Category: Wildflowers

Podophyllum peltatum

I’m trying to get lost
somewhere south along the mountain
when I break through a tangle
of fox grapes & stop short:

an insurgent sea of mayapples
bobs in the breeze, a minature forest.
I remember the stories I’ve heard
about human-shaped roots

& how they’ve yielded a new
weapon against cancer.
I think of them crowded together
in the stoney dark.

We who eulogize private virtue
& small acts of kindness,
have we forgotten the glory
of the grand gesture? I stand

as immobile as that line of tanks
at the Gate of Heavenly Peace,
unable to go farther without
crushing one or two.

Their parasols make a brave show,
but they keep their faces down
& their yellow focus on the fruit
they know will come, if only for a few—

fruit that may or may not be digestible,
flowers that may or may not self-pollinate,
depending on the encampment,
& insects that may or may not visit,

since the mayapples offer
neither nectar nor desirable pollen,
& seem to persist because a few bees bumble
& forget where they are.

Geranium maculatum

Alum Bloom
you of the shocking
blue pollen
Chocolate Flower
root once used
as a styptic
Old Maid’s Nightcap
fruit like
the head of a bird
Cranesbill
bursting open
expelling the seeds
Crowfoot
each seed with a tail
that curls & straightens
Sailor’s Knot
pulling itself into
a likely crevasse
Rockweed
what fool
invented these names?
Shameface
a flush beloved
of the bees

Anemone quinquefolia

Sheltered when small by
the three deeply cut leaves,
this so-called windflower
sways on its thin stalk even
from the wake of a passing fly.
Its pale sepals serve
as an almost mirror
for the April sun,
warming the sexual organs,
perhaps even helping to attract—
in lieu of nectar or fragrance—
the solitary bees that bring it
carnal knowledge of its mates.
Veined like flesh drained of color,
sometimes flushed pink underneath,
its close relatives reminded
the Egyptians of sickness
& European peasants of an ill omen,
especially the way it folds up
each night like a tent.
What is it trying to hide?
What secret pleasures prompt
such incessant trembling?
It’s bitter, they say,
burns the mouth & throat,
causes nausea, vomiting & diarrhea.
But the deer in early spring
are ravenous. It wants to live.
By midsummer, flower & fruiting done,
its ruined leaves melt away
into the damp ground.

Waldsteinia fragarioides

“stay together
learn the flowers
go light”
—Gary Snyder, “For the Children“

Don’t let the clearing the loggers left
remain desolate.
Grow an evergreen blanket
over the grave
of a tree’s shadow.

Treat each knot as a chance
to sprout adventitious roots
or open a still
& turn sunshine into sugar,
but go easy on the upward mobility:
keep your leaves & flowers
close-knit.

Say grace before raising
your pollen-heavy heads
to the ministering bee.

Neither barren nor strawberry,
keep your fruit small & hard
& your roots non-medicinal
so nobody but the birds will bother you.

Stay together.
Learn the humans.
Stow light.

Dicentra cucullaria

These are no knickers, Dutch or otherwise,
but a yellowed tooth the bumblebee drills for nectar
with her long strong tongue.

Where some see underwear, others —
judging from the common names — see hats,
white hearts or earrings, even butterfly collections.

It’s useful to know what you’re looking at.
Some wasps have learned how to steal nectar
by chewing a hole at the top,
where the Dutchman’s foot would go
into the breech.

I once spotted a white crab spider
hanging from the end of the line
like one more flower,
waiting for an undiscriminating drinker,
the trap of its legs set.

The Menominee used to use it as a love charm,
lie in wait for their crushes & try to hit them
with a well-aimed white heart.

Staggerweed, the old-time farmers called it,
for what the lacy gray-green leaves
could do to a cow.

Thalictrum dioicum

Dioicum: separate houses.
Here the male
& there the female.

Clouds rise from the male plant
& dangle yellow weather.
From the female plant,
ten-fingered hands stretch
in all directions.

Without scent or nectar,
what flying thing will be
their go-between?
There’s only the wind.

But this meadow-rue
has abandoned the meadow,
so it must flower early or
the canopy will close
& the wind
will retire to the treetops.

Quicksilver-weed.
The leaves aren’t even
open all the way,
& already the male flowers
are vanishing

into the fertile household
of the earth.

Maianthemum racemosum (A.K.A. Smilacina racemosa)

False lily-of-the-valley,
false spikenard,
false Solomon’s seal —
well, what the hell
is it, then?
Fleshy rhizome
used despite the lack
of Solomonic imprimatur
to treat insanity, rheumatoid
arthritis, tapeworms,
snakebite, backache,
the common cold
& even conception
if taken the morning after.
Plant whose stalk tacks
back & forth from
leaf to ribbed leaf,
whose immature flowers
take their good green time.
Branched bloom,
white spray where all
the beetles wallow.
Hypogynous flower
with six inconspicuous tepals.
Ovary: superior.
Style: short.
Stigma: obscure.

Tiarella cordifolia

An island in a mountain stream
covered with foamflower
is scoured down to the rocks
by a hundred-year flood.
But some piece of root
or stolon must persist, for
within three years the rocks
are hidden once again by a crowd
of maple-shaped leaves,
paired like open palms around
the tall flower stalks—
a gesture of acceptance
or of letting go. And these
their offerings are nothing less
than galaxies. White stars
storm in the heat of sex—
long male streamers,
a sharp-tipped female flare—
& pull wandering bees
into their orbit. Creation
& destruction follow each other
like night & day: even as
the oldest florets begin to collapse,
anticipating the inward turn
& the dry rattle, pubescent buds
at the top of the cluster
are brimming with the light
of imminent dawns.

Caltha palustris

Nectar oozes from a pair of pits
beside each carpel in the crowded flower
variously known as water gowan
or meadow gowan, marsh
marigold or Marybuds,
water dragon, solsequia,
great bitterflower, king cups,
crazy bet or leopard’s foot,
May blobs or water blobs,
mollyblobs, pollyblobs,
cowlily or cowslip,
soldier buttons, palsywort,
water bubbles or water-goggles,
meadowbouts, capers,
water crowfoot, verrucaria,
gollins or the publican,
drunkards, gools.