Kip’s Comments - September 22, 2022

I Found Gentians and More!

Last week I shared my story of hiking to find stiff gentians blooming in a prairie in Northeast Iowa. The saga ended with me not finding the gentians…I was disappointed. After getting home I studied my GPS coordinate files and found one single entry suggesting I might be able to find the stiff gentians if the coordinate was accurate.

Today I challenged the accuracy of my coordinate entry by traveling to the prairie and hiking to the spot indicated in my GPS file. My route out included hiking through a couple of cornfields that wrapped on the ends. What that meant was I hiked in repeated circles in the corn. For a couple of hours I had no idea where I was for sure, other than wandering in a cornfield that seemingly had no end. (My GPS was not accurate due to the tall corn blocking the satellite signals to the GPS.)

Eventually I made my way out of the corn and was able to orient to what I thought was my intended destination of the stiff gentians. Once at the maker point on my GPS I was in awe of what I found. Not only did I locate stiff gentians (nearly all past their prime), but I also found grass of Parnassus in bloom. Like the gentians, most were past their prime.

Even though most blossoms were past their prime, finding the gentians and grass of Parnassus was thrilling. I was assuming the stiff gentians were still blooming, but to find the surprise of the grass of Parnassus nearby was quite a blessing. Wow…what a hike!

Oh, and as I was hiking in the cornfield I found several “Devil’s Stinkhorn” fungi. This was a fungus species I had not seen before in person. A friend introduced me to them recently, otherwise I would not have known about them being here. None were in full “bloom” but they were still visible and worth a picture.

While much of the morning was spent wandering in corn, the outing was still worthwhile. Next time I will go a different route to the special spot to avoid corn. Still, the flowers and fungus made the morning special.