Great St. Johnswort Hypericum pyramidatum, Photo by Lorraine Anderson

Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 - Report by

This Wednesday was not spent in Cook County. We went camping at Jay Cooke Park just south of Duluth MN. It is truly a wonderful park - so very clean and wonderful hiking trails.
I had received a suggestion that among the rocks near the Swinging Bridge I may find a rare and endangered plant blooming. Well, after three attempts and with helpful suggestions I found the Wild Chives Allium Schoenopasum. They were almost done blooming and certainly not especially beautiful, but what a joy finding them!! In that area there were Michigan Lilies (I had first seen them last Wednesday and here they were again) what a treat! As I looked around some more in that area I saw a yellow, 5 petal, daisy type flower about 3' tall. The flower was on top of the spike and it looked like two more flowers will also bloom from the same spot. The petals had a slight twist and the leaves were opposite. I took some pictures and showed them to the staff and they tried to figure out what this beauty was. This morning as I was waiting for the naturalist I did a last study in my book and it just seemed to jump out on the page - Great St. Johnswort Hypericum pyramidatum. The naturalist had never seen it before and she looked it up in a book and found that it was very rare in MN.
We also saw the last of the Showy Lady's Slipper (our state flower).
What a trip! Who says life is boring?