, and taller flowers displaying more lively colors, take their place; and still later, a series of still higher but less delicately formed flowers appear on the surface.” Captain Basil Hall, 1827

Thimbleweed, milkweed, tickseed, spiderwort, rattlesnake master, yellow coneflower, black-eyed susan, butterfly weed, bergamot, rosinweed, compass plant…

Nothing fancy about most of these names – common household names. Tick, milk, thimble, cone, black eye, compass, butterfly, seed, weed.

But there is everything wild and fancy about the prairie itself.

The tall grass prairies of the eastern range are far different from the short grass prairies of the plains. I seldom think prairie when I drive through the plains in Oklahoma, Kansas, eastern Colorado — I think grasslands when I see shortgrass prairie — hard to find, nearly extinguished, maybe 3% of the grasslands from the 1800s remain.

But those that have survived, mostly in the Flint Hills of Kansas, those are the wide undulating grasses of which the poets once wrote with eloquence, and the land that sent despair through European settlers who spoke of the eerie sounds of the relentless winds.

The eastern range of prairie – the tallgrass prairies which receive the most rainfall of all prairie types – are those I know.

Prairie - Pope Farms Conservatory

Wisconsin Tallgrass Prairie  © 2014 Bo Mackison

Replete with thick stands of grasses and flowers, these prairies are nearly impossible to wade through in July and August when the tallest of both are in full bloom. Matted thick, no space left untouched. It takes perseverance and a disregard for claustrophobia to walk in the midst of tall prairie.

And never mind that you are trampling plants and grasses as you step  if this is a remnant or one of the first restorations from the 1930s/40s and long established — this is one of the very factors that made the prairie what it is, the constant trampling by animals. These are plants that rebound, no matter if the visitor is man, animal, wind, or fire.

These plants continue to thrive — as long as you don’t cultivate the earth itself, and destroy their roots.

Without a complex knowledge of one’s place, and without the faithfulness to one’s place on which such knowledge depends, it is inevitable that the place will be used carelessly and eventually destroyed.  ~ Wendell Berry (1972)

The undisturbed prairies are bountiful. A third to a half of all the plants are forbs, the flower producing plants, and attract vast numbers of pollinators. New species of flowers – perhaps as many as 17 new plants each week from mid July through mid August – come into bloom.

This is the tall grass prairie, and what a wild and precious habitat it is…

 

 

Garden Party – White Coneflowers

Coneflowers in Olbrich Garden

White Coneflowers © 2013 Bo Mackison

“Let us dance in the sun, wearing wild flowers in our hair…” ~ Susan Polis Shutz

This array of stunning white coneflowers makes ME want to go dance in the sun!

The coneflowers are abundant this year in the prairie spaces of Wisconsin. Perhaps one of the gifts that comes with the record-breaking rainfalls we’ve had this spring and early summer. Every prairie space is white and purple with the waving, dancing, bouncing cone flowers, their bright orange heads bobbing, their brilliant rays fluttering.

It is nearly impossible to walk among hundreds of coneflowers and not dance and sing, if not with your body, then surely with your heart and soul.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.   Today is the opening for her exhibit, Garden Party – A Celebration of Botanical Photography at the Alicia Ashman Branch Library Gallery in Madison, Wisconsin. There are coneflowers dancing upon one of the walls in the children’s area!

Exploring — My Lawn as a Metaphor

Fully Floral

Fully Floral in Black and White © 2012 Bo Mackison

“Think of your free time, and how you spend it. Are you fighting your inner geography and planting a lawn? Are you going with the ambient climate and keeping it simple? Do you want to do work that is intense and may not fit the popular climate, or do you want to go with the flow and keep your work suited to an easy schedule? Or, do you want to create an environment that’s exotic for you or do you want to explore your nature as it is?” – Quinn McDonald

There are just so many options for spending my free time, and I always pack more ideas into my brain than one woman could do in a lifetime.

But that doesn’t stop me from adding to the list constantly. When I factor in my penchant for change, I need to consider several options for my front lawn if it is to be a metaphor for my free time.

At first thought, I liked the idea of a tall sunflower field.

I would be surrounded by eight foot high plants, all topped with giant yellow sunflower heads. Hidden in the glory of all those waving flowers, spending my free time wandering without being seen. But when I thought about the upkeep and the crispy brown remains of sunflower stalks once autumn’s frost paid a visit, those glorious sunflowers lost their appeal. Maybe I would get tired of being surrounded by a jungle of bright yellow flower heads the size of dinner plates. Too much intense color, over a long period of time, it might be too bright. Or too lonely, hidden away in the flowers.

What about a mass of low growing, take-care-of-themselves-flowers?

And while I’m imagining what I’d really like my free time to look like, in lawn form, I’d like a black and white flower yard where I can change its colors on my whim – like the original movie version of The Wizard of Oz which begins in black and white, and then magically transforms into resplendent  color. That would satisfy my preference for quick change – white to match a pristine day, red for a passionate mood, multicolored when I’m feeling  festive.

Of course, I’d need a magic wand to keep the flowers in tip-top shape, growing lush while remaining an easily tended ground cover.

And the magic wand would come in handy when it was time for a color change, too. My flower lawn requires a bit of magic – is that because I don’t want to do all of the work that fun sometimes requires (such as the wild rush that comes before and after a planned vacation.)

Perhaps I’d like a magic wand because I’m not the quick change artist I wish I could be in real life.

One day I yearn to be a landscape photographer tramping through the wilds of red rock country or the Southwest desert; another day I’m the artist curating her photographs for a museum or gallery show.

One day I am a photographer who is demonstrating the simple workings of a pinhole camera to a group of excited children; another day I’m an urban photographer documenting form and shape in the architectural details of abandoned buildings.

Maybe I’d even be in the mood for some meticulous, creative work. I spend much of my free time doing just that when I am in front of the magical computer screen processing my photographs.

What a changeable yard…um, photographer…

 

 

 

Life Cycle of New England Asters

Life Cycle of New England Asters

Asters Life Cycle © 2012 Bo Mackison

… in gardens, beauty is a by-product.
The main business is sex and death …
–  Sam Llewelyn,
The Sea Garden

Oh, that quote seems so appropriate for many of the botanical photographs I shoot.

I am either shooting the reproductive parts of flowers or I am shooting the flowers that are no longer beautiful flowers but on their way to brown and crispy, or the parts that are left standing to produce the next flowers, the seed heads. But the by-product of all those seeds and reproductive parts make for some pretty fine floral displays in the flowering seasons.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is catching up on photography work at the computer today, after a weekend of weddings and birthday celebrations.