Back Again, and Here All the Time

 Driving out of my island retreat in late February I saw my first swallow-tailed kite of the season, pretty much right on schedule. They may have been around, but I hadn't been out where I could see them. It made my heart glad. I will never tire of these elegant aerialists. They don't use just their tail-feathers and wings to navigate, but  also can turn their tail itself nearly 90 degrees, using it as a rudder, as they execute complicated maneuvers, rolls, and even backward dives. And they make it look effortless. Once aloft, they tend to ride the thermals all day, returning to the trees only at night, to roost. 

Ornithologist/artist David Allen Sibley describes them as, "Unmistakable; incredibly graceful, [with a ] flowing flight."(The Sibley Guide to Birds. Knopf. 4th printing Jan. 2001, p.111).

When mature, these raptors have white bodies with long, slender wings trimmed in black, and a long, forked black tail. They measure about 2 feet from bill to tail tip, and have a wingspan of a good 4 feet or more. They are fairly gregarious, and nest close together. 

There are 2  subspecies of Elanoides forficatus - one in the U.S., and one in Central and South America. The population in the States breeds in Florida, coastal Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina and parts of Texas. Their range in the U.S. used to extend up the Mississippi river all the way to Minnesota, but hunting and habitat loss have shrunk it drastically. They breed here in  late winter and then in July gather in large flocks for the return to South America. The Central and South America population stays put.

 They pluck their prey - mainly insects, reptiles and sometimes baby birds, from the treetops, and since the mangroves don't grow exceptionally tall here, it often is possible to get a good look at them as they hunt. They can eat, and even drink, on the wing. Unlike other raptors, they also will eat fruit. They are pretty adaptable - I  used to see them in heavily-populated suburban Miami, and I see them over populated areas in Naples as well. 

Apart from my own observations, I found information on these birds on the following websites:

American Bird Conservancy - abc.org

Cornell Lab - allaboutbirds.org

Florida Fish and Wildlife conservation Commission - myfwc.com."swallow-tailedkite"

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A few weeks after the filthy storm surge brought by Hurricane Ian in September of 2022, rendered all ground-hugging vegetation brown and dead, a few brave individual plants of blue-eyed grass, Sisyrinchium angustifolium, not only appeared, but actually bloomed. It was a little out of season for blooming, and I suspect it was triggered by the sudden kill-off - a desperate attempt to ensure that there would be a new generation.

The swale, where these diminutive iris thrive in my yard then became the staging ground for all the wallboard, furniture, appliances and personal belongings destroyed by the flood. That debris included sodden carpet, cans of chemicals, solvents, portable gas tanks,and other unimaginable, including half a pizza, that washed in from elsewhere. The FEMA claw trucks made regular runs, picking up this detritus with remarkable dexterity. As cleanup and demo continued, these piles of battered remnants of past lives regenerated with remarkable speed. The skill of the crane operators in maneuvering such colossal crude claws was impressive, as they managed to scrape up virtually every last piece of broken glass or plaster. Still it was in no way a delicate operation  - it was digging and scraping and leveling on a brutal scale.

Instead of creating a desert, though, this enormous soil disturbance brought thousands of seeds to the surface. Some of these "weeds" were actually desirable plants, just not here, and certainly not welcome in the wild abandon with which they grew. The blue-eyed grass seemed overwhelmed.

The massive pollution spread by the flood paradoxically seems to have had a fertilizing effect in my yard. To be sure, fertilizer itself can be a pollutant, but the wasteland I expected after the flood didn't materialize.  I had to pull out massive clumps of dune sunflower, Helianthus debilis,  one of my favorite natives, which rendered the rest of the yard impassible, repeatedly. 

I had to have the swale mowed - no way was I going to be able to hand-weed that mess. Mowing the swale made it look presentable - but it made the weeds bushier and denser. One of the plants taking over was a lovely little native legume called Pencil-flower, Stylosanthes sp. It grows wider than tall, and tends to be rather open when left alone, but it loved the mowing, getting much tighter and blooming like crazy.

I still  had to do something about noxious exotics vying for control, so hand-weeding had to accompany shearing after all, Even with gloves I get scratched up by the woody twigs of the pencil-flower. 

I wasn't even looking for it when I uprooted a clump of blue-eyed grass in one of my weeding sessions. Then I saw more...and more...and still more. All thriving and blooming like crazy. It was as though the plants, especially the pencil-flower, that I assumed had choked it out, had, instead, acted as a shelter from hot sun and clipper blades. The blue-eyed grass hadn't disappeared at all. It had been there all the time.

If I lived on Fort Myers Beach or Sanibel Island, which experienced catastrophic destruction, my story wouldn't necessarily have such a rosy ending. The Ding Darling Reserve on Sanibel opened only partly in February, 2024, then more fully in April of 2024. It was devastated by the wind and waves. 

Maybe the natural landscape is recovering. I hope so. Given a little space and time, it seems that what we like to call the natural order will try to reassert itself, cling to its rhythms, even heal itself. But that is the big picture. In past decades and centuries one destroyed area wasn't so critical, because there were still hundreds, even thousands of unaffected acres, But now we've built out onto every available inch, and then some, especially along the coast, and we haven't left Mother Nature much recovery room. In fact, we build back stronger, deeper, higher. I am one of the guilty parties, living on what once was a barrier island, where I have no business being there at all. Yet I don't want to leave, and plenty more still want to move here.

(I'm  having computer problems, so can't include photos or sketches. I hope to solve this issue soon).

  

Shells

 Even though I lived on Fort Myers Beach early in my life, I've never been particularly interested in shells. That got me in trouble in the 4th grade, when we moved, and I changed schools. Miss Owens, my teacher, said something about making shell collections, which I interpreted as an optional activity.

So I didn't bother, and that bothered Miss Owens. A lot. During my public shaming before the class, I muttered something to the effect that I didn't have many shells. She wasn't having any of it, saying something like, "Here's a girl from Fort Myers Beach who claims she doesn't have a shell collection."

My defense was at least partly true. I suspect most of the stuff my siblings and I collected from the beach stayed behind when we moved. And I had been more intrigued with the highly polished stone-like shell fragments I found on the beach in Miami than the actual shells at home.

But after I got home that day my mother and I shuffled through various boxes and tin cans until we found enough shells to make an acceptable collection, and Miss Owens was placated.

Big life lesson learned: A suggestion from somebody who is ahead of you in the pecking order is never optional.

Banded Tulip 
A Subtly Beautiful, Predatory Marine Snail

Actually I owe a good bit to Miss Owens. She was a birding fanatic, and enrolled the entire class in the Junior Audubon Society. When we weren't chanting multiplication tables or reading our primers, we drew birds, we looked at pictures of birds, and learned the rudiments of identifying birds. What I know about birds, I learned mainly from Miss Owens, and I thank her for it. 

Miss Owens also discovered that I did not know how to tell time, and pointed out that scandalous fact to my mother, who passed the job to my father. With the help of a broken windup alarm clock, he taught me the basics of quarters and halves. I hate digital clocks because now I can't "see" those concepts.

 Last fall (2022) flooding from Hurricane Ian turned me and my husband into refugees. After several months with relatives we arranged to buy a small condo while we got in line for home repairs. The seller, realizing that we were in a bind, moved quickly, and probably left more things behind than she otherwise would have, among them boxes and boxes of shells. There also were glass globes filled with shells, vases filled with shells, trays filled with shells, and a smattering of shell craft. Fortunately, the local shell club was delighted to take all, but before I donated the swag, I saved a biggish box for myself.

My rationale was that they were for drawing, since I couldn't go to the devastated yard for botanical specimens. But the reality was that I got seduced by the myriad shapes, patterns and colors. And I discovered that shells are fascinating on many levels. 

They  also are hard to draw well. They are stringently symmetrical, and can't be faked very convincingly. Trying the figure out the degree of curve either by measuring or by "eyeballing" can be maddening, because it doesn't always work out. Some of my inaccurate sketches possess a certain charm, despite their lack of accuracy. But apart from a few happy accidents, wonkiness with shells doesn't cut it with me. I want my drawings to be perfect. Fat chance of that happening anytime soon!

Old Conch? Whelk? with Barnacles
Semi-Blind Contour Drawing

On some level I  "knew" that mollusks are not like hermit crabs, seeking ever larger vacant shells for shelter as they grow. But I'd never  really thought about their growth process either, until I read Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells by marine biologist Helen Scales.

It  turns out that shapes, proportions, and growth patterns of many natural things can be expressed mathematically. Indeed, these proportions and their relation to each other and the whole form the "golden mean," the backbone of ethics and esthetics in both Eastern and Western civilizations. This ratio is also sometimes called a logarithmic spiral, or the Fibonacci sequence. It is particularly obvious in pine cones and pineapples, and the cross-section of a chambered nautilus.

 Scales devotes an entire chapter of her highly readable and informative book to the astounding mathematical principles determining shell forms. You don't need to confront Blake's burning bright tiger to be overwhelmed by the "fearful symmetry" in nature. Though Blake's poem explored the dichotomy of good and evil, beauty and horror, there is still something breathtakingly awesome, even fearful, when we break through the surface and perceive order in the form of natural things. One quickly enters a realm in which esthetics, biology, mathematics and metaphysics merge.

I don't know what I thought they ate, but before I started reading about marine mollusks, I had no idea how fiercely predatory they can be. The "moon snail," or "shark eye," is a good example. This mollusk extrudes its mouth-containing foot (hence the term Gastropod) like the blob to cover its prey, often another moon snail. It then drills a perfect hole in the victim's shell with a barbed, tongue-like structure called a "radula," and starts digesting. It often preys on members of its own species. The shell on the far right shows a drill hole. They occur in browns, beiges and grays.

Shark-eye or Moon Snail

The cone snail uses its radula to inflict a painful sting to the unwary predadtor or human trying to collect it, and some species in the South Pacific  have a toxin powerful enough to kill an adult male. They like sandy bottoms in shallow waters, and several occur in the Gulf of Mexico. The alphabet cone is so named because its markings resemble hieroglyphics, and in some individuals, actual letters of the Roman alphabet. Though our local species eat mainly marine worms and other mollusks, some Pacific Ocean cones use their radula like a harpoon to catch fish (Helen Scales).

Florida Cone Snails
2nd Row: Florida Cone
Top and Bottom : Alphabet Cone
Third Row: Drill Hole in Top of Shell

Because they are so fragile, finding an intact fig shell is a rare event. They live in the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico around SW Florida,  and Caribbean Sea. Other species occur in Indonesia and Singapore. Our fig shells are mostly a pale beige, with a cross-hatched or linen-like texture. I haven't been able to ascertain whether local fig snails are carnivores.

Atlantic Fig Snail

So far I've only scratched the surface when it comes to drawing the contents of my shell box. Scallops, whelks, conchs, murexes, and others still tempt me. In spite of my less-than-stellar beginnings, I'm just as hooked on drawing them as I am on botanical subjects. I don't know that I'll ever master nature drawing to my satisfaction. But that is why this blog is about a sketchbook, not a gallery.

Some Sources:

Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum. shellmuseum.org. Click on "Shells & Science" tab.

"Central and South Florida Gastropod Seashell Identification Guide." libguides.nova.edu.

 Helen Scales. Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells. Bloomsbury Sigma. 2015. 

What Happened

 Months after Hurricane Ian's storm surge covered it with a couple of feet of brackish/salt water, slimy gray silt, and no doubt sewage and other pollutants, my Florida backyard is still there, but it's not a place you'd like to visit. 

Other than shoveling debris out of the way of the doors, cleaning up in the yard had to wait for the more urgent job of removing sodden carpet, books, sheetrock, furniture, and ruined appliances. I'd still be standing in the middle of a mess were it not for family and neighbors who did yeoman's service. 

 With no air conditioning, the black mold didn't wait to make its appearance. I lost most of my sketchbooks, journals and nature studies. Piling them up on the side of the road for the claw trucks to remove hurt. Perhaps they could have been salvaged, but there was no time for that. 

It was clear that I either was going to spend a good part of my remaining years trying to reclaim what was lost, or start living anew. I chose the latter, but it's not easy. The past keeps tugging at you, especially as memory fails and there are no photos or diaries to jog it.

Temporarily homeless and carless, we lived first with one sister, and then another, a good hour-and-one-half commute over I-75. There were no rentals or sales of either cars or apartments. Eventually we found a car, and then bought a small condo - a little over 800 square feet plus a reasonable screened patio. This space has become more and more like home, but I want to  move back into the house if and when it is habitable.

A host of problems starting roughly around 2020, and steadily worsening, already had interfered both with my engagement with the natural world, and consequently, my blogging. The frequency of my blog posts diminished from slow to a trickle. I lost the rejuvenation that regular interaction with nature can bring, along with the physical benefits of active gardening. I was doing very little, yet was always pressed for time, and bad went to worse. 

Then Ian hit, and that was that. I have been consciencious about packing and evacuating since we've lived here, and we've been hit by 2 major storms - Wilma in 2005 and Irma in 2017. Irma should have been a wakeup call, because several homes on our street flooded, and the debris line left by the surge came disturbingly close to our back door. But then Ian didn't seem to be headed our way initially, and already feeling half-defeated I did nothing to prepare, and we made the potentially fatal mistake of riding it out. 

Fortunately, a neighbor with a two-story house took us in, so we didn't get wet. Had we stayed, our lives wouldn't have been threatened because the water didn't rise high enough to drown us, but it would have been an extremely ugly experience, and in other worse-hit areas people who stayed died or had very close calls. As it was, looking at the rising water from the safety of a 2nd floor window was bad enough.

Streets and canals disappeared. All was just a gray sea, with the houses and vehicles poking up from it. Yet compared with the destruction experienced by Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel and Matlacha, we got off easy.

As for the yard, the native shrubs and small trees scarcely missed a beat, since we got very little wind, but the herbacious material was all killed to the ground. The bromeliads won't come back, because they have no underground parts or seed banks to regenerate. We didn't even get that much rain with Ian, and this winter has been exceptionally dry, with no flushing rains at all, so some plants, the bougainvilleas for instance, have had a hard time recovering. 

Other than removing debris like a stray recycling bin, various bottles of toxic cleaning solutions and fuel additives, a 5-gallon gas can with a mixture of gas and water, and even most of a pizza, I've done little with the yard. An initial cleanup was followed by a regrowth of weeds, and now the front is also littered with construction debris. At least the drought means that the weeds are not as robust as they will be in a few months, assuming seasonal rains resume. 

Even with all the work of rebuilding and living out of boxes, I've had time to sketch, but not the will. Now and again I get a little burst of energy, and scribble a little in my sketchbook. Sometimes I've tried to force it, with predictable ininspired results. 

I sit with the window open tonight, listening to the chuck-will's-widow calling from the mangroves. Even though we live in a large complex, there are glimpses of the natural world to be had. Alligators swim in the small bay outside, and the oak and mahogany trees lining the streets host a wealth of native tillandsias. Resurrection fern flourishes in the hedges, and I've even seen a good-sized black racer. The winter warblers have gone back north. The swallow-tailed kites, coming from South America, delighted us with their aeronautical skills. These magnificent birds epitomize grace, strength and beauty. Now they have headed back too. We don't see many, but throughout the day and early evening we see wading birds, anhingas, frigatebirds, ospreys and both black and turkey vultures. 

The bird's song in the stillness of the night is comforting. Here in Florida we have done, and continue to do our best to wipe out the natural ecosystem. But pockets still resist, and in spots even thrive. We haven't destroyed everything yet. And maybe I will take out my sketchbook tomorrow.

Weedy Euphorbias: Field Notes

 Almost ten years ago I got very interested in the weedy spurges popping up all over the yard. I had let the mulch groundcover evaporate under the unremitting Florida sunshine, and it seemed that members of this genus, Euphorbia, were colonizing every available sandy spot, of which there were many, and also growing in between cracks between the bricks in the driveway.  

I started drawing them because their gracefulness and complexity intrigued me. I also attempted to decipher their structure and identify the different species. It seems that I am attracted particularly to subjects so tiny and complex that I nearly blind myself trying to sort them out, and my weedy Euphorbias are a perfect example. 

Unidentified Spurge

The ones I have tend to be small and multi-branched, which can make drawing them rather tedious.  Deciphering and depicting their very complicated blooming structures, called "cyathia, " is a huge challenge. 

It's a poor workman who blames his materials, but I got discouraged by the drawbacks of the magnification available to me, and the project sputtered to a halt. I also lost confidence that I was drawing accurately.

I noticed the plants again a few weeks back as I was strolling around with no purpose, and thought about resuming my old project. You have to get down to, or practically down to, groundlevel to appreciate these diminutive weeds. Getting down isn't so much a problem, but years later, getting back up is increasingly arduous! 

I dug out my old sketches, and was surprised by how far along I actually had gotten. Some were basically diagrammatic, but others showed, although crudely, a hint of the plants' innate gracefulness. In fact, I was gratified to go back to my field guides and discover that the common name of one, Chamaesyce hypericifolia, is "graceful sandmat."

Euphorbia  hyssopifolia?
Eyebane

This plant is graceful, but it seems more to resemble the species hyssopifolia than hypericifolia. The leaves as depicted bear some resemblance to hyssop leaves, which are about the same shape. It also resembles plants of this species as shown in Internet images. But my notes give no hint about the color of the cyathia, stems or leaves. I drew the 2 bottom-most  leaves seem with toothed margins, but I drew the margins as all the other leaves as smooth (entire). I also made a note about this, which could prove important. The drawing is pretty primitive, but it does show that the inflorescences are on stalks, and that they sit just above a pair of leaves or bracts.

Now the plot thickens. The descriptions of this plant that I can find show that it has finely serrated leaf margins. Is this another species? Did I not draw it correctly? I also have no notes about where it was growing. Most of our yard is dry and sunny but there are parts that are more moist and shadier. I have a note that the leaves have stipules, but I haven't drawn them, and that could be important. I didn't draw any seed, either, and now I find that seeds can be identifiers in Euphorbias. I also discovered that the plant has been reclassified as from Chamaesyce hyssopifolia to Euphorbia hyssopifolia.

The stems between leaves (internodes) look a little zig-zaggy, but I didn't make a note whether the plant was wilting or had a sort of drooping habit. At least I recorded a date, Nov. 11, 2015.

Is this the same species? Months later - Regardless, it is quite pretty.

This might or might not be the same species. Often drawings give more information that photos, and this photo clearly shows colors, serrate leaf margins, a slightly oblique, or unequal base, and a cymose inflorescence.  Since the photo is from the top, looking down, it doesn't give a good idea of the habit. If I had made more notes when I made the pencil drawing, I might be able to id both.

Now let's look at a sketch that has some color.

Euphorbia hypericifolia?
Graceful Sandmat?

Here the stems appear red and hairless. The stipules look magenta, which is characteristic of hypericifolia. The leaves have slightly toothed or irregular margins. The base of the leaf is not even, "oblique" in botanese, and are wider than the tip.  I have no notes regarding the hairiness or smoothness of the leaves.  I show a little of the branching pattern, but not enough to convey a clear idea of the habit. While it appears  to be upright, I don't indicate whether the specimen is the whole plant, or just a part.  There's no note as to whether it is multi-trunked, spreading, weeping, etc. The only thing I can glean about the inflorescences from this sketch is that they appear to be at the ends of the stems. 

One more sketch.

Details of Inflorescence

Even though the page is disorganized, at least I have recorded some hard information, such as relative sizes, notes about the seeds, and  a quick habit sketch. The leaf margins seem toothed or somewhat serrate, and the inflorescence is clearly cymose. Even so, I don't quite have enough information to make a solid identification. 

I know a lot more about botany and scientific illustration now than I did when I made these drawings, though one never knows it all. I have pages of such studies/sketches, and hundreds of photos. Since I have an actual body of work to evaluate, I can see clear deficiencies in my sketches and notes, and can start improving my work considerably. 

Some of my takeaways:

I need more patience and self-confidence while I am sketching and drawing. My old drawings of weedy Euphorbias in our yard aren't "bad," but they don't go far enough. If I'd had a little more patience, and a little more faith in my ability to record things accurately, I'd be much farther along.

I need to make detailed written notes along with my drawings, or at least label extensively and clearly. What seems clear at the moment may look ambiguous later - are there fine hairs on the stem/leaf/etc. or is my pencil line just blurry from the friction of the other pages in the sketchbook? More importantly, writing a summary first really would make me look at the plant that much more in detail and in its totality. 

I need to pay attention to all the parts, to the extent possible. I can't uproot a specimen in a protected area or cultivated garden, but if I don't recognize the plant, I don't know which details are going to be critical in the identification, so I need to record as much information as I can, and not just be seduced by graceful form, color, or leaf pattern. Obviously, I am not going to be able to find all stages from young leaves to seed on every plant I draw at any given time, so I need as many reference points as possible to connect later drawings to earlier ones.

The sketchbook format is not conducive to an intensive study of a species or genus. I love my sketchbooks, but when I am trying to zero in on specifics, I can't have dozens of disconnected drawings scattered through various pages and various books. I'm not going to give up my sketchbooks, but if I realize I am on the way to getting "hooked" I need to start keeping a specific portfolio, organized by real or tentative ids. That would mean drawing on separate sheets of paper that can be collated, revised, and stored so that the drawings don't get worn or fuzzy from rubbing against each other. I am reluctant to cannibalize my existing sketchbooks, but it may come down to that, too. 

I'm excited, though I'm not quite sure how I am going to develop my work, how to make the pages less random and more esthetically pleasing, and also how to integrate written comments with graphic notes. I also need to exert discipline so that it is clear which drawings are of the same specimen, and include dates. I have to discover a practical way of relating photos to specific specimens and drawings, and also to make notes on how and when and where the photos are taken. I've got to beef up my technical skills to find out what options my digital camera and smart phone offer in that regard.

I don't know whether I'll eventually make any contributions to the very real category of Citizen Science, or even who might eventually want to look at my work. I may be reinventing an old wheel. But regardless of those ends, I will be expanding my own education and enjoyment, and that in itself is worth every minute.

Florida Fishpoison Tree

 Piscidia piscupula, the Florida fish poison tree, Jamaica dogwood, or fishfuddle tree, is a tropical hardwood native to south Florida and the Keys, the West Indies, Bahamas, and parts of Central America and Mexico. It is semi-deciduous, ie - shedding its leaves quickly, remaining bare only for a short time  before pushing out new growth. Flowers appear on bare or nearly bare stalks. It hit its flowering peak in the last week of May, and first week of June this year. 

Piscidia piscipula in bloom; 
edge of Johnson Bay, Isles of Capri, FL

The name "Jamaica dogwood" refers to its use in boat building. South Florida naturalist Roger Hammer reports that "dogs" are spikes or bars used as fasteners in ship construction. The flowers certainly don't look anything like the dogwoods most North Americans know. The wood is very  hard and apart from boats, is used for wood carving, fence posts and charcoal. 

Flowers

Typical "pea" flowers are borne in elongated clusters (racemes), and appear before, and sometimes overlapping with the year's new growth. Under magnification, they are hairy, especially the cup-like calyx, which appears to be a soft grayed lavender, like a mole's skin, due to the tiny hairs. Parts of the flower itself also bear silky hairs that are pressed flat on their surface. Flower color can vary quite a bit, from white tinged with pink or lavender, to red, to muddy gray. Like other members in the family, they attract a lot of pollinators, especially bees.

The bark and leaves contain rotenone, among other chemicals, and when tossed in the water, stun small fish, which float to the surface and can be harvested, hence the name "fishpoison." This practice is illegal in Florida, though we've reached such a state of general ignorance that I doubt anybody under 60 even knows the trick. 

Rotenone supposedly doesn't harm warm-blooded animals, but the plant contains plenty of other substances that do. Dried root bark is used  both internally and externally in folk medicine to relieve pain and insomnia to the point of unconsciousness, and to treat nervous disorders and skin ailments, but the plant's toxic/medicinal potential remains largely uninvestigated. Dried extract is available on the Internet, but I don't plan to play lab rat myself! For one thing, there seem to be no generally accepted dosage guidelines, but plenty of warnings.

The tree, which can reach 30-50 feet tall, with a broad, spreading crown, can make a striking specimen where it is not crowded. In shade and  competition from other plants it stays pretty spindly and unimpressive.  Osorio calls it "underutilized" in the Florida landscape. A sucking insect, the Jamaica Dogwood Psylla, occasionally can make the leaves unsightly, but again, acccording to Roger Hammer, doesn't make it undesirable in the landscape. It is highly drought tolerant once established, and grows behind the dune line on beaches, and in sand, rocky or gravelly soil elsewhere. Rather than falling over in storms, it tends to lose branches. 

Multi-trunked specimen,
Parking Lot, Collier-Seminole State Park
Collier County, FL

What first may appear to be leaves are actually leaflets. Like other members of the family, the fishpoison tree has compound leaves. They alternate along the branch, and typically have 4-8 pairs of leaflets plus a single terminal leaflet. The leaflets can vary in shape from more or less oblong to more oval, and the tips can be blunt, rounded or even pointed. They are fairly leathery on  top, and hairs  can give the underside a velvety feel. The leaves appear near the end of the flowering period. Leaves and individiual leaflets in the subfamily Faboidae, to which Piscidia piscipula belongs, are characterized by a swollen structure where they join the petiole or stem, called the "pulvinus." The leaves are a dark, matte green on top, and a lighter, softer shade on the underside. Varying pressure levels within the pulvinus cause the leaves and leaflets to fold up, seemingly at nighttime, but studies have shown that this is a biological rhythm not triggered by light levels. 

Piscidia
3 Mature Leaves; 3 Emerging Leaves

Members of Faboideae also are associated with the famous "nitrogen-fixing" bacteria, varioius species of Rhizobium. These symbiotic soil organisms "infect" root hairs of certain plants, especially members of Faboideae, where they transform atmospheric nitrogen into an ammonium form that can be used by the plant to produce plant protein. In turn, the bacteria gain carbohydrates from the host plant. Usually each Rhizobium species is limited to a single host species. Such complexity is probably one reason supposed "restoration" projects may fail, for replanting alone is a pretty simplistic approach. 

Black seeds are borne in a papery winged structure that passes from pink, green, yellow to brown. The tree apparently will grow readily from seed, as well as cuttings, so readily, in fact, that limbs used for fence posts make take root!

Seed Pods

The native Cassius Blue butterfly and the black and silver Hammock Skipper use the leaves as larval hosts. 

-----

I have relied heavily on the following sources for this article:

Roger Hammer. Florida Keys Wildflowers. Falcon. 2004. p.177. Email conversation.

Rufino Osorio. A Gardener's Guide to Florida Native Plants. University Press of Florida. 2001. pp. 265-6.

J. Paul Scurlock. Native Trees & Shrubs of the Florida Keys. Laurel Press. 1987, p. 123.

Wendy B. Zomlefer. Guide to Flowering Plant Families. University of North Carolina Press. 1994. pp. 160-166.

What Goes Around Comes Around - Musings from a Disjointed Year

 Or is it the other way around?

One evening in mid-March my husband remarked that there was something resembling,"a mocking bird on steroids," in the Simpson's Stopper. It was dusk, and all I saw was a dark silhouette flying off. I reckoned that it must have been a bluejay, though I really wasn't convinced. 

A few mornings later I had my answer when I startled a pair of brown thrashers that were searching for food by vigorously tossing bits of mulch with side-to-side, sweeping head motions. By the way, they made pretty deep holes. They left sometime in late April or early May - my last recorded sighting was April 27th.

We were visited by a pair of brown thrashers for the first time, as far as I know, in the winter/spring of 2018. The region was still recuperating from a direct hit by Hurricane Irma in September, 2017, and I attributed their presence to a general natural disruption. 

I hadn't seem them in the intervening years, but that doesn't mean they haven't been here. For one thing, our garden and the ones of our adjoining neighbors have recovered and filled out considerably, so these shy birds have a much better chance of hiding. 

For another, I haven't been outside as much. I injured my elbow cleaning up after Irma, so there are times that I physically can't do the down and dirty gardening I love. Increasing age and decreasing agility also meant giving up our beloved day-sailing activity. Instead of spending more time outside to compensate, I retreated indoors.

 For reasons that are not clear to me at all, I virtually stopped sketching outside. Botanical illustration requires an attention to detail largely unavailable in field sketching, but analyzing and depicting a part of a plant indoors doesn't produce the whole story. Field sketching includes context - what else is growing, what the weather and seasons are doing, what animals may be skittering around. After you've sat sketching for a while, birds either don't notice you, or decide you're not too much a threat to go about their business nearby. Small snakes have such a ground-level perspective that they just slither over my feet, but of course, disappear quickly when I jump from their touch. 

And field sketching, like sailing and gardening,  not only gets you out of the house - it gets you out of yourself, away from your own belly-button. It becomes a sort of meditation - not a meditation about anything - just a state of mind without thoughts - a pure sort of concentration on conditions around you at the moment. 

Encyclia tampensis 'alba' - Bloomed in May

Blame it on COVID isolation, politics, world events, old age  - whatever - I recently realized that instead of heading out into the yard with my coffee and sketchbook before and after breakfast, I turn on the computer to read about the most recent disasters. That has to change, but bad habits persist, while good ones are hard to re-establish. 

Apart from tanking my productivity and contributing to a general sense of malaise, this virtual life I've been leading has deeper implications. 

When I stopped recording the version of the natural world that exists in our own backyard, I lost touch with something bigger. Edward Wilson's philosophy in his very personal account Biophilia: The Human Bond with Other Species (1984), proposes that  our very humanity  is rooted in our co-evolution with and along with all other life forms. In that sense he arguess that conservation should be understood in terms of, "protection of the human spirit." (p.140). According to Wilson, and borne out by my own recent experience, we need to maintain contact with the natural world to feel fully ourselves.

The increasing digitalization and virtualization of our daily lives threatens dire consequences. How  much of the alienation behind homelessness, dropout rates, mental illness and even murder can be linked to our increasing estrangement with the organic world in which we evolved? The computer is sometimes called a "window on the world," but have we forgotten about just looking out a real window at a real universe? Tethered to our devices, we risk floating thorough our lives with no anchors at all. 

Simplistic sloganeering or "back to nature" campaigns won't do it. But somehow, as a society, we need to unplug from the sterile, technological ersatz world in which we've started living, and establish a connection and appreciation for what's left of the real. 

Ludisia discolor - Terrestrial Orchid (not native)

Back to local reality, we've had our annual visitation by flocks of Southern White and Florida White butterflies. The swallowtail kites graced our skies with their acrobatics, and too soon, returned to South America. Songbirds like the thrashers visited on their return migrations northward. The Jamaica Caper and Seven-Year Apple are again covered with fragrant blooms, and the brilliant red-orange blooms of royal poincianas justify their Spanish name, "Flamboyant." 

There is something deeply comforting in these rhythms and patterns. As much as we try, we still haven't quite destroyed the natural world. Weeds, even flowers, still sprout in cracks in the concrete, and the Gaillardias have reseeded faithfully in what I euphemistically call the garden. Winters are too warm now for my native iris to bloom, and rising tide levels are killing mangroves. But the tides still rise and fall acccording to their rhthyms, not ours. 

Not everything in the garden is lovely, but at least there still are fragments of that original garden, and if we only will go out and look, we may be graced by glimpses of it. 

Royal Conundrum - Killing the Monarch Butterfly with "Kindness"

The monarch butterfly population has been in serious decline for years now, something many gardeners know. To compensate for habitat loss, gardeners have been encouraged to plant more milkweeds, the insect's larval host plant. But this has led to unforeseen negative consequences, especially in warm winter regions of the U.S.

Native milkweeds can be hard-to-impossible to find, so the tropical, showy "scarlet" milkweed has become ubiquitous in garden centers across the country. This plant, Asclepias curassavica, is native to the American tropics and has spread to pantropical regions worldwide. It has become invasive in some areas, and threatens to become a pest in South Florida. 

Many monarch butterflies harbor a protozoan, Ophryocystis elektroscirrha (OE), that can weaken the adult, prevent the pupa from emerging from the chrysalis, or deform the wings. Monarchs visiting milkweeds deposit spores when they visit milkweeds. Normally, migration culls weakened individuals, and the OE spores die when the plants die back in winter. The plants grow back in spring and summer with fresh, uninfected leaves. But in areas with warm winters tropical milkweed grows all year, thus maintaining high levels of OE spores. Areas of Georgia, coastal Carolinas, Florida and the Gulf Coast have become hotspots of infection.

Monarch on Scarlet Milkweed

Apart from the immediate threat to individual monarchs, year-round milkweed is also, probably more ominously, threatening the migration itself. The presence of the milkweed affects the butterfly's hormonal balance, and works as a trigger to make it reproduce. So monarchs that find themselves in areas with warm winters don't migrate, and a year-round population gets established. With increasing warming trends this area of permanent, sickly individuals will only increase. 

Migration plays a critical role in maintaining a robust gene pool, for it culls badly infected individuals, which simply don't survive the trip. But migration may play other vital roles as well, in ways  we haven't discovered. 

Some organizations like the Xerces Society and the Florida Native Plant Society actively campaign against the use of tropical milkweeds. Some people, though, citing the drastic declines in the monarch population, feel that keeping the numbers up is of primary importance. 

Weaning gardeners away from tropical milkweed is going to be a monumental project, especially since it was promoted so aggressively as a solution to monarch population decline. 

Monarch on Asclepias curassavica

In and of itself, I'm not particularly heartbroken over the loss of scarlet milkweed in our yard. Due to neglect, they've sort of died out this spring anyway. It is a water hog, and the stems quickly get leggy and woody. It also is a magnet for aphids and spider mites, which would make any self-respecting female monarch look for greener pastures. 

Aphid-Infested Milkweed

Finding natives or even native seeds, is going to be a long, drawn out process. Some mail order nurseries offer native milkweed species that theoretically would grow here, but I'd have a better chance with offspring originating  much closer to home. 

Even though they might be the same species, a plant grown in the mid-Atlantic or Midwest would be quite different genetically from one that has adapted to South Florida conditions. They might not even look the same, they might not  survive, and they certainly wouldn't do anything to maintain genetic diversity. Ecologically even North Florida differs greatly from the southern part of the state.

Asclepias incarnata, "Swamp Milkweed," a Native

But there's a further complication!

Whether it comes to weather patterns, the density of bear fur, and many other things, matters often are much more complicated when it comes to the southern peninsula of Florida. It seems that there is an established, non-migratory monarch population south of Lake Okeechobee.  The most-studied migration routes don't cover us, especially on the sw coast, though we might get a few strays. I have had basically year-round monarchs since I began butterfly gardening around 1995. Over the years I have seen newly-emerged monarchs with deformed wings, but not a lot. Even without the scarlet milkweed, all of our native milkweeds might not go completely dormant during our winters, so a small population could persist theoretically without our help. The assumption has to be that the infection rate in our monarch population is close to 100%. 

So, in a way, it doesn't matter whether we keep planting Asclepias curassavica, but it goes against the grain now that I'm aware of a problem. While I don't like the plant, and getting rid of it would not stop the problem of diseased butterflies, it still seems somehow that replacing it with its cousins that "belong here" would be ethically as well as esthetically better. Now comes the hard part - actually doing it.