Florida Native Plant Society Blog

Melanie Simon, Director and Chair of the Council of Chapters Melanie is a lifetime member and has been with us since 2015. Melanie pledged to help match the first $10k of donations to our 2022 Annual Fund Drive. We asked her a few questions. What attracted you to join FNPS? I started volunteering at my local state park around 2001 and started working with the park biologist and learning about native plants.  In 2015 I learned they may be starting an FNPS chapter in my area - with meetings and activities close enough to attend.  Tell us your fondest native plant memory. Helping a newbie at a plant rescue find and laboriously dig up the huge root of an endangered Scrub Buckwheat ( Eriogonum longifolium var gnaphalifolium ). What's your favorite plant joke? Why couldn't the gardener plant any native plants? She hadn't botany. Tim Keating, Director Tim has been a member since 2020 and is a new board member this year. Tim joined the board and staff in putting up a match for the...

By Shirley Denton Common Eastern Bumble Bee ( Bombus impatiens ) foraging on a Partridge Pea ( Chamaecrista fasciculata ) in Split Oak Forest WEA in Orange County. Photo by Valerie Anderson. Two native insects have been in the news, and not in a good way. The first, the bumblebee, is an important native pollinator. The second, the lightning bug, needs native habitats. Neither is a single species, but together, they demonstrate the importance of maintaining healthy native plant ecosystems in balance with other environmental factors. Both demonstrate the importance of climate. Both demonstrate the importance of human behavior. Fireflies in Maryland CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 by Robert Sullivan The bumblebee study (published in Science) showed that populations in North America and Europe have plummeted as a result of increasingly extreme high temperatures. The number of areas populated by bumblebees has fallen 46 percent in North America and 17 percent in Europe. The data ...

Paddling with Skeletons Shirley Denton Twice in the last two months, I have joined friends on multi-day paddling trips in southern Florida. The first (in late December, 2017) was to the shoreline southeast of Goodland.  We were in the area in the quadrant of the storm with the strongest on-shore winds. The second was the Florida Keys near Big Pine Island in April, 2018. We paddled at Cudjoe Key where the eye of Hurricane Irma passed over the Florida Keys and 6 other places the quadrant of the storm with the strongest winds up to Marathon.  Just this week, this week (April 17), several preliminary reports from NASA on Hurricane Irma damage in the Everglades were released, so it seems like a good time to share some general observations with you. On both trips, I was particularly interested in the hurricane damage, variation in degree of damage, and in any signs of recovery. Some things were apparent: red and black mangroves in the Keys appeared to have s...

Vachellia farnesiana ,   formerly   Acacia farnesiana Submitted by John Holyland, Mangrove Chapter Photo by John Holyland, Lemon Bay County Park, Englewood, Florida Sweet Acacia, (Pronunciation: uh-KAY-shuh far-nee-zee-AY-nuh), is a large shrub or small tree in the legume family. It is native to the Americas, including the Southern United States, Mexico, and the tropics. Sweet Acacia is fast growing and drought tolerant, making it good for landscapes, but it can suffer from root rot if too wet. As it is very thorny, with thorns on its trunks and branches, it should be placed away from walkways.  The oval yellow flowers, about 1-2 cm. in diameter, bloom in the winter. They are very fragrant and have a long history of being using to make perfume and scented ointments. The fruits are cylindrical green pods that will will turn purple as they age.  The thorny branches make good cover for birds and other wildlife, and bees love to forage in flowers.  ...

By Shirley Denton We bemoan the prevalence of invasive species in our landscapes. From cogon grass to Brazilian pepper and Japanese honeysuckle, we don’t want them. I personally fight with natal grass, guinnea grass, skunk vine, and lantana, all of which insist on coming into my landscape. But I love species such as water lily and red mangrove – and sometimes us humans have spread them beyond their native ranges. I thought it might be instructive to see how some of them have behaved in their new homes. Global Invasive Species database I just scanned through 3065 records in the Global Invasive Species database looking for Florida natives that can misbehave when moved into areas where they don’t grow natively. I found a dozen of them, but since I was scanning through the list, there could be more. And this is just the species that are considered to be problems in the areas where they are introduced. Some of these I knew about. Others were surprises. A couple, I didn’t even know ...