Conservation and Habitat Restoration for Two Florida Endemic Mints

We're proud to announce we were awarded a Powerful Communities Grant from Duke Energy for our Conservation and Habitat Restoration for Two Endangered Mint Species! We're putting it to work by deploying staff and volunteers to monitor two populations of endemic Florida mints.


The first rare mint, Blushing Scrub Balm (Dicerandra modesta), is endemic to Polk County.


The second is Longspurred Balm (Dicerandra cornutissima) and is endemic to Marion and Sumter Counties. Both are State and Federally Listed Endangered native plants.

We have two main goals: annually monitor these two populations and restore the two sites. The largest and only publicly-protected population of Longspurred Balm occurs on the Marjorie Harris Carr Cross Florida Greenway in Marion County. This population was impacted by the recent construction of an access road. There is only one population of blushing scrub balm on public lands and possibly only one small population remaining on private lands. It occurs on the Horseshoe Creek
Scrub Tract of the Lake Marion Creek Wildlife Management Area in Polk County. This population was impacted by installation of the Sabal Trail pipeline which shares a utility right-of-way with Duke Energy. Both species of imperiled mints have small historic ranges and are state and/or federally listed as endangered.

Want to help? Email Valerie at communications@fnps.org to get on our workday mailing list.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wednesday's Wildflower:Spanish Needle

Image
Spanish Needle, Bidens Alba Submitted by Donna Bollenbach, Suncoast Chapter Biden's alba , all photos by Donna Bollenbach Nothing attracts more butterflies and bees than a simple white flower called Bidens alba . Also called Romerillo, Beggar’s Tick, Spanish Needle or Monkey’s Lice, this Florida native wildflower is the third most reliable source of nectar for pollinators in our state. There would be many starving bees and butterflies if not for the Bidens family of flowers. More so, Bidens alba and its sister plant, Bidens pilosa , are both edible and have medicinal value. Yet, many gardeners have a love/hate relationship the plant, and some even consider it a pesky weed. Why?
Read more

Florida Native Azaleas

Image
Piedmont Azalea, Rhododendron canescens. Photo by Lilly Anderson-Messec By Lilly Anderson-Messec While growing up in North Florida, I began to recognize the arrival of spring by the boisterous show of white, pink, and fuchsia blooms of azalea shrubs. The house I grew up in had large, mature azalea hedges with a variety of different colors and forms. Every spring, my mom would bring in vases full of them and my dad loved to point out the showy shrubs as we drove through town. I suppose I assumed these plants were native, but most likely I never gave it a thought. I didn’t differentiate a native plant from a non-native one because I didn’t yet know the importance of native plants as the basis of our functioning ecosystems. I was so surprised when I learned the azaleas I was so familiar with (Rhododendron indicum) are actually transplants from Asia! They are favored by the horticultural industry for their fast, vigorous, and dense growth of evergreen leaves and large, showy blooms. Curio
Read more

Paradise Tree: Beautiful and Useful

Image
"The native Paradise tree is more useful than Google, and easy to grow." And how could any blogger resist leading off with this intriguing quote from the Key West Garden Club? I am a Master Gardener and a Master Naturalist, but I only know so much; so I always check out  statistics from experts before posting information about plants. I have a beautiful Paradise tree in my yard, it came from the raffle table at my chapter's program night about six years ago.   Paradise tree                Simarouba glauca For the first six years the little tree had a perfect, closed, cone shape; but just this summer I was astounded one morning to walk out and notice that my tree had changed. The canopy had begun to open up, there were open spaces between the layers of branches. It seemed to happen overnight. Proving again that a garden is constantly in motion, which is one of the fascinating things about observing them. Pinnate leaves of the paradise tree The leaves
Read more