It is a small delicate flower of the prairie. This slight little
plant was treasured by the Native America people for its medicinal
properties and is commonly called “Prairie Smoke.” It is one of the
earliest harbingers of spring and quickly blooms and slowly releases it
seeds to the wind.
It is easy to ascertain how the plant was
named, looking at its wispy waving hair-like tufted flowers each holding
dozens of strands to carry the tiny seeds aloft to perpetuate the
species. The small flowers resemble miniature campfires with the fine
strands billowing up as smoky signals of the promise of new life.
In
this minor little flower that is hardly noticed as its showy
presentation occurs over such a short duration a multitude of events
play out. The slender shaft appears quite quickly from its somewhat
broad ferny leaves reaching upward with its developing flower head. The
flower reaches a given height and then droops as it waits for
pollination. A honey bee must pry open the fused bud which will then
become a tiny fruit. The fruit will mature and the stem will turn
upright bursting open with wispy tuffs of smoke to eventually release
their seeds to float on the wind to a new place to repeat this amazing
life cycle of the simple little plant known as “Prairie Smoke.”
All
of this small scale pageantry is accompanied by intense contrasting
colors of the ferny leaves and deep crimson dipped flowers and subtle
slightly nuanced hues of the wispy strands of the tufted seed heads. All
this design and all this color embedded and planned into a simple
little flower. All this dramatic play and show that hardly a soul will
see looking across the sea of the virgin prairie. If the Master Creator
placed all this beauty, splendor and care into a simple flower on the
prairie, does He not care about each one of us? Will He not create in
us, something of beauty and splendor and will He take care of all of our
needs?
“And
why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field,
how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon
in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so
clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is
thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little
faith?” (Matthew 6:28-30, ESV)
Suggested Reading ... Matthew 6
Public Domain - Edward Poynter, 1890, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Wikimedia Commons
No comments:
Post a Comment