Florida Native Plant Society Blog

By Lynn Sweetay,  Palm Beach Chapter of F.N.P.S. We met with representatives from various organizations to review the park's management plan A wonderfully sunny, cool Monday morning found me at my second land management review on the beach!  On January 13, I met with representatives from the Florida Park Service, DEP, FWC, Forestry, Soil and Water Conservation, South Florida Water management district, and other local government officials. Our purpose was to review the previous management plan written for Ft Pierce Inlet State Park and see if the park was meeting its management goals as written in 2006. Ft Pierce Inlet State Park is located on the North side of the Ft Pierce Inlet in St Lucie County just on the south tip of Hutchinson Island. The park is approximately 1140 acres including parts of the Indian River-Vero Beach Ft Pierce Aquatic preserve as well as Atlantic Ocean frontage. The five prevalent natural communities within the park are beach dune, maritime hammo...

Starting over I recently relocated from the northeast corner of Florida to my hometown of sunny Miami. As such, I had to leave the Ixia chapter, which had become something of a family to me. Most of what I've learned over the past several years is the byproduct of being involved with that small, warm group of people. I am sincerely grateful that they were able to tolerate my obnoxious sense of humor long enough to identify specimens for me on field trips and during meetings. Nonetheless, the landscape in Atlantic Beach (where I'd lived for the past 4 years) is dramatically different than that which is found in "the 305," and I'm discovering that I’m not quite back to square one regarding my knowledge of local natives, but I'm far back enough to recognize that there's a whole lot more to know. I've always found that if I really want to learn about AND remember new species of flora, doing so in their respective natural settings is the best way to go. ...

Pileated woodpeckers work a red bay ( (Persea borbonia ) before it was killed by the laurel wilt disease. Trees are so important! And to receive the maximum benefits with the least amount of effort, plant a tree native to your region and one that's been bred from local stock.  Here is a post to help with this: Natives for your landscape: an FNPS tool for you . In addition to being beautiful and supporting local wildlife, here are a few of the more quantifiable benefits.   Trees: - clean the air. In 1991, Chicago's 51 million trees “removed an estimated 17 tons of carbon monoxide, 93 tons of sulfur dioxide, 98 tons of nitrogen dioxide, 210 tons of ozone, and 234 tons of particulate matter. They [also] sequestered about 155,000 tons of carbon. ... where trees were large and lush, they could improve air quality by as much as 15 percent during the hottest hours of midday. More trees and bigger trees meant cleaner air." ( What Is a Tree Worth ) - absorb wat...