Alaska Trip

Flowers are blooming in northern Michigan right now, and it makes me think of the flowers I found and loved in Alaska. The following is an excerpt from Road Trip With Remington Beagle:

“The state flower of Alaska is the Forget-Me-Not. My opinion was if Fireweed couldn’t be the state flower maybe it could be the state weed. The Fireweed was so pretty, and huge patches grew along the roadside and sides of the mountains. In the springtime, you might wonder why this plant was called Fireweed. Both varieties have beautiful pink blossoms that look nothing like fire. However, when the colors turn in the fall, the leaves of the plant turn bright red, and those leaves pointed upward in abundance from the stem look very much like tongues of fire. When the plants go to seed, a fine fluffy substance with seeds attached is carried by the wind producing abundant Fireweed for future generations.”

I had a recipe for Fireweed jelly…we collected blossoms to make a tea, and then jelly from the tea. It is pretty good, but questionable if the jelly was worth the work. Two hundred blossoms were needed for one recipe. There is also Fireweed honey, but we were lacking bees. In the spring the shoots are edible, but we didn’t try that either.

There was much to be learned in our travels with Remington Beagle.

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