Wildflowers on Interstate 20

Yesterday I drove to Shreveport and back for a doctor’s appointment. As always, I noted the wildflowers blooming along the side of the road (Interstate-20) in the areas that had not been mowed. Parts of that road I have driven since I got my driver’s license way back in 1972. It wasn’t all built at the same time. The section from Minden to Ruston must have been one of the first sections finished in Louisiana. My brother started Louisiana Tech University in 1964. It was Louisiana Polytechnic Institute back then (LPI). He referred to it as Louisiana Politicking Institute. I don’t ever remember riding to take him to Ruston via US 80, so it must have been finished about that time. My mother was always on the lookout for wildflowers, and the new road with the big medians and wide shoulders provided lots of opportunities for new discoveries. One of the first “new” plants she spotted was chicory. It came up in the median in Bienville Parish, somewhere between Gibsland and Arcadia. Over the years it spread in both directions until the population was nearly a mile in length. It is a native of Southeastern Europe and Western Asia, and it is dried ground root that flavors Cajun coffee. It is commercially grown in Turkey. I noticed yesterday, as in recent years, that there is no longer any trace of it on I-20. I believe it was lost when the highway was rebuilt several years ago.

When the exit at Minden at La. Hwy 7 (now US 371) was completed, Mother and her garden club buddies noticed something new blooming on the south side of Interstate. That side was built in a cloverleaf configuration and the slopes were covered with cornflowers or bachelor’s button. It is also an introduced species, native to the same region as chicory. It is listed as a noxious weed in some states, but has never been a common one in Louisiana. These particular cornflowers were small and fit in with the grasses beautifully. The cornflowers played a huge part in how pretty the Interstate is in Webster Parish. One year the highway department mowed them down before they set seed. The garden club ladies were furious. It never happened again. I found out years later why. One of my sisters moved back to Minden after I graduated from high school. She bought a house on the same street as a fellow that worked for the state highway department in the parish. She was complimenting him on how pretty the wildflowers were on I-20 on day, and he begrudgingly told her why they were there. It seemed one year they had mowed those blue flowers down out on the exit while they were still blooming, and one of those garden club ladies (not Mother, she didn’t have that kind of clout) had called Baton Rouge and chewed on somebody high up in the department. Word had come from Baton Rouge that no mowing was to be done, period, until those blue flowers had gone to seed. That order benefitted all the spring flowers along the road side, so now there are great sweeps of golden corepsis, pink phlox, and assorted other common meadow species that start abruptly at the Webster Parish line in April and May. Taking advantage of that, one of my mother's other garden club friends began pulling over and dropping off seed of some other wildflowers over the years. I know she is responsible for the queen anne’s lace I saw blooming west of Minden yesterday. It is yet another introduced species from Eurasia. It is the wild relative of our domestic carrot.

As for the cornflowers, they suffered mightily a few years ago when the cloverleaf portion of the exit was completely rebuilt. Lots of dirt moving and heavy equipment pretty much wiped out the population on the slopes. I did see some blooming in the median when I passed the exit. I also noticed that the contract mowers were already mowing in Webster Parish, and that it was a little early to do so for the good of the wildflowers. Perhaps that’s why there are not as many flowers blooming this year as in years past. The lady that chewed on the highway department 40 years ago passed away not long ago.