What? Teasel in Minnesota?

Yesterday, Steve and I were driving home after running errands. We were about 3 miles from home on a road we take multiple times a week. I was lazily staring out the window, and Steve has driving. We passed a newish apartment complex where they had created one of these “rain gardens” to catch parking lot water runoff. The trend (which I am all for) is to line the concavity with prairie flower and grass mixes. I just assumed those mixes were using only native seeds. As we passed this particular rain garden, it took both of us the exact amount of cognitive dissonant mental processing time (about 5 seconds) to simultaneously say “wait? what? was that teasel?” We did a U-turn.

We became intimate with teasel while living in southern France. It is native there. And quite abundant. We don’t have teasel in Minnesota. It is not native here. And until yesterday I had never seen it here–not ever in my 62 years.

I have learned it is considered an invasive weed in North America and is not uncommon in parts of the midwest. But Minnesota has more in common, ecologically, with Winnipeg than it does with Kansas City. That’s why I refer to us as the North, and not the Midwest. Last year I saw teasel all over the roadsides of Chicago, and marveled at how big a difference a few degrees of latitude makes when it comes to botanical habitability. So when we saw that field of teasel yesterday, I could not make sense of it all. It would be like seeing an olive tree growing in my woods. It made no sense. Did someone plant it intentionally? Or mistakenly, thinking “midwest” and “upper-midwest” seed mixes were interchangeable? Or did birds bring the seeds? And has our climate changed so fast that Mediterranean teasel can now grow on our roadsides? I am still very confused about seeing my beloved teasel in Minnesota. I loved teasel in southern France–so structural, so photogenic, so lethal. But in Minnesota? I don’t know.

cutleaf teasel (Dipsacus laciniatus)

PS I always just assumed teasel was in the thistle family (genus Carduus), but I just learned (from Wiki) that teasel is actually in the honeysuckle family. I love STILL. It keeps me on my toes.