August 3

One mile south of town on Route 31, just after Keep Avenue where the road gently curves to the right on its way toward Moore State Park, there is an open field which is beautiful just now in the August sunshine.

It is sun dappled at 9:00 in the morning. Yellow greens of the uncut tall grass are dotted with thousands of Queen Anne’s Lace. With no distracting homes or structures in the midst or background, this field is simply idyllic, almost a romanticized version of a summer pasture in full maturity.

In passing by I stopped to estimate the flower count, for the shear number of the spreading stalks is incredible. In one square meter quadrat, I estimate 6 individual lace plants. The field must be nearly a ¼ acre, and there are 4840 square meters to the acre. 4840 times ¼ times 6 = 7260 plants in this relatively small plot.

Each composite flower is a world unto itself, and seen in isolation resembles an enlarged snowflake with the florets as patches of crystals in arranged patterns. A sample flower contained 38 small clusters, each lifting upward and supporting a platform of florets of roughly 36 tiny white flowers. 38 x 36 makes 1368 florets on the singular Queen Anne’s Lace.

This ¼ acre has thus by estimation 1368 x 7260 = 9,931,680 tiny white flowers spread about, each a potential awaiting chance and circumstance to be pollinated.

The number is overwhelming to me, a reminder of my own relative insignificance in the spatial sense at least. There are dozens of fields like this in Paxton and dozens of small towns in New England so alike.

These flowers live and reproduce and die, in so many fields; their ubiquity is the norm at this place and in this season, and we who tend to believe in an exaggerated sense of ourselves in this land should pay greater attention.