Walk any dry prairie in late spring and you are walking through a pharmacy, a dye shop, and a kitchen garden all at once – if you know what you are looking at. On our property right now, seven late spring wildflowers are either at peak bloom or just finishing. Here is what we are seeing.
Late Spring Wildflowers
Carolina Anemone
Carolina anemone, also called white prairie anemone, belongs to the buttercup family. It appears in dry prairies from April through June and is one of the cleaner, more architectural-looking wildflowers of the season. What looks like white petals are actually sepals. Anemones do not have true petals. The sepals, normally the green structures beneath a flower’s petals, have taken on that role here and turned white. The flowers open in the morning and close by late afternoon. A tincture made from the flowers and leaves has historically been used as a sedative and anti-anxiety medicinal.
Blue-Eyed Grass
Despite the name, blue-eyed grass is not a grass at all. It is a member of the iris family and appears in prairie settings from May through July. The flowers are violet and appear at the tip of a long, flat stalk. Easy to miss if you are not looking at eye level with the meadow. Native Americans made a tea from the plant to treat diarrhea, stomachache, and hay fever.
Fringed Puccoon
Fringed puccoon is a bright yellow tubular flower found in dry prairies from April through June. It is one of the more vivid splashes of color in the spring prairie palette. Native Americans made a tea from the leaves to treat coughs and colds. The word puccoon itself comes from a Native American term meaning red dye — the roots of the plant were used by the Powhatan tribe, the tribe of the Jamestown settlement, to produce a red dye.
Missouri Violet
Missouri violet prefers moist meadows in light to partial shade and blooms from April through May. The flowers are small, half to three-quarters of an inch across, with five blue-violet petals. The leaves are nutritionally dense, high in vitamins A and C, and can be eaten raw in salads or cooked as greens.
Prairie Iris
Prairie iris, also called prairie pleatleaf, is one of the most striking wildflowers on the property. The flowers range from sky blue to deep purple, with white forms also occurring. Each flower has six petals and three bright yellow stamens. They open in the morning and curl up before mid-afternoon, so each flower lasts only a single day. We see them in April and May, and they are worth getting out early to catch.
Prairie Ragwort
Prairie ragwort, also called butterweed, is a bright yellow member of the aster family found in dry upland prairies from April through June. The flowers appear in flattened clusters at the tops of stems that reach about two feet. It is worth knowing that the plant is poisonous to both humans and livestock. In folk medicine, it has been used to treat delayed or irregular menstrual cycles.
Queen Anne’s Lace
Queen Anne’s lace is the most abundant wildflower on our property. In late spring and early summer it covers the meadows. It was named for Queen Anne of Great Britain, who lived from 1665 to 1714, and the flower does look like a lace doily — intricate and white and perfectly round.
It is a biennial, meaning the flowers appear in the plant’s second year of growth. It is also called wild carrot, and for good reason: it belongs to the carrot family, and the cultivated carrots we eat today were hybridized from this plant. It arrived in North America with European settlers and has been a common wildflower here ever since. The carrot-like root is edible when young but turns hard and woody as the plant ages.
The flowers and seeds have been used as a method of birth control for centuries and can also induce abortion — a fact documented across multiple Indigenous and folk traditions. We see Queen Anne’s lace in bloom from May through September.
Two of the best are worth their own look: Indian paintbrush and wild indigo. For the hidden gems out in the tallgrass, see our guide to prairie wildflowers.
