Yes, South Florida Has Seasons!
People often
lament that there are no seasons in Florida, especially South Florida. I’ll
admit they are subtle, but they do exist. The big divide is wet vs. dry, but there are other changes as well. October is a transitional month - it may be wet, dry, or both. For us here on the coast, the rain faucet was turned off the second week of October, and I have used just about all of the rainwater I managed to save during the summer. Bright, breezy days dry plants out in a hurry.
It definitely gets noticeably cooler and drier after September. Though we can have hot and humid days all year, the relative humidity does drop in the fall, and it just doesn't "feel" like summer any more. We can turn off the air conditioning and open the windows again. What a liberation! Skies tend to be a more intense blue, as the summer haze disappears.
One of the
first signs of autumn – the arrival of huge swarms of
blackbirds and starlings - makes me very melancholy. They swarm like something out of Hitchcock, lining up on the
power lines by the hundreds, or making sweeps of open lots and lawns. I could live
with the blackbirds, because they are at least native, but I hate the destructiveness of the ever-increasing hordes of starlings. We have starlings all year, but our summer numbers are augmented by northern migrants.
Another sign of autumn is the same
as “up north.” The asters start blooming. The Elliott’s Asters in our front yard got so blown and burned by Irma
that they may not bloom this year, but late summer and autumn definitely are glory time for many members of the Asteraceae.
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| Aster elliottii - Elliott's Aster |
Elliott's Aster is a diminutive plant, with heads no larger than a dime. You need a clump to have any garden impact, but that is not hard given the plant's suckering habit. In fact, unless you have room to spare, you will be pulling out plants regularly to keep it within bounds. The plant occurs naturally in swampy or marshy places. It grows in a lower area of my garden, which stays more moist than the rest, but is scarcely swampy unless we have a particularly wet summer. During the winter, when we get little rain, it may go dormant and disappear entirely, the way northern perennials do to survive cold weather. In spite of its eagerness to take over the garden, it really is a charming plant, and various pollinators love it.
Autumn is the time Florida's beautiful native grasses come into bloom.
The chalky-silver/blue-green blades of Elliott's Lovegrass,
Eragrostis elliottii, make it lovely even out of bloom. In late summer to early fall it sends up hundreds of tall, delicate, multi-branched bloom stalks that first bear tiny flowers, and later multiple seed heads (spikelets). In full bloom the plant seems to be covered with a fine white or golden-beige mist. I don't water it, so it turns brown, and may even disappear during winter. Maybe this year I will water one clump to see whether the foliage will persist. It will make a clump about 2-3 feet wide and tall. My only complaint with this plant is that its brittle seed stalks break off and tumble in the wind. They always want to blow in the door when I go in and out, and they have the very irritating habit of working their way up my pants leg. It's impossible to fish them out without taking my trousers off. A real nuisance! But worth it.
The blooms of Pink Muhly Grass,
Muhlenbergia capillaris, are even more delicate and diffuse than those of Elliott's Love grass. Muhly grass comes into bloom a little later, though the showy times overlap. Muhly grass is one of our most beautiful native grasses. It likes seasonal moisture with a winter dry-down, so it is perfect for my yard. It has a more vase-like form than Elliott's love grass, and also grows taller.
The rising or setting sun shining through the flowers gives a golden sheen to their pink/purple coloration - one of the many beautiful sights provided by Florida native plants.
Fall is mating time for the ospreys. Their melodic, piercing chirps and squeals mark the early mornings and early evenings. They are in the sky a lot, performing their aerial displays. This year the ospreys have more work than usual, since many of their nests were destroyed when Hurricane Irma toppled trees, power poles, and channel markers.
Migratory birds start arriving, Palm Warblers being among the first.
To quote Morton C. Winsberg,
Florida Weather. (University of Central Florida Press, 1990, page 26): "{Those} who find Florida's climate monotonous ...might learn to use criteria other than temperature to differentiate one season from another." There are lots of signs that summer is over - we just have to get outside and look around us.
Carphephorus corymbosus (Chaffhead) - A Florida Native Plant in the Aster Family
