Friends of the Wildflower Garden
These short articles are written to highlight the connections of the plants, history and lore of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden with different time frames or outside connections. A web of present and past events
The Wildflower Garden opens on April 15 for its 119th season.
April 2025
False Rue Anemone - avoiding identification confusion
50 years of footprints - a path down the hillside
Spring ephemerals webinar
Exploring spring ephemerals is the title of this webinar hosted by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources as part of their Outdoor Skills and Stewardship Program.
When: Wednesday April 23 2025 Noon. Duration - less than an hour.
Garden Curator Susan Wilkins will be on this program. Wednesday April 23, 2025 at noon.
Here’s what it is about:
As the snow melts and the days get longer, Minnesota’s woodlands, prairies, and wetlands spring to life with vibrant, fleeting wonders—spring ephemerals! These tiny, early blooming plants are among the first signs of life after a long winter, but they only stick around for a short time. Join three local experts for a fun and fascinating exploration into the world of these early bloomers. They'll highlight a few common species, share tips on how to identify them, and give you an insider’s guide on how to catch them before they disappear!
Register at https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/fishwildlife/outreach/index.html
Wattles in Wirth
Here is something new that is also something old - wattles.
No, not the part of a turkey’s anatomy but the things that control erosion. You have seen them all over at construction sites - long tubes filled with some substance that slows and filters water thus controlling runoff from a storm and allowing some water to recharge groundwater.
Traditionally wattles have been made of sticks held together by stakes and interwoven with twigs and branches. A log by itself can be a wattle if use for erosion control purpose. Wattles have been used this way in Roman times and long before. The technique is also used for fencing and wall construction.
So now they come to Wirth Park. Originally suggested by James Shaffer, Natural Resources Supervisor for Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, wattles are being used to repair eroding gullies that have formed on unofficial trails in areas where the volunteers have begun removing buckthorn. The group uses ratchet straps to compress the bundles, and tie them up on tables, so it is easier to do and then they are staked in position. Please don’t mistake these for cut buckthorn that someone forgot to remove.
Below: Wattles and logs provide slope erosion control in the area of Wirth Park being restored.
Below: Gathering wattle material in Wirth Park. FIPAG photo.
Newest and shortest sunflower
It happened by pure serendipidy and now you can meet the strangest and possibly smallest sunflower you have ever seen! It's called "Woolly Devil."
It is also the newest - a just recently discovered species in Big Bend National Park, Texas. When found by a park volunteer, it matched nothing in the plant guides but it had the required characteristic of a sunflower - each individual bloom is made up of two types of flowers, a more showy ray flower connected to the smaller tubular disc flower, unlike coneflowers which have a separate outer ray flower and the disc flower in the central cone.
This newbie, flowering right at ground level, is a long way from the common sunflower, Helianthus annus, which can be 5 feet tall. The traits that allow it to grow in Big Bend, like the protective hairy leaves, short stature, blooming only after a rain, all are for survival in that habitat - from the climate and from predators. The plant is so different that it was assigned a new genus - Ovicula, “meaning little sheep.” The full scientific name is Ovicula biradiata.
Below: Big Bend National Park botanist Carolyn Whiting photographs the tiny woolly devil sunflower. Photo NPS/C. Hoyt
False Rue Anemone - avoiding identification confusion
On your visit to the early spring Wildflower Garden look for one the five earliest blooming spring ephemerals and the most abundant - that is the False Rue Anemone (Enemion biternatum), but don't confuse it with a relative.
The earliest noted bloom date is March 24, the latest April 24 with the average around April 17, just the time the Garden opens for the season. It grows most prolifically in large patches in the NW corner of the Woodland Garden where the hillside faces the sun. This is one of the first areas in the Woodland Garden to be free of frost.
The white 5-part flowers are 1/2" wide, in a small cluster or single. The color is on the sepals, it has no petals and the leaflets are in 3's. It rarely grows above 12” high but it forms large clumps.
While this is an early bloom, there is another Anemone that blooms slightly later in spring that you might mistake for our subject. That is the true Rue Anemone, (Thalictrum thalictroides). The flowers look similar as do the leaves but the flowers may shade to pinkish and there may be 5 to 10 colored sepals. The placement of the flowers on the stem is the main key to identification. In the Rue Anemone that rise from a common point atop the stem above a whorl of leaf-like bracts. The False Rue has flowers rising of the stem axil of a leaf.
Below: False Rue Anemeone with more deeply lobed leaflets and flowers rising from leaf axils with no whorl of bracts beneath the flowers.
Identification key below the image.
Here are more keys to tell them apart:
| False Rue Anemone | Rue Anemone | |
| Flower color | always white | white to pink |
| # of sepals | 5 | 5 to 10 |
| Flower arrangement | single or loose group, rise from leaf axils | single or umbel shape rising fromm a single point. |
| whorl of bracts | no | yes, just below flowers |
| Leaves | 3-lobed, small gland on leaflet tip | 3-lobed, more shallow, no gland. |
Below: Comparison photos of the Rue Anemone.
Complete information and more photos on these information sheets:
Plant information sheet - False Rue Anemone
Plant information sheet - Rue Anemone
50 years of footprints - a path down the hillside
Isn’t that path in the Wildflower Garden from the front gate to the Martha Crone Shelter a most peaceful introduction to the woodland?
You meander slowly downward to the plateau under a canopy of leaf with wildflowers are all sides. Functional, yet imperfect, incomplete, and impermanent, the true essence of Wabi Sabi. For 60 years that was not the way you reached the office and shelter that Eloise Butler built.
After the Crone Shelter was completed in 1970 a change was needed. A revised front gate and a new path were put in place during 1975.
Gardener Ken Avery wrote about it this way:
The gate itself is very different and when you step inside the gate, you won’t recognize the path at all. Where the path used to hurry straight down the gully toward the shelter, it now meanders snakelike first one way and then another to the shelter. Do I like the changes? Yes, I do. The old path was a problem because of constant erosion as it tried to be a proper gully, and the new path is pleasant.
The person who came up with the plan was Moana Biem, Clinton Odell’s daughter. She and Ken Avery arranged a garden hose along the route she wanted to use, they staked it out and the path was then constructed. Over the years it has been outlined by stakes, rope and twine, railroad ties, etc. The current arrangement of timbers dates to 2000.
Below: The winding path down to the shelter, originally laid out in 1975.
Large image.
Historical Photo
Snow trillium in the Garden photographed by Martha Crone on April 4, 1952.
All selections published in 2025
All selections published in 2024
All selections published in 2023