With the blooming of Queen Anne’s Lace and its annual sidekick, chicory, along our roadways, summer for me reaches full flower. This year I’ve been appreciating roadside wildflowers more than ever.
Weatherwise, we haven’t had the greatest of summers. Climate change is the culprit — intense heat and humidity, flooding, more tornadoes, and wildfire smoke from Canada. We’ve had some fine weather, too, but for much of this, my favorite season, I have felt confined indoors.
But summer is outdoor time, so when going outside becomes intolerable, I take a drive and contemplate the unfolding season through my windshield — a climate compromise, being outside yet inside the air-conditioned comfort of my car (which, alas, contributes to more climate change). But thanks to Lady Bird, “nature” parades past just beyond the windows of my mobile four-wheeled compartment.
Lady Bird Johnson, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s wife, one of the lesser known but more admirable of this country’s “First Ladies,” made it her focus in the decade following the completion of the Interstate Highway System to “beautify” the new roadside embankments with wildflowers unique to each state. According to the Lady Bird Johnson Center, located at the University of Texas in Austin (www.wildflower.org), the First Lady who was known almost exclusively by her peculiar nickname (bestowed by a nursemaid during childhood, her given name being Claudia) “saw roadside restoration as an opportunity to bring ecological richness, plant and animal biodiversity, and regional identity to what might otherwise be unhealthy, homogenous areas lined with billboards and invasive species.”
She championed the newly developed Head Start program as well, but passing “The Highway Beautification Act” in 1965 was her primary achievement (the billboard industry objected strenuously). Some states take the program more seriously than others, and I’m not sure where Illinois ranks, but 60 years on you can still find plenty of wildflowers along our roadsides, making the chore of driving during an under-the-weather summer a more aesthetically pleasing experience.
And queen among the wildflowers in our local eco-system (though technically an invasive plant introduced by the English) is Queen Anne’s Lace, a lovely bloom with a somewhat grisly back story. It is a tall-ish umbrella of interconnected tiny white flowers, giving it the look of a circle of lace on a stem. In the center (usually) you will find a dark red floret which, according to the folklore of not-so-merry old England, commemorates one of several Queen Annes, who pricked her finger while “tatting” a piece of lace, causing a drop of her blood to blemish the fabric’s center.
That’s the tamer version. In the telling I first heard, the red droplet came from a different Queen Anne — Henry VIII’s wife Anne Boleyn — who was beheaded for the crime of not producing a male heir, causing her royal blood to mar her lacy collar (England has a famously bloody royal history).
Folklore notwithstanding, this exquisite wildflower has caught on in the Midwest, making its way into front and backyard gardens — almost as much in vogue as the omnipresent hydrangea in modern landscaping.
But Queen Anne’s Lace, first and foremost, populates our roadways — along with chicory, a “drought-resistant” blueish/purple flower that flourishes in the distressed soil along heavily traveled roads (and whose roots can be roasted to create a coffee substitute). Keeping company with these two annual anchors, you might also find a sprinkling of sunflowers, purple coneflowers, blue forget-me-nots, bachelor’s buttons, bull thistles, bee balm, milkweed, black-eyed Susans, yellow buttercups, and daisy fleabane.
You may not find all of these along our highways (which, nationwide, comprise 17 million acres), but in their various combinations, they constitute a vibrant visual bouquet across Northern Illinois.
As America became an automobile-centered culture in the 1950s and ’60s, Lady Bird Johnson gave us something to look at, state by state, reflecting pride in local flora. Even as we cruise by in our climate-controlled vehicles, insulated from the oppressive heat and humidity of summer, we can still enjoy glimpses of nature’s beauty flowing past in our peripheral vision, nodding, bobbing and swaying in car-generated breezes on a sunny summer’s afternoon, as drivers glide from point A to point B — beauty barely noticed but perhaps subconsciously registered, even appreciated if we pay attention, all thanks to the First Lady with a peculiar moniker, Lady Bird.
Summer’s peak at night each August is a chorus of crickets serenading a rising moon. During the day, it is the lazy sway of lace with the dark red droplet in the center.
Each year I salute summer’s impermanence by savoring this perennial display of short-lived beauty, fragile flowers with their deep, hearty root systems returning year after year to delight anyone whose fixed gaze remains unglazed during our long days’ journeys into night.
An answer to our restless, road-weary longings and musings.
Blowing in the wind.