Downy Wood Mint - by Diane Porter
At the edge of our woods, a shimmer of pale lavender caught my attention. It was a small patch of flowers that I had never seen before.
At the top of each stem rose a tower of flower clusters, each coming straight up from the center of the one below, like the tiers of a pagoda.
I took a flower to identify it. A book about native prairie plants gave me the name: Downy Wood Mint, Blephilia ciliata. An alternate name is Downy Pagoda Plant. It belongs to the mint family, Lamiaceae.
It is rare in Iowa, where I live.
It was thrilling to discover this species. I wondered how the plants got here. I searched the surrounding area, looking for more. There were no others. Only these.
Pollinating insects small and large had already discovered the flowers. Bumblebees buzzed between the plants and probed the blossoms. Clearly, Downy Wood Mint was a significant nectar source!
To make sure this Iowa rarity would continue to live on my land, I marked the spot and collected seeds when they were ripe. They were tiny, almost as fine as dust.
The next year I grew out the seeds. From that start, Downy Wood Mint now blooms outside my front door. In summer, it is attended all day by bees. It makes me smile every time I see it.
Downy Wood Mint is native to eastern North America. However, it barely makes it into southeast Iowa.
In the map above, created by The Biota of North American Program (“BONAP”), light green counties are the plant’s normal range. It is rare in yellow-colored counties like mine, Jefferson County.
It’s a mystery how the plants got here. It seems unlikely that wind would deposit seeds in a such tight cluster. I try to picture how they might have arrived on an animal’s fur or a bird’s feather. It is almost as if a magical hand of nature planted them.
Downy Wood Mint never returned to the spot where I first found it. But because I collected those seeds, it still lives here, to my joy and the joy of bumblebees.
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