Bottle Gentian blooming on Moccasin Lane Trail
Yesterday, a volunteer spotted a blooming bottle gentian (Gentiana andrewsii) wildflower just off the small boardwalk along the Moccasin Lane Trail. This curious Christmas light shaped flower doesn’t open farther than what you can see in the picture above, which explains why it’s also sometimes referred to as a closed gentian. According to Stan Tekiela, “Bumblebees force themselves inside the flower through the top by pushing apart the flowers.” The flower blooms in late summer or early fall and is usually found in boggier areas.
If you’ve hiked along our Moccasin Lane trail, you know it’s the interpretive wildflower walk at Chik-Wauk. As you walk along the trail, you’ll spot numbered markers which correlate with information in the Moccasin Lane Guidebook. In the guidebook, bottle gentian is described as a plant you’d find in area 8, but due to our dry summer, those bottle gentian plants aren’t flowering this year. Only this single bottle gentian, which is technically in area 9 of the guidebook, is blooming from its home in the boggy shoreline of Saganaga Lake.
The bottle gentian in bloom on the trail this year is a small specimen. The flowers are normally between 2-3 feet in height, but this little plant is only about a foot tall. The blooms are also often in clusters, rather than just a single bloom. Big or small, this unique flower is worth the short hike the Moccasin Lane trail offers.