May - Prelude to Summer

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Where has May gone? I feel the time running through my hands like water. ( I stole that image from my sister-in-law,  E.).

Apart from a few afternoons, it hasn't been terribly hot yet; in that regard it clearly is not summer.

South Florida does have seasonal patterns. Things start happening by late February or early March, and the pace gets increasingly hectic until the onset of drowning rains and crushing heat of deep summer applies some brakes.

Every plant and animal seems intent on reproducing. For plants that means germination, growing, flowering, seed production all at a dizzying rate. I can't draw fast enough to record the abundance, much less the process.

Despite drought*, abundant sunshine and seemingly incessant wind, the yard is full of furiously blooming plants, crowding each other, sprawling over each other, all vying for the most light. White and lavender Heliotropium groundccovers, Gaillardias, Coreopsis, Dune Sunflower, Camphor Weed  (Pluchea rosea), Goldenrod, Blue Porterweed, Gopher Apple (Licania michauxii), Vinca, Scarlet Sage (Salvia coccinea), and Bidens alba are all vying for attention up to a few feet off the ground. Frangipani, Jamaica Caper, 7-Year Apple (Genipa clusiifolia), Red Geiger, Bougainvillia, and Simpson's Stopper round out the list for flowering trees and shrubs.

Intensely Fragrant Genipa clusiifolia

Coral Honeysuckle and the bizarre flowers of Pipevine represent the vines. Not to  mention a few blooming Tillandsias and orchids. And this is all happening on a 60 x 110-foot lot that also holds a house, driveway and sidewalks. Apart from a few boat trips back into the mangroves, I haven't managed to get out into the natural world for several months, but things are happening there, too.

The first tiny Easstern Lubber grasshopper nymphs, which popped out of the ground in early February, have turned into adults. Birds are nesting. Osprey "chicks" have mostly fledged by now. Tropical hardwoods like gumbo limbo and mahogany are shedding their leaves in anticipation of summer's rains.

Lubber Grasshopper Nymphs. These individuals have molted several times already.

Adult Lubber. It was crawling up a screen. Don't know why I didn't sketch  that.

Monarch caterpillars are devouring milkweed faster than I can coax it to grow. Even if you can find plants in garden centers, by now they usually already have caterpillars or eggs on them. I feel like a factory worker in the old Soviet Union. As soon as he met his quota for the month, the reward was a higher quota to meet. And on and on. It's the same with the caterpillars - raise one or two successfully, and before you know it you've got multiple broods chomping down leaves and even stems. If I can't find some more milkweed, some of my caterpillars are going to starve.

I would like to use native milkweeds instead of the West Indian scarlet milkweed (Asclepius curassavica), but they just aren't available. Even my trusty native plant nurseryman hasn't had success bringing them through our hot and humid summers.

Asclepias perennis. I can't bring it through our summers.

Perhaps we butterfly gardeners are pushing the monarchs' range farther south than it should be, and encouraging them to stick around instead of migrating, but we are in the range of their cousins the queens and soldiers. The fact that both have been around for a while makes me think that there must be some native milkweed(s) surviving further inland. White twinevine  (Sarcostemma clausum) is one possibility - I've seen it growing in several locales, but it wouldn't provide a great deal of forage, so there must be others.  For some reason the queen population in my yard has crashed. I used to have swarms. Last year I had just a few, and I haven't seen any at all so far in 2018.


The downside of all the vegetative abundance in the yard is that there are far too many plants for it to be a garden. At present large parts of this small plot are virtually impassible for anything other than rodents, reptiles and birds. I hate to rip out perfectly healthy plants, but from time to time I have to harden my heart. It would be nice to have a garden again.

A Riot of Color; Not So Good for Moving Around

*Our drought has been replace by heavy rains. We've had over 9 inches in just one week here at the house, and plenty more is in the forecast. Just another way Mother Nature turns things upside down.

Weeds I Like III - Southern Fleabane

Erigeron quercifolia, "Southern Fleabane," or "Oakleaf Fleabane," bloomed vigorously all through March and April, and has gone to seed now. Individual plants will bloom sporadically throughout most of the year, but spring is the time for the big show.

"Big show" is misleading, because this diminutive annual is one of the quiet bloomers. It just does its job, does it well, without fanfare, and in general is overlooked completely. However, in March and April masses of it adorn roadsides bordering ditches and  brackish bays. The pale heads seem to float above the ground like a layer of dew-bedazzled spider webs. Pollinators like it, but most homeowners who know it regard it only as a turf weed, if they are aware of it at all.

I've always liked this plant, yet I can't find any photos or notes, and I have precious few sketches of it.

The heads (see my post from Jan. 25, '18) are no bigger than a dime. Over 100 tiny white or slightly lavender ray flowers surround a central disk packed with bright orange-yellow disk flowers. The plant arises from a basal rosette, with clasping, often lobed, leaves with hairy undersides and edges.  A many-branched inflorescence, with each branch ending in a single head, arises from a central stalk, which is hairy to sandpapery in texture. Leaves on the inflorescence are sparse and smaller than those in the basal rosette. The entire plant grows 8 to 10 inches tall, possibly taller in particularly favorable  habitat.

Erigeron is a large, cosmopolitan genus in the family Asteraceae, or Composite.  The USDA Plants Database shows Erigeron quercifolius growing throughout Florida, west through Louisiana, and north through Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina, but the Flora of North America limits it to the southeast. It likes moist to wet situations, and Tobe, Burks, et. al. classify it as a wetland plant. (Florida Wetland Plants. 1998).

 It actually seems able to cope with fairly dry conditions as well. Though it grows only in part of my swale -  the lowest point on the property, where there must be at least some moisture beneath the rock - it still blooms vigorously in our dry, windy spring conditions.

Canadian fleabane, Erigeron canadensis, is well known in herbal medicine with both external and internal uses. Some of the conditions reportedly treated by it include coughs, lack of appetite, hemorrhages, diarrhea, and kidney and liver problems. The common explanation of how it got its common name is that people thought that the dried plants repelled fleas. A more likely origin is Culpepper's description of the seeds as black, shiny and small like fleas in his 17th century herbal.
(A Comprehensive Description of Nearly All Herbs with their Medicinal Properties and Directions for Compounding the Medicines Extracted from Them. 1652). Southern fleabane probably shares some of these medicinal qualities, though it doesn't seem to have been studied.

This charming little annual probably is a little too wild to be a reliable part of a flower border, but might be a good plant to give interest to a moist meadow. Next year I'll be careful to pay more attention and sketch it more.