Opening in the Sun

Purple Cornflower Beginning Its Bloom

Purple Cornflower Beginning © 2008 Bo Mackison

A pale purple coneflower just beginning to open.

This plant is common in Wisconsin and found in dry prairies and open savannas from Nebraska and Iowa east to Arkansas and Indiana. Farther east, it is seen occasionally usually an escape from cultivation. Illegal digging represents a major threat to this plant in some regions.

Dancing on the Prairie

Purple Coneflowers

Purple Coneflowers © 2008 Bo Mackison

Pale Purple Coneflowers.

Bridal Flower

Bridal Flower © 2008 Bo Mackison

Like a blushing bride waiting

Dancing in the Prairie

Dancing in the Prairie © 2008 Bo Mackison

or dancer of the hula in the gentlest of breezes.

Showy Goat’s Beard

Showy Goat's Beard

Showy Goat’s Beard © 2008 Bo Mackison

This wildflower, also known as Meadow Salsify, blooms from May through August in Eastern Canada and the Northeastern and Midwestern regions of the United States. It is a flower that literally follows the sun, a true sun-worshiper. The blossoms only open on sunny mornings and as they do they turn to face the sun. They close by noon as protection against the harsher mid-day sun,but then open the next sunny day.

Goat's Beard Going to Seed

Goat’s Beard Going to Seed © 2008 Bo Mackison

The plant’s white, plumed seeds form a puffball that is especially fluffy, hence the name of the flower – goat’s beard. Native Americans used the sap of the plant – a thick, milky substance – as chewing gum. The tap root can be cooked like a parsnip or roasted to make a coffee-substitute. Even the leaves are edible – either raw in salads or cooked.

Wildflowers Blooming in the Prairies

Spiderwort

Spiderwort ©2008 Bo Mackison

Spiderwort is a common plant throughout Wisconsin, blooms from now until September. If you want to enjoy this flower, you have to visit before mid-day and each flower only lasts one day. It becomes droopy in the afternoon, and shrivels and disappears into a sticky, liquified mass by nightfall.

Bitsy Yellow Hearts All 'Round

Bitsy Yellow Hearts All ‘Round ©2008 Bo Mackison

The Prairie Rose is another frequent Wisconsin flower, blooms from late May through late July. I love it under a macro lens – lots of bitsy yellow hearts spring out of its center.  In late summer, the flower heads transform into rose hips which are small, edible fruits. They stay on the plant through the winter and provide food  for birds and small mammals during the snowy months.

Native Americans collected the hips and used them medicinally, often as a treatment for headaches or stomach problems. The Native Americans and early pioneers used the wild rose for food, and a “health food” at that. Rose hips have 24 times more Vitamin C per unit than orange juice.  People still collect the hips for vitamin supplements, the rose petals for rose petal soup and rose petal jam is also made using a combination of the petals and lemon.

White Wild Indigo

White Wild Indigo ©2008 Bo Mackison

This is the White Wild Indigo plant. It rises 3 to 6 feet from the prairie floor and is currently waving its long flower covered spires across the prairie landscape.  The sap of the wild indigo has a blue dye and was often used as a substitute for the true indigo plant. It was also used as a treatment for lung diseases by Native Americans in the northcentral United States, though in larger quantities it is poisonous.

Walk into the Unknown

Winter Path © 2007

Care to take a walk?  Maybe to the wild side?

Winter day in Owen Conservation Park in Madison, Wisconsin.