Midwest Wildflowers - Part II

Back in the Air Force days when I was flying by the seat-of-my-pants with the Colonel, and even since then -- certain wildflowers found in the Midwest have captured my imagination.

It was on one such excursion, that the Colonel found me in tears on a sunny Montana morning sitting among some lovely pinkish flowers. I was re-reading a letter from my young husband, also in the Air Force, who was far away in Europe. As a young bride, it seemed to me that it was going to be forever before I would hear his comforting voice.

The Colonel, who was a sucker for the tears of a woman, sat down and handed me his handkerchief, as he picked one of the beautiful flowers and handed it to me.

His normal gruff voice soften as he teased, "It's fitting you'd be a blubbering in the presence of these flowers. You didn't eat breakfast and it's past lunch time. It isn't your beloved you are really missing, it's food, and these flowers are a reminder of that fact."

Well, that wasn't exactly the sympathy I would have wanted. Embarrassed, I took the verbal bait, knowing he was merely trying to distract me from my weepy pity party.

"What about these flowers?"

"Well, the Sun heard an Indian mother crying because she couldn't find food for her children. Touched by her love, he changed her tears into bitter-root, so she and other Native American mothers would always have food for their children."

Digging down and pulling up the roots with his hands, he shook the dirt all over my lap. Laughing as he watched me get mad and brush it off, he offered:

"Well, I can cook you up some of these, or you can eat one of those peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I brought with us in case we had a crash landing."

The Bitter-root is a beautiful and interesting flower. Belonging to the Portulacaplant family, it clings to life with a tenacity that exceeds even that of its near relative the garden purslane (or pulsey).

The thick fleshy roots have grown after having been kept in a dry room for several years. This tenacity of life has given it the second part of it's scientific name Lewisia rediviva, the first part being given in honor of Meriwether Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, who explored the Continent in 1804.

The thick roots are full of starch and were formerly used for food by the Indians, who collected them in the spring, when the bitter bark is easily removed. When peeled and boiled, the roots then have little of the bitter taste.

Growing on open dry hillsides from Montana, Utah, and Arizona westward, it blooms in the spring, producing a white or rose-colored flower from one to two inches across, with six or eight delicate petals.

The flowers rise but a few inches above the ground from the center of a rosette or narrow thick leaves. The bitter-root is the state flower of Montana, where it abounds in the Bitter Root Mountains.

Pasque means "Easter," for since the Pasque Flower (Pulsatilla) is one of the earliest, it is often in bloom on Easter morning.

Widely scattered from Montana, in the north to Texas, in the south, it reaches eastward through the prairie and westward into the mountains, where it climbs to an elevation of 9,000 feet.

The bud appears at the tip of a stem from three to six inches high. It is enclosed in a deeply cut and sharply pointed involucre of gray bracts of silvery hue and shining brightness. Soon the bud expands into a broad cup like flower of lavender or bluish purple color, shading to white at the base.

Soon the bud expands into a braod cup like flower of lavender or bluish purple color, shading to white at the base. A central mass of yellow stamens provides a golden lining for the bottom of the cup.

The six colored leaves of the flower are called sepals, since there is no green calyx to infold them. Each is over an inch long, and as they fade and fall, a rosette of finely divided leaves appears about the base of the stem that now carries a head of seeds, each adorned with a long curling plumes style.

Among the many other common names given to this plant are:

• Wild Crocus
• Windflower
• Prairie Smoke

It is the state flower of South Dakota. It is one of the most striking of all flowers of the region and always attracts the attention of the visitors to it's natural habitats.

A relative of the common buckwheat, the Sulphur Flower (Eriogonum), is named for its yellow color. From a stout thick root short stems arise that bear rosettes of paddle-shaped powdery gray leaves.

From among these, slender flower-stems stand from six to ten inches high, supporting an undulate cluster of small simple sulphur-yellow flowers.

On gravelly banks of the plains, the plant spreads and ascends the mountains till it is far above the timber-line, decreasing in size as it climbs.

On the mountain top, the flowers remain of the same size as those on the plans below -- but the root is smaller, and every other structure is reduced and dwarfed, an entire plant being less than two inches high.

The Umbrella Plant is almost exactly like the Sulphur plant, except that the flowers are white or cream, tinged with pink.

It, too, ranges from the plans to the mountain tops, diminishing in size as it climbs higher and higher.

"Strange flower, thy purple, make haste

To glorify each blackened waste

Of fire-swept land,

Is with a blessed meaning fraught,

And we--when pain has fully wrought -- Shall understand." -- Sir Thomas George Shaughnessy

The habit of coming in quickly after forest fires and covering the unsightly waste with handsome flowers has given its name to Fireweed (Epilobium).

The long willowy leaves that screen the charred and blackened trunks with their luxuriance have also given it the name Willow Herb).

It is a handsome, showy plant, from three to six feet tall, with stems and branches and petioles shading from white to rose and ending in crimson buds. The flowers are an inch across, with four broad petals, eight stamens, and a long four-lobed style.

In color they are reddish lilac, some shading away to almost white. The corolla is at the top of a long ovary which, when mature, forms a slender capsule from two to three inches long, filled with small seeds well tufted with silky down.

When ripe, the capsule splits into four long valves, releasing the feathery seeds that float on the breeze for long distances. This wide dispersal of its seeds assures the fire weed of being among the first plants to reach a burned-over area.

Through July, August, and September -- the plant blooms on, during the last month filling the air with its silky plumed seeds.

A close relative of the sunflower, the Gaillardia does not seem to have acquired a common name, and yet its splendid flower is to be seen throughout the prairies, the plains, and much of the mountain regions.

Of the Composite plant family, its flower-head has a compact disk surrounded by a radiating ring of strap-shaped flowers. The entire bloom is from two to four inches across, the colors usually shading from yellow at the tips of the rays to dark orange passing into purple at the center.

So handsome are the flowers that the Gaillardia has found its way into gardens and is cultivated for its beauty.

The plants are a foot or two high, with most of the leaves basal, varying in form from lanceolate to deeply pinnatifid.

The flowers are on long slender stems that make them easily popular picked and displayed in vases.