Along the roadside, broad swaths of Queen Anne’s lace and chicory grace the landscape as far as I can see. I revel in their exquisite beauty. The delicate white petals of the Queen Anne’s lace paired with the extraordinary blue of the chicory evoke not only awe in me, but tenderness, gratitude, and memories of my mother pointing out these favorite flowers every year as they came into their full bloom during the heart of summer in northern Michigan. How she loved the blue and white, made even more beautiful by their contrast with each other.
Queen Anne’s Lace
The Queen Anne’s lace ranges from small flowers to big, lacy, showy ones. Some would be curled up like a bird’s nest. My mom always had us look for the extra special ones that had a ruby in the center. These were the jewels of the meadow. That ruby center may be the reason for the flower’s name, for it is said that Queen Anne II pricked her finger while tatting lace, causing a drop of blood to fall onto the lace.
Chicory
For a summer, my mom wrote a nature column for the local rural newspaper. Of the chicory she wrote, “They’re heavenly, and as blue as a Walloon sky. . . . During the war, roasted ground Chicory was occasionally added to our coffee to stretch the coffee supply. Sometimes it is substituted for coffee. But there is no substitute for the blue of the Chicory” (Northland Press, July 23, 1970).
This is what my mother taught me about wildflowers – appreciation. She passed along the names of the many wildflowers near our cabin in Michigan, making sure we could identify tawny hawkweed, sweet pea, knapweed, Johnny-go-to-bed-at noon, brown-eyed Susan, blue cohosh, white baneberry, Bouncing Bet, thistle, daisy, aster, and of course, Queen Anne’s lace and chicory – not so we could know their genus and species and scientific specifications, but so that we could know them as our friends.
In the first of her nature columns my mom wrote, “I am not a botanist, or expert, . . . just a neighbor who wishes to share some of her friends with you” (Northland Press, July 2, 1970). And that is how I came to know wildflowers, as friends who came to live among us at different times of year -- beginning with the small woodland violets of early spring to the mid-sized mid-summer daisies and sweet peas, to the tall goldenrod and purple asters of late summer and early fall. I would look forward to their appearance as one would a long-time friend who has been gone for a time but has now returned. I still do.
Since moving to Minnesota, I’ve made an effort to become acquainted with the local flora -- some familiar like violets, jack-in-the-pulpit, trillium, jewelweed, and goldenrod, but others completely new to me like nodding trillium, bloodroot, wood anemone, marsh marigold, bunchberry, Turk’s cap lily, and our state flower – the lady’s slipper — though the Anishinaabemowin word for it, makizinwaabigwaan, or “moccasin flower,” seems more appropriate, since it looks far more like a moccasin than a lady’s slipper.
I’ve been lucky enough to see yellow lady’s slippers both here and in Michigan, but the pink lady’s slipper (makazinkwe — the Aanishinaabemowin word indicating it is a woman’s mocassin*) has eluded me. Then this spring my friend Kathy told me about a patch she and her husband had found on a part of the Superior Hiking Trail that runs through Duluth. My husband and I hiked the trail a few days later, joined at various points along the way by other lady’s slipper seekers. “Are you here to see the lady’s slippers?” they would inquire. “We are, too.” It was well worth the hike. The pink lady’s slippers were stunning – quite different from the yellow lady’s slippers – much taller, with larger blossoms. Forest orchids – they took my breath away – or in Kimmerer’s words, “rocked me back on my heels in awe.”
In her Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer tells of how she wanted to study botany to understand why the world is so beautiful – specifically, why asters and goldenrod look so beautiful together. Though her college adviser told her that such ponderings were in the realm of aesthetics, not science, she would go on to discover a scientific reason for this pairing. The fact that the yellow of the goldenrod and the purple of the aster are complementary colors makes them even more vivid and thus more attractive to pollinators.
She had found her scientific answer, but in doing so, had forgotten the indigenous way of seeing the world that had initially drawn her to the study of plants. It took a conversation with a Navajo woman to remind her of what she had already known – the stories, the songs, the relationships, and the simple beauty of the plants. “In indigenous knowing, we understand a thing only when we understand it with all four aspects of our being: mind, body, emotion, and spirit” (47).
As Alice Walker would say, Kimmerer had to get that white man “off her eyeball” before she could see what was right in front of her. In The Color Purple, the character Shug said she’d been so busy thinking about that white man’s God that “I never truly notice nothing God make. Not a blade of corn . . . not the color purple. . . . Not the little wildflowers” (179). But now she knew that all these things are just God’s way of trying to please us. “It always making little surprises and springing them on us when we least expect. . . . Everything want to be loved.” (178).
And that is why the most ordinary scrap of meadow can rock our world. We are bowled over in love with the world. . . and She smiles.
* My thanks to Valerie Ross Zhawendaagozikwe for her help with the Anishinaabemowin translations.
Notes
Bartlett, Elizabeth H.. “Friends to See at Walloon.” Boyne City, MI: Northland Press, July 2, 1970 & July 23, 1970.
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis: Milkweed Press, 2013.
Queen Anne's Lace: Facts & Folklore - Farmers' Almanac (farmersalmanac.com)
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Washington Square Press, 1982.