The queen lives

I had feared the Queen was dead, or at the least, trampled by the natives. That would be my transplanted Queen of the Prairie wildflower, and the natives would be everything from tansies to raspberry bushes to milkweed.

But after the Queen disappeared last year after a few seasons of modest reign, not to mention a season of modest rainfall, I’ve found the Queen lives! On a muggy July morning in the meadow, between the farm fields and the woods, the color pink caught my eye in midst of all the green. Could it be? Yes, the Queen of the Prairie, at least two plants, was beginning to bloom.

The balls of pink atop amber stems, with large, pointed and deeply divided leaves below, had not yet burst into flowers. They will; the Queen is a beauty in August. But I was thrilled at the sight, the transplanted prairie flower in a meadow where perhaps this North American native once bloomed a century or more ago before part of the small clearing met the steel blades of a plow.

Let’s back up to the city, where we were given a Queen of the Prairie years ago. The plant likes sun and moisture, we later learned, but the shadow of the house kept it from sunshine in the morning, and a spreading maple tree took up the shading task in the afternoon. We could give it moisture, but not sun.

So I proceeded with my plan of most things that won’t grow on our city lot: transplant it in the country. Would not a prairie plant flourish in the small meadow clearing that juts out from the field? It did, for several years, joining the other blooming wild flowers, some of which I haven’t identified. I like to think they are prairie plants, as free as wild horses, plants that are centuries old, found nowhere else for acres around.

The Queen joined the masses and bloomed, until last summer, inexplicably absent except for maybe the lack of moisture. The kingdom lived on without the Queen. And while her disappearance is the stuff of royal mystery, she has now returned to her throne, where the leaves of birches and maples wave in approval.