Ah, Spring: A Time For Wildflowers The June splendor of flowers of the fields, weeds though they may be, brings great beauty to rural Door County. Aggressive alien weeds though they may be, the fields of orange and yellow hawkweeds, ox-eye daisies and even the naturalized blue flax are beautiful beyond description. They highlight the month and June and help memorialize our ancestors who in various ways unknowingly brought them to this country. The broad vistas of orange, yellow and white blossoms alone are pleasing to the eye, but are even more dazzling when sprinkled with the delicate sky-blue flax. I can only assume that the flax was grown here years ago as a crop, easily escaped cultivation and has become firmly naturalized. Hopefully it will remain for centuries to come! June is also wild strawberry month. As much as we consume and enjoy the enormous commercially grown berries, the superb taste of the much smaller wild fruits is hard to beat. Granted it seems to take forever to even fill the bottom of one’s pail, but nevertheless this wild treat is the one we savor the most. There are few wildflowers as common and as dazzling in their color and form and that are also hardy enough to survive along many of our roadsides as the wild columbine. Their blossoming period starts around the middle of this month. Many years ago, seventy or more, when a few conservation groups were trying to persuade our federal government representatives to establish a national flower, the columbine just about made it. Unfortunately the project became "pigeon-holed" until a few years ago when, finally, the "rose" was chosen as our official flower. I still think it was the florists who railroaded this choice into acceptance. Mid-June invariably triggers the first emergence of our huge native silkworm moths. All are quite large and will often be attracted to lighted windows or outdoor lights at night. Included are the Cecropia, Io, Luna, Polyphemus and Promethea. These moths have no mouth parts and couldn’t eat if they wanted to! Their sole function in life is to mate, lay eggs and reproduce their own kind. Surely they must rank among the most beautiful of all night-flying creatures on our continent. It is when we notice our supply of blackberry jelly has been totally depleted that we begin hoping for a successful wild blackberry season. Even though the canes may be loaded with large showy white blossoms during the middle of the month, they require plenty of rainfall to produce good fruit. June trivia question: What is the official wildflower of Door County? It’s a yellow flower, but not the one that undoubtedly some of you are considering. It happens to be the large yellow lady’s-slipper orchid. What made it such a truly outstanding choice for this special flower is the fact that its blossoming period in the county is approximately six weeks long. Fully opened flowers can be found in woods and along roadsides high on the bluffs of the bay-side of the county as early as late May in some years. The colder prolonged spring along the Lake Michigan shore holds back their opening until early to mid-June, and it is along the borders of some of the low-lying swamps, in sight of the big lake, where we have recorded flowers still in good shape near the middle of July. The other two larger species of lady’s-slippers, the pink and the showy, will also be opening before the end of this month, with the pink, or moccasin flower, being the earlier of the two. Sadly, both of these spectacular orchids have become favorite foods of the white-tailed deer. In fact, I know of a few areas where several hundred showy lady’s-slipper orchids grew and thrived 40 years ago. Today they are all gone – devoured! Plenty of butterflies have already been on the wing, species including Milbert’s tortoise-shell, comma, painted lady, red admiral, mourning cloak, black swallowtail, tiger swallowtail, and spring azure. Now we wait in great anticipation for the arrival of the first monarchs. Arrival dates can start in late May, but it is usually into the first week of June that the greatest numbers are recorded. June in bloom and on the wing! What a thrilling time to enjoy life in this gorgeous part of the world. Let’s all work diligently to enable future generations of residents and visitors here to be able to delight in these same precious natural treasures. This column appeared in the Door County Advocate on 05/31/2003. © Copyright 2003 Roy Lukes. All rights reserved.