When I think of wildflowers, the first thing that comes to mind are the hayfields fields of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Nothing says wildflower more to me than ox-eyed daisies. Of course when I say wildflower I am not speaking about native plants. My mother’s hayfields outside of Iron River Michigan are filled with wildflowers and not a one of them is native.
I didn’t know when I was a child and my imagination was so captivated by these flowery fields, the difference between native and exotic, weedy, invasive (all pejorative terms I throw at those European plants that have colonized this country along with the humans). Theyu were wild flowers, free from the constraints of gardening—free, easy, simple…It was the 70s and we were prone to romanticizing those traits, in plants as well as people.
Arthur Lee Jacobsen in his book “ Wild Plans of Seattle” says “ Wild plants is a term that encompasses both the native and the introduced species, whether desirable or considered to be weedy.” He lists 1358 plants in this book, 828 of which are not native to Seattle, but still wild.
Google defines a wildflower as “an uncultivated variety, or a flower growing freely without human intervention.” I question this definition. As soon as my mother’s hayfileds stopped being mowed native trees sprang up . the forest retirned with native herbacoues plants, and the European weeds retreated to the sunny edges . Cultivation allowed these wildlings to flourish.

Before I ever became familiar with the hayfield of Michigan I spent many hours naturalizing along the railroad tracks near my childhood home in Milwaukee, a landscape more neglected and ignored than truly wild. But plants appeared spontaneously. Both native and non-native plants fused in an ecosystem totally manmade, and in some ways wild.
This was the nearest I got to wilderness in my neighborhood of mown lawns, vegetable gardens, and public parks. As a young boy I captured insects to create zoos in my sandbox, or bedroom, which never went over with my mother. As a maudlin pensive teen, the railroad tracks became a place to take long walks and have poetic feelings, in particular about wildflowers. There were plenty of natives there milkweed (Asclepius syriaca) and asters (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae). But it was always the weedy, chickory (Chicorum intybus), which attracted me the most.

Just as easily as a dandelion did each spring so triumphant after a harsh Midwest winter. I knew they were weeds but I loved them anyway. They were just part of the wild cosmogony that d crept into every crevice of human order. I loved them, and still do, for that matter. I actually used to joke that when I retired I would never pull another weed, but just smile at them with appreciation. AS I get older and tire of weeding I wonder if this joke will be come truth.

Still everywhere I go now I like to know which plants are native and which invaders from elsewhere. White clover (Trifolium repens) I have seen everywhere. It grew in the lawns that surrounded my childhood home. I’ve seen it deep in a river valley of the Olympic rainforest. In Japan, and Hawaii. Even Italy, where it is native.

The Italian name for wild flowers is Fiori spontanei, spontaneous flowers, which seems much more appropriate a name for this group of unclassifiable plants, than wildflowers, which implies some connection to wilderness.
I lived and gardened in Italy back in the late 1990s. I remember being chided for weeding the “spontaneous flowers”. Most of them were probably weedy native plants that worked their way into any place that humans disturbed. Actually one Italian botanist I spoke to said there was actually more biodiversity in cultivated
fields than there was in a restored oak forests of the national parks. What he said seemed true as I explored every rough up edge of the Italian landscape and found numerous beauties like this saffron thistle (Carthamus sp.).

I was so used to seeing the same 3 cultivars of rosemary here in Seattle area gardens , that I was shocked to see the diversity of forms and colors in a swaths of it that cover Monte Serra on the Island of Elba where I lived and worked. Many definitions of the term wildflowers limits it to only herbaceous plants. But along with Helen S. Hull author of “Wild Flowers for Your Garden” I like to include the blooming woody plants too…and even the non-flowering plants like ferns. I guess I’m back to Jacobsen’s ‘wild plants’.

When I stopped weeding so frantically in Italy I began to see plants as beauties unto themselves. In the rose garden at Santa Caterina, this spontaneous sow thistle (Sonchus oleraceus) was as welcome as “Cecille Brunner” and “ Abraham Darby” roses. It delicate ephemeral presence , so geometric and ordered in its “wildness”.

This fragile bouquet of bluebells (Adenophora sp.) in a food court in a department store basement in the heart of Tokyo, far from the mountains where they come from, is both humble and precious. It is a far cry from dyed Shasta daisies one might find in a similar situation here in the States. The Japanese have a certain appreciation for wild looking bouquets, though I did see a fair an mount of ugly died daisies and distorted roses there too.

The sales clerk, at this antique kimono shop in Tokyo, saw me admiring this bouquet. She told me the florist loved the mountain flowers and always brought them in. I had just spent nearly 2 weeks hiking in the mountains and enjoying the Japanese wildflowers where they grew. This looks like a garden bouquet I might make, but all of these are wildflowers in Japan.

This native
X grew at the base of Kuwanonoki falls

Another lovely Japanese native, felwort ( Swertia bipunctata) is a gentian relative which grew in prolific stands in this shady river valley.

But the Japanese have their share of introduced wildflowers too. Spider lily
(Lycorus radiata), was introduced to Japan nearly 400 years ago. Long associated with death,it proliferates in cemeteries where it has been planted for centuries, but is also found along roadsides, even happily colonizing in farm fields.

Our North American cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus) has also settle into the rural landscape of Japan. Here a gardener took advantage of it spontaneous appearance in the gravel walkway to their house creating a moment both wild and cultivated.

It was early autumn when I travelled through Japan and I was happy to see the Wisconsin native, giant golden rod (Solidago gigantea), so familiar from my railroad track meanders so long ago. It seems so emblematic of the end of summer to me. It is actually an invasive weed in Japan, aggressively colonizing rice paddies and other farm fields and requiring laborious removal. Here it is allowed to colonize the edge of a pond in the Koishikawa Botanical Garden at the University of Tokyo.

Back home Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius) is wreaking havoc on many northwest ecosystems, in particular our endangered Northwest prairies south of Puget Sound.

These prairies are home to some of my favorite plants in western Washington like blue toadflax (Nuttallanthus canadensis), growing at Glacial Heritage Preserve.

And large-flowered blue-eyed Mary (Collinsia grandiflora).

And golden paintbrush (Castilleja levisecta), one of our rarest plants, and sea blush(Plectritis congesta).

Still nothing compares to the wildflowers of Eastern Washington. The arid landscapes simply scream with flowers each spring. Thelypody (Thelypodium laciniatum) blooming in the Columbia Gorge above Vantage.

Desert buckwheat (Eriogonum sphaerocephalum) blooming in Sun Lake State Park, near Coulee city.

Arrowleaf balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata) blooming at Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge near Spokane.

Even the sides of the highways become wildflower gardens in the spring. Lupines and balsamroot along highway 97, just outside of Goldendale.

Closer to home these large-leaved lupines (Lupinus polyphyllus)
were planted a few years ago after the new bridge was built . Happily, the colony increases in size every year.

In my own drive this spontaneous mélange, columbine seeding freely among the weedy buttercups and even weedier native horsetail, look as though they were meant for each other.

I have also introduced wildflowers, and hopefully not future weeds,
Like this toadflax (Linaria capraia), endemic to the Tuscan Archipelago of Italy, is from the original plant I started from seed collected in the island of Elba.

I hope to get this Spanish fennel (Nigella hispanica) to go a little wild on our gravelly drive, too.

I always look forward to this spontaneous sterile foxglove hybrid, between Digitalis purpurea and D. lutea which shows up every few years in our gravelly drive.

I am looking forward to going back to the Big Island of Hawaii next spring, where everything is not anthuriums and pineapples. Here is Hawaiian raspberry or Akala (Rubus hawaiensis) believed, by some botanists, to be a decendent of our Northwest native salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis).

Believe it or not, there are more weedy invasive orchids in Hawaii than native ones. Hawaii has only 3 native orchids, all rather small and hard to find. Washington has about 12. Still every field, even the grasslands in Volcano National Park are full of
invasive orchids.

There are actually more native orchids in Michigan than Hawaii. This grass pink (Calopogon tuberosum) grows in the bogs near my mother’s farm.

This pogonia (Pogonia ophioglossoides) is another orchid in the zone 3 bog lands of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

As much as I see dandelions and daisies as wildflowers, as much as I feel at home in the world whenever and wherever I see white clover growing.
Not matter how many plants I get to settle in and become wild in my own little garden. It is these singular sightings:
a bog orchid in place where no one believes orchids would be,
a familiar prairie giant on the edge of a Japanese Rice paddy…

or Hinahina kolo (Vitex rotundifolia)on a Hawaiian beach,

or a narcissus (Narcissus autumnalis) in October on the Island of Elba,

or rain lilies (Cooperia pedunculata) after a thunderstorm on the coastal plane of Texas.

Even if they are not wildflowers, but wild plants,
a spontaneous smattering of licorice fern (Polypodium glycyrrhiza) on an neglected roof in downtown Seattle…
Wherever or however spontaneous wildflowers and plants occur,
they bring a smile to my face, and for a moment I am a retired gardener.