Bruce Morrison is a working artist and photographer living with his wife Georgeann in rural southeast O’Brien County, Iowa. Bruce works from his studio/gallery–a renovated late 1920s brooding house/sheep barn. You can follow Morrison on his artist blog, Prairie Hill Farm Studio, or visit his website at Morrison’s studio.

I first came across Pale-spike Lobelia (Lobelia spicata) 40-45 years ago in the Waterman Wildlife Area (Waterman Prairie) in southeast O’Brien County.

When my wife and I moved to our acreage and two small pastures 22 years ago, we realized just how many native forbes and grasses had survived decades of livestock browsing. Each year we would discover new species.

In 2008 I found my first pale-spike lobelia on our own pasture, a few feet down the north slope of a gravel ridge. I recognized the plant upon close examination and marveled how diminutive they were.

Unlike that first one I found on Waterman Prairie years ago…roughly a 18-20” spike, these new plants could not top 10” and most were slightly shorter. The flowers were equally small, blossoms of 1/4” across are on the big side. It’s likely the poor soil and moisture conditions contribute in keeping these in the “bonsai” mode.

The plants here do not appear every year, especially during a stressful year of drought. I suspect they just go dormant until things get favorable again. This was the first summer they have returned here on the acreage since 2020. (We were in a significant drought from 2020 through 2023.)

Pale-spike lobelia is a fairly undiscriminating plant. It can be found in a variety of conditions: full sun, shade, open woods, and prairies—wet or dry. Pictured below is a good representation of a full spike, courtesy of Luuk Clark—Prairie Steward and Pinnated Grouse advocate. This plant is likely of average height, and not buried in the undergrowth so much.

The plant is made up of one single spike stem with basal leaves. These leaves, slightly hairy, are just slightly toothed and gradually decrease in size as they move up the stem.  

I guess these usually average one to three feet in height and bloom from June through July. I can set a clock by when ours appear: every July 15th! That is the only way I can find them, since there is barely anything to pale-spike lobelia structure-wise, and it’s hardly noticeable until the flowers begin forming. Growing up among the grasses and forbs around them, keeps those here fairly incognito until bloom.

Individual flowers are pale blue to white, tubular with two small upper lobes that are bent back and three larger lower lobes that are similar in size. All lobes have pointed tips. There are two yellowish spots at the base of the lower lobes, and a dark blue stigma that sits between the two upper lobes. The two yellowish spots are just barely perceivable in the closeup dew covered images, and the dark blue stigma between the two top lobes is fairly easily seen in one of the previous images with a full stalk of dew-free flowers.

Dew always looks cool to me, and it’s unavoidable early in the morning, when the breeze is less of a hassle as I try to photograph delicate details up close. But dew also can mask discrete details as well.

The part of the plant cupping the flower (the calyx) has five narrowly triangular lobes that are about as long as the floral tube. Flower stalks and the calyx exhibit a short hairy appearance in some of these images (especially the extreme close-ups), but some sites and literature describe them as hairless or slightly so.

I’ll include the image below just for fun. An unidentified spider lurks under a flower, so well hidden I didn’t even see it until the image file was on my computer monitor. Given the small flower size, this is a fairly small spider! I have seen very small beetles and native green sweat bees (Augochloropsis metallica) feeding on their blossoms.

I can always find the pale-spike lobelia when in flower, after a few minutes of careful searching, but no such luck before blooming and even after. I think that’s simply because our plants are so small. In addition, they are pretty short-lived after flowering is finished; I had great difficulty finding finished plants only four weeks after my photographs were taken. The plants just wither and die…blending in with other plant material.

I flagged our pasture’s pale-spike lobelia this summer so I could get some seed pictures later. I still had a dickens of a time finding just a couple 8” stalks in the late summer growth! Geez, these seeds are small!

I’ve read that even a slight breeze will scatter their seeds—they are about the consistency of dust. I’d wager a good wind out here would clean a seed pod out in no time. The seed illustrated was collected four weeks after bloom, and the seed pods were mostly vacated already.

This small Lobelia is really worth a close look. Just perusing through these image files as I write this article gets my attention again.

Crossing my fingers here that next July 15th leads me to find them in our southeast O’Brien County hillside pastures once more!