AA-2026-4120CC
On the image
Door County in early summer has a way of making people feel they have discovered something the rest of Wisconsin doesn't know about, which is why it has been full of tourists since the 1950s. The woodland floor here is thick with false Solomon's seal and wild lily of the valley pushing up through pine-needle duff — native understory plants that were doing exactly this before the peninsula became famous for cherries and art galleries, and will keep doing it afterward.
By 2002 the quiet competition between Door County's managed gardens and its native woodland had quietly been won by both sides. Somebody with a camera walked into a shaded patch where the white flower spikes were at their peak and documented a planting or a woodland edge that looked almost too orderly to be entirely accidental. The cedar mulch visible underfoot suggests a managed natural area rather than deep wilderness — the kind of cultivated-wild compromise that was the preferred aesthetic of Midwestern garden design at the turn of the millennium.
The plants themselves are indifferent to the distinction. Maianthemum canadense has been fruiting and spreading through the Great Lakes understory for millennia, and it bloomed just as enthusiastically in 2002 as it did before anyone started keeping track of such things.
Visually related — by likeness
Wild Lily of the Valley in Bloom, Door County, WI, 2002. 2002. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-4120CC. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/wild-lily-of-the-valley-in-bloom-door-county-wi-2002.
@misc{aaAA20264120CC,
title = {Wild Lily of the Valley in Bloom, Door County, WI, 2002},
year = {2002},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-4120CC},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/wild-lily-of-the-valley-in-bloom-door-county-wi-2002}
}TY - ART TI - Wild Lily of the Valley in Bloom, Door County, WI, 2002 PY - 2002 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-4120CC UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/wild-lily-of-the-valley-in-bloom-door-county-wi-2002 ER -
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