Florida Native Plant Society Blog

Melbourne, FL – The Florida Native Plant Society (FNPS) has designated October as “Native Plant Month.” During October, local society chapters host talks and hikes to natural areas to promote native plant communities and the environmental benefits to wildlife. In that educational spirit, FNPS created a landscape award program open to homeowners, businesses, government agencies, HOA’s, and community groups. FNPS received 19 applications for the 2023 landscape award cycle. Applicants across Florida had the opportunity to showcase their landscaped project and to highlight their garden.   Among the 19 applicants, a local winner for the “Garden of Excellence” was selected. Mead Botanical Gardens in Winter Park was chosen for its native upland plant restoration work since 2013 in partnership with the local FNPS Chapter. The applicant described Mead Botanical Garden as a “natural oasis amid urban Winter Park and Orlando, almost a “last frontier” of natural land.” The presence of 100-yea...

by Brian Brandon, Tarflower Chapter , originally published in The Tarpaper, July 2019 . Edited by Valerie Anderson . On June 12, 2019 I had the opportunity to “shadow” Juliet Rynear and several local and state government representatives on a land management review at Lake Griffin State Park . Lake Griffin State Park is located in Lake County off of Highway 27 in Fruitland Park. The park consists of approximately 621 acres of mesic flatwoods, sandhill, scrubby flatwoods, xeric hammock, basin marsh, baygall, depression marsh, hydric hammock, and river floodplain lake habitats. Although the park is not located on Lake Griffin, there is access to the lake from the park via the Dead River which terminates within the park boundaries. The park primarily operates to provide outdoor recreation to the public. The park is improved with a large parking area that accommodates the parks public boat ramp, providing access to Lake Griffin. The park also provides pontoo...

  by Cecilia Catron , Tarflower Chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society (reprinted with permission from the August 2016 issue of Tarpaper ) Pine Scar  When days are hot, as they have been for the past month, it seems like a sensible idea to lie in or around the pool all day, like a motionless alligator. Curds of bright, white thunderheads rise higher and higher, expanded by the increasing heat. Gradually air pushed from the east and west coasts meets in the middle of the peninsula. By mid-afternoon it becomes charged by the collision of the fronts and summer lightning is created, with or without a storm. Knotty Oak Have you ever noticed a stripe spiraling down the trunk of a pine tree where lightning has stripped the outer bark off? You may have also noticed there is no such stripe on the trunk of an oak tree. Oaks and Pines, both dominant here in central Florida, have different ligh...