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 and usually include personal commentary of the writer, not necessarily related to the Wildflower Garden. A web of present and past events.
September 2025
It is late September. Wild flower blooms have been greatly extended this year due to abundant moisture and the lack of long hot spells; prolific blooms on some species, rabbits in abundance, goldfinches numerous, the female hummingbirds and their young still around. It's the time of the year to add some non-garden topics but not neglecting an historical note on a few Garden plants.
Articles
Friends annual guest lecture - October 14
What happens to Bald Eagles rehabilitated from Lead Poisoning?
Do plants learn, remember or make decisions?
The 2025 Guest Lecture Meeting
All are welcome
The Annual Friends of the Wildflower Garden Guest Lecture will be Tuesday, October 14, 2025 at 7PM in the Fireside Room, Eddie Manderville Chalet, Theodore Wirth Regional Park (parking at the Golf Course lot).
Phyllis Root will speak on Chasing Wildflowers.
Presenting her adventures of chasing wildflowers throughout their unique Minnesota habitats. Phyllis is author of 50 children’s books including the Big Belching Bog, Plant a Pocket of Prairie, and The Lost Forest. She and photographer Kelly Povo have written Searching for Minnesota’s Native Wildflowers and their newest book Chasing Wildflowers.
Big Hill Books in Bryn Mawr will be selling Root's books at the event.
Can't make it to the meeting in person?
The meeting will be available via Zoom on the link shown below.
For remote access use this link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81184166046?pwd=ppklC3rIuDGf8Fhw4EG1XmEhva5ady.1
Meeting ID: 811 8416 6046
Passcode: 431086
Do Bald Eagles released from rehabilitation for lead poisoning survive? And to they thrive?
We don't know. The Wilson Ornithology Society recently reported that these questions have not been studied rigorously or with any consistency.
Photo - The Raptor Center.
Most of us have heard the story of how the bald eagle population was decimated by DDT. Recovery from DDT was so effective that the bird was removed from the protection list in 2007. The USFWS estimates the bald eagle population in the United States five years ago was about 316,000, four times as many as 10 years earlier.
The ongoing problem for eagles is the ingestion of lead fragments while scavenging left over pieces of birds and animals shot by hunters using lead ammunition or from fishing gear. The Minnesota Raptor Center reports that “80-90% of the bald eagles that come into our hospital test positive for some level of lead in their system, with about 30% at fatal levels. Most of these majestic birds die or are humanely euthanized to alleviate their extreme suffering.” If treatable, the prescription for lead poisoning is called chelation and when successful, the bird is released in the wild.
Many of us cry for these birds when they are injured and are joyful when they can be released but unfortunately, it is an unknown how well the bird survives once released.
The Wilson Ornithology Society reported, in a just released study, that some answers have been found but the new study pointed out the difficulties of determining whether such treatment of these eagles is successful for the bird after release. First, the new study was small, only three birds. Why so small? To be an effective study the bird must have a gps transmitter attached and be tracked continually for long periods of time. That requires a lot of organization, time and funding.
There were encouraging findings in this first study of three New York birds. First, two birds survived. The third died 60 days after release from ingesting more lead. The other two seemed to migrate in a pattern fairly typical of other eagles. One of the two birds was tracked for 20 months. So, two birds survived but we do not know if they were able to breed or if they maintained other habits typical of birds free of lead poisoning. Answers to that may be a long time coming because of the constraints.
Below: Bald Eagle flying over winter ice. Photo - Peter K. Burian CC BY-SA 4.0
Reference: "Movements of Bald Eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) after
rehabilitation from lead poisoning."
Alexa N. Bluncka, Sean Petersona, Michael L. Schummera, Missy Runyanb,
and David LoVerdeb.
THE WILSON JOURNAL OF ORNITHOLOGY 2025, VOL. 137, NO. 2, 284–293 .
Blueing the Hillsides
“From year to year I become more and more attached to wild asters. They are so varied in color, habit and form. They bloom from August well into October, defying frosts. The one I look at last, I like best of all, for each species has a charm peculiar to itself.”
When Eloise Butler wrote those words to her brethren of the Agassiz Association in 1915 she actually did have some favorites among the 25 species in her Garden. The favorites were voluminous in number based on how many she planted, they were punctually late in the fall season, and they were beautifully blue.
When she planted 165 of them in 1917 she noted she was “continuing blueing the east hillside." And blue the hillside must have been as these were the most frequently planted asters and in the largest quantities.
We are referring first to the sky blue aster, Symphyotrichum oolentangiense (older - Aster azureus.) which Eloise planted every year of her tenure from 1914 through 1932, more often than any other aster both in terms of years and number.
She said in her 1915 article:
"Aster azureus (photo below) still burgeons on the hillsides (October 5). It is a sine qua non not only on account of its late blossoms, but because of their profusion and bright, pure color."
Her second favorite blue (photos below) was the smooth blue aster, (Symphyotrichum laeve (older Aster laevis) and it was planted most years from 1912 to 1931. She wrote:
"Aster laevis with richly colored flowers, smooth, thick leaves, and sturdy habit, is also still in evidence [October 5th] on dry, sandy soil.”
Both are indigenous to the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden. Of the two species the smooth is the hardiest and good for prairie restoration, habitat ranging from moist woods to open prairie. The sky blue prefers mesic to dry sandy to loamy soils in full to partial sun and be careful of excess water. Both are good pollinator attractors and are late bloomers.
References:
Eloise Butler wrote about the asters in the Garden in her 1915 report to the Board of Park Commissioners. Much the same text was incorporated into an essay that was sent to The Gray Memorial Botanical Chapter, (Division D) of the Agassiz Association for publication in the Chapter's circular.
Information sheet on Sky blue aster.
Information sheet on smooth blue aster.
P.S. That strange latinized species name for the sky-blue aster, oolentangiense, refers to the Oolentangy River in Ohio where John Riddell, who named the plant, found the species in 1835. Another older name, but the most descriptive, is Aster azureus, which species name means 'sky-blue'. However, all the new world asters, formerly in the genus Aster, have now been reclassified, most into the genus Symphyotrichum.
Do plants learn, remember or make decisions?
It was gospel for centuries that humans were only able to do this. Disagreeing, Darwin said it was a matter of degree and not kind that other creatures differed from us. A century later animal studies indicated that animals possessed rudiments of these traits. Still later plant studies indicated something was “there” also.
So, can there be a plant that uses touch, memory and basic math? OK the last might be stretching it a bit but let’s look at our example. We humans experience the world through our senses with the sense of touch being processed by our nerves. Plants have a form of nervous system and exhibit reactions based on electrical and chemical signaling that give some of them a sense of touch. Examples are sensitive pea, wood sorrel and obedient plant. We have previously reported on plants that seem to have a sense of hearing. (Twigs November 2023). What about adding some complexity by introducing a sense of memory to that of touch?
This nerve complex is seen in members of the carnivorous plant family such as the Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula). Why waste energy by springing your trap on something not alive that will not provide nutrients. So how do they “sense” that a contact is worth trapping?
The Venus flytrap uses a counting mechanism to determine if the prey is live. First, two of its trigger hairs of the leaf must be activated within a short time frame for the trap to close. Second, after the trap closes there must be three more stimulations of the trigger hairs for a total of five, before the plant releases digestive juices. Thus, the plant has a form of memory to create this count cycle.
Below: Venus Flytrap with prey before snapping shut. Photo - Beatriz Moisset CC BY-SA 4.0
Below: Closeup of the trigger hairs on the inside of the leaf. Photo - Noah Elkardt CC BY-SA 2.5
The sundews, such as the round-leaf found in the Wirth Park Quaking Bog, use a much less complex system, but still require a trigger - an insect or anything touching one of the sticky trigger hairs on the leaf surface. That must be followed by a chemical signal from the potential prey indicating a live prey. That and the touching of hairs prompts an electrical signal that causes the trap to snap shut to clasp the insect.
Below: Round-leaf Sundew in a west coast bog habitat. Sundews used stick hairs around the leaf to trap a prey. Photo Noah Elhardt - CC BY-SA 2.5.
Think about that next time you talk to your plants.
Reference:
Trends in Plant Science
"Venus Flytrap: How an Excitable, Carnivorous Plant Works"
Rainer Hedrich, Erwin Neher
Growing the Wild Poinsettia
In the 1820s when Joel Roberts Poinsett (1779-1851) sent from Mexico plants which now bear his name to the greenhouses of Charlestown he chose a perennial and passed over the plant featured in our historical photo this month which shows the wild poinsettia, Euphorbia cyathophora, in the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden in 1952.
Not needing a greenhouse to grow, our wild species has been planted in Eloise Butler’s garden as early as 1913. The wild poinsettia is found in the United States in all the southern states northward as far as New Jersey; in the central states north to Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota; and in the far west it is found in the states bordering Mexico. It is native to Mexico and has spread to many countries, as has its cousin, Poinsett’s gift to winter, the Christmas poinsettia, E. pulcherimma.
You can grow wild poinsettia from seed with some patience. It needs adequate moisture and can grow in shade to partial shade but will do best in sun. In the wild it inhabits open woods, floodplains, disturbed areas. Seeds are difficult to start. Some germinate without cold stratification, others seem to require 30 to 60 days of cold stratification. You will find it best to sow in the fall and let the seeds overwinter.
This species is an annual. Plants self seed but are subject to crowding out by larger more aggressive plants. Plants may pop up in different places if seeds have been transported by wind or birds. Give it an area to concentrate in to insure survival of some seeds and be careful with your weeding. In central Minnesota, the seed doesn't germinate until July, so you might think the young plant is a new weed. But germination is followed by swift growth and flowering in late August.
Below: A wild poinsettia growing from a single stem with an unusually large amount of branching in the inflorescence.
It’s an interesting plant to add to a wild plant collection. First it is in the Euphorbia family with its strange arrangement of the sexual parts of the flowers. (see info sheet). Second it’s an annual so plants don’t stay in the same place. Third, the stem is solitary not branching, but branching only in the inflorescence, but when it does branch you have an out-of-the-ordinary flowering plant.
Information sheet on this plant:
Historical Photo
The wild poinsettia in the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden from a Kodachrome by Martha Crone on September 5, 1952. Photo ©Friends of the Wildflower Garden.
*Photo note: Photos with a “CC” credit are used for educational purposes under Creative Commons license. Photos without credit are by G D Bebeau and may be used for educational purposes under Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 3.0. Learn about this at https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/cclicenses/
All selections published in 2025
All selections published in 2024
All selections published in 2023