Florida Native Plant Society Blog

String lilies are common in Florida's wetlands. Several kayaking field trips are offered as part of the program for the FNPS conference in May in Jacksonville . This one, about the Kayak Amelia Island, could apply to most of the others. Space is limited for the field trips so register sooner, rather than later, to reserve your spot. By Kat McConnel Northeast Florida has its share of valuable and beautiful tidal marshes; there are numerous meadows of brackish and freshwater marsh vegetation. As marshes are best observed from the water, paddling provides the best opportunity to access this overlooked aquatic natural community. Spartina grasses intercept the waves at the shoreline. Between high and low marsh, inches, not feet, cause a dramatic difference in vegetation community composition. Low salt marshes are regularly flooded on each high tide typically dominated by salt marsh cordgrass, ( Spartina alterniflora ). Other salt marsh plant species, such as needlerush ( ...

Meadow garlic ( Allium canadense ), a Florida native, belongs in your herb garden next to the chives. More and more people are growing at least some of their own food. The reasons for this resurgence include food safety issues, lack of money for fresh vegetables, educating the children that carrots grow in the ground (not on the supermarket shelves), and simply the desire to replace an unused and expensive-to-maintain lawn with something more productive. What is a post on food doing on a native plant society blog? Native plants play an important role in sustainable edible gardens. Sometimes native plants are the crops such as meadow garlic (“ A Native Herb has Earned a Spot Amongst the Mediterranean Species ” ), prickly pear (" Edible Native Recovers from the Frost "), and dotted horsemint (“ Dotted Horsemint: An Appreciation ”), but mostly native plants play a supporting role. An edible garden with all its non-native plants, both the carefully-bred cultivars and ancie...

 FNPS Secretary Peg Lindsay reminds us that our native plants are providing some of the most basic needs of other inhabitants of an ecosystem... Red touch yellow - Coral snake Two extraordinary things happened at our Highland Lakes home. The first was the appearance of a snake. A snake in Florida is not so unusual; we’ve found quite a few in many colors and sizes over the years here. Snakes are generally benign and benevolent creatures, whose diet is any creature smaller than they are. We’ve seen them in our garage, gardens and patio. Most of the time we let them be. Occasionally we relocate them where they can live peacefully without having to encounter any lawn mowers. With the coming of the summer rainy season, my husband was cleaning out the gutters. I had the job of turning the water off and on while he was up the ladder removing the leaves. One obstruction in the downspout would not wash out. I told him he would have to take the downspout apart, and I went into the h...

Here in Florida, we have 160 state parks consisting of more than 700,000 acres. In contrast, Texas boasts "more than 90 state parks." There are various types of parks in Florida such as the underwater parks John Pennekamp Coral Reef State and San Pedro Park; the historical sites such as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historical Park and the Fort Zachary Taylor Historical Park; but most of the parks highlight wonderful natural areas of the "Real Florida" where you can enjoy native plants and animals in their native ecosystems. Our state parks host more than 21 million visitors a year and provide many of the destination sites that bring out-of-state visitors to our state. www.floridastateparks.org Even though Florida's parks provide beautiful and educational experiences and bring in many tourists, Governor Scott threatened to close many of them to "save money" and then some of our politicians were ready to make a deal with Jack Nicklaus to build golf course...