Florida Native Plant Society Blog

By Lisa Roberts Florida Wildflower Foundation Executive Director Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Ananth Prasad recently signed the department's new Wildflower Management Program Procedure , which will allow more of the state's native wildflowers to flourish along roadsides through reduced mowing and other management practices. Left to right - Jeff Caster, FDOT landscape architect; Jeff Norcini, FDOT wildflower horticulturalist; FDOT Sec. Ananth Prasad; Florida Wildflower Foundation liaison Eleanor Dietrich FDOT state transportation landscape architect Jeff Caster said, “Roadsides are the state’s most visited and visible landscape.  The department is committed to increasing the visibility and enjoyment of native wildflowers.”  State Road 65 - roadside wildflowers; photo by Eleanor Dietrich "We salute the department in enacting this forward-thinking program," said Vince Lamb, Florida Wildflower Foundation board chairman. "In Flor...

Haven't been to the Circle B? You're missing out on some fabulous birding and tons of trails for hiking! The 5 Ws, More or Less On February 8th and 9th, 2014 your F.N.P.S. Board of Directors (a.k.a. "Fearless Leaders") congregated in Lakeland, Florida for a weekend of meetings, which were held at the Circle B Bar Reserve. The first day began with the usual: approval of minutes from the previous meeting and reports from the Executive Committee. We quickly navigated through the morning's business like a motorcyclist in a traffic jam. After a short break for lunch, we reconvened to tackle voting on Bylaw revisions and take part in a goal-focused workshop derived, to some degree, from the Strategic Plan that the Bristol Strategy Group submitted some time after our last retreat in November. SurveyMonkey is a web-based service used by a multitude of industries to ask questions of a target audience and compile responses in real time. Bylaw Changes - Voting...

by Laurie Sheldon I have two nephews - brothers, in fact - who turned 4 and 6 a few days apart in early January. Naturally, I gave them each birthday gifts. I generally ask my brother and sister-in-law what their kids could use before buying anything… but this time I did not. Instead, I took a cue from my oldest nephew, Kai, who, one year earlier, told me he had a butterfly garden at school, and asked if any of the plants I’d installed at his home would bring monarchs (to which the answer was, “no”). I replayed this conversation in my head, and, without hesitation, jumped in my car and headed toward Homestead. Asclepias tuberosa and Calotropis procera I picked up two 3-gallon containers of milkweed, two large clay pots and saucers, some potting soil, and headed back home, where I repotted them and made a mess of my mother’s patio. Despite the fact that the boys were/are beginning readers, I carefully wrote the genus and specific epithet of each plant on the back side of its...