I love to get out in nature. Hiking or running. Often with a camera.

One thing I always enjoy is noticing what flowers are in bloom during different times of the year.

Wildflowers are one of my favorite types of plants because they live in harmony with the environment. They seem to spend most of their time seemingly dormant or underground. They are often just a patch of green mixed in amongst everything else in the landscape.

Then BOOM. A Burst of color where there previously was none. And the color is often short lived. The flowers have evolved to perfectly exploit this one single niche. Bloom Now. This is our time. Then recede.

My favorite wildflower is the Bluet.

The humble Bluet is one of the most unassuming flowers. This is not a big flashy flower that grabs your attention. They are small and delicate.

The Bluet can almost go unnoticed if you are not looking for it. Especially if you are in an unfamiliar place where there are many new things to catch your eye. But return to a location time and time again and you begin to see them.

This is one of the ways I have fallen in love with these tiny flowers. One of my favorite places to hike and run is our local trails at Tanglewood Nature Center. I have been there countless times, but it still often feels like not enough for how close by they are and how beautiful they are.

But over time I feel like I have ben able to more fully observe the environment. I used to go there to see flashy songbirds or deer. Or to watch the butterflies flit about from the tall wildflowers in the summer. But eventually I began to notice what was happening closer to the ground.

The Bluets bloom only a few inches from the ground. And these flowers really don’t last long. They bloom and then the plants fade back into complete obscurity. I don’t think IU would ever be able to pick out a Bluet plant without its flower in bloom.

What I have noticed over the years is that these flowers grow right along the edges of one of my favorite trails. So I have now went hours slowly moving along the trail. Maybe a few dozen feet in an hour just to observe and photograph the beautiful flowers.

I really love their subtle shade of blue that dominates most of the petals’ surface. And they are punctuated with a yellow center. The Bluets also mostly seem to grow in clusters. There will be a bunch here and then a few feet away another bunch. And over time these clusters of flowers can fill in a good chunk of space in a landscape.

Take some time. Slow down. Look down. And see if you can spot these flowers in the spring.

What is your favorite wildflower?

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