Readers often tell me they appreciate Bleeding Heartland’s wildflower series as a break from the stress of following political news and the negative energy of social media. I feel the same way when I browse the hundreds of lovely photographs in the Iowa wildflower Wednesday archive.

But for a truly peaceful experience, nothing beats spending time with wildflowers in the real world. When you are stuck indoors, spending a few minutes with Iowa wildflower videos can a pretty good substitute for wandering around natural habitat.

This post features some of my favorite Iowa wildflower videos by two of Bleeding Heartland’s occasional guest authors: Bruce Morrison and Katie Byerly. Their YouTube channels (Bruce Morrison and Iowa Prairie Girl) are delightful in their own ways.

VIEWS FROM PRAIRIE HILL FARM

Bruce has been a working artist and photographer for many years, and along with his wife Georgeann has been restoring prairie patches in rural southeast O’Brien County for more than two decades. I’ve been fortunate to visit the Prairie Hill Farm Studio and view some of Bruce’s artwork in Morrison’s studio—a renovated late 1920s brooding house/sheep barn.

I discovered Bruce’s wildflower videos relatively recently, but he’s got lots of experience with this medium. He uploaded “Mid Summer at Prairie Hill Farm” way back in 2011—the year before I wrote the first installment of “Iowa wildflower Wednesday.” And it’s not even the oldest one on his channel!

Bruce’s videos generally follow the same format. No script, no narrator, no subtitles. Just images of native plants (and pollinators) with the sounds of nature as accompaniment. Even without being able to identify the birds or insects visiting the wildflowers, it’s so relaxing to watch and listen.

More recently, Bruce has produced shorter “Prairie Moment” videos, focusing on one native species for a minute or so. Here’s the latest example, showcasing Big Bluestem with views of different parts of the plant, at various stages of development.

Bruce typically treats the viewer to a few pollinator visits, as with this prairie moment featuring false gromwell.

The plants are often swaying in a light breeze. Here’s prairie rose, Iowa’s state flower.

Some plants are subdued and not at all “showy,” like Porcupine grass.

Others are bright and cheerful, like this view of butterfly milkweed (one of Iowa’s few orange wildflowers).

Speaking of cheerful, let’s spend a few minutes with Katie, whose wildflower videos take a different approach.

EXPLORING NORTHERN IOWA WITH PRAIRIE DOG

Katie launched her channel about five years ago. In nearly 60 installments, she takes viewers to a wide variety of natural areas—usually not far from her home base in Cerro Gordo County.

Katie narrates all of her videos, sharing tips on how to identify various Iowa wildflowers. In this installment on blue vervain (one of her most-watched), Katie takes viewers into a drainage ditch to describe the leaves, stalks, spikes, and flowers, and how to distinguish these plants differ from the related species hoary vervain.

She also informs viewers about any notable facts about the featured plant, such as the anti-itch properties of jewelweed (one of my personal favorites).

Katie says white wild indigo is one of her own favorites.

Last year’s video on big bluestem (one of the hallmark tallgrass prairie plants) was popular as well. Katie likes to share alternative common names for each plant—in this case tall bluestem, blue joint, beard grass, turkey foot, cattle’s ice cream (because cows love to eat it), and king of the prairie.

I got a kick out of Katie’s video about Maximilian sunflower, one of those “damn yellow composites” (which can be challenging to distinguish from one another). She threw in a little bit of folklore, explaining that sunflowers have been seen as symbols of loyalty, good luck, or truth: “If you sleep on a sunflower, put it underneath your pillow, the next day the truth will be revealed to you.”

Some of Katie’s wildflower videos have a bonus feature: her companion Prairie Dog. Look at her sweet face resting on Katie’s leg for several minutes as we learn about stiff gentian.

I hope you’ll take some time exploring both of these channels. Watching Iowa wildflower videos is bound to be less stressful than whatever YouTube’s algorithm thinks you want to see.