Last Year's Gentian

Its getting close to the blooming season for Fringed Gentian, a rare wildflower we are lucky enough to have on our property. The description of fringed gentian says that before is blooms, it is "an innocuous rosette," which means it just looks like everything else. I might have found the pre-bloom plant by comparing what I know with what all is in the patches Cornell has boxed off across the street, but there's no way to know until the flower stalk starts to go up.

Last year, they started blooming at the end of the first week of September.

I just found a poem by William Cullen Bryant dedicated to Fringed Gentian.