White Mangrove and Buttonwood

I have been working hard on finishing pieces for a show in January, which means I 've been neglecting sketching and blogging. I'm taking a little time now trying to catch up for a while.

White mangrove, Laguncularia racemosa, and buttonwood, Conocarpus erectus, both bloomed in late July, and well into August. They are in the family Combretaceae, which also includes the black olive, sometimes used as a shade tree. My neighborhood in Miami was lined with these stately trees until Hurricane Andrew uprooted dozens - maybe hundreds - of them along with huge slabs of sidewalks.

White mangrove, obviously, is classified as a mangrove, but buttonwood, which lacks special adaptations to cope with highly saline, saturated, and oxygen-starved soils, is considered a "mangrove associate." Typically it will be the most landward, highest and driest species in a mangrove forest habitat. It often grows in mixed stands with the white mangrove. However, white mangrove requires at least moist soils, whereas buttonwood is very drought-tolerant.

White Mangrove, Laguncularia racemosa

The presence of  2 bumps, one on each side of the petiole just beneath the leaf, is characteristic of the Combretaceae. They once were thought to excrete salt, but the general consensus now is that they are "extra-floral nectaries," glands outside the flowers that secrete nectar. It's possible that the reliable source of nectar attracts ants and wasps, which then protect the plant from leaf-eating insects. Only the new leaves of white mangrove produce nectar.(1)*

White Mangrove, Extra-floral Nectaries in Center of Illustration

Another, really cool, feature of this plant family is the presence of "domatia" on the undersides of the leaves. "Domacium" is Latin for "house, home, etc." - think "domicile." A domatium on a plant is a pit, pouch, or tuft of hairs that serves as a residence for ants or tiny arthropods like mites. There probably is a symbiotic or mutualistic relationship between creature and leaf.

Under magnification the domatia on these 2 plants look like mini volcanos, with the crater being the home. They don't go all the way through the leaf, but do make slight bumps on the other side. In buttonwoods the domatia tend to be lined up along the midvein where secondary veins branch off. They are located about a quarter of an inch inside the outer margins on the white mangrove.

Domatia, Buttonwood on Left; White Mangrove on Right;
Expanded View of Domatium on Right

The white  mangrove is primarily a "salt excretor," getting rid of salt through its leaves. Lenticels on the trunk help with air exchange in very wet situations, and it can send up "peg roots," like the pneumataphores of black mangroves, to aid in air exchange if it is inundated regularly.

White mangrove and black mangroves are the most salt-tolerant of our mangroves, able to survive in areas with salt concentrations as high as 40-50,000 ppm, but buttonwood is usually destroyed at concentrations of 40,000 ppm. (2)

At first glance, the idea that the red mangrove, which can grow directly in the salty water of estuaries,  is  the least salt-tolerant of the group seems counter-intuitive, at least to me. Actually, constant tidal flushing and freshwater runoff into these estuarine habitats reduce salinity in the red mangrove root zone. In fact, the red mangrove reaches its most luxurient growth along tidal rivers and even in freshwater swamps if it is not out-competed. White and black mangrove are flooded only intermittently, so salts accumulate in their  soils.

The white mangrove gets its common name from its light-colored bark. The leaves are opposite, succulent, yellow-green and oval, and get to about 3 inches long. They may be notched at their tops.  They can be shiny, but sometimes are dulled by salt residue. The plant can get up to 60' tall, but often remains shrubbier. It is the least cold tolerant of our mangrove species.

White Mangrove in Mixed Stand with Other Species 

Vase-or-cup-shaped greenish white flowers, which can be mildly fragrant, are produced on stalks. As is the case with other mangroves, the fruit is a propagule. Some of my sources say it germinates while still on the plant, others say it germinates only upon dispersal. It stays viable for about 35 days. The propagule is green, narrow at the base, widest in the middle, and ribbed. It gets up to about a half-inch long.

Flowers

The white mangrove has a rare means of reproduction, called androdioecy.  Trees produce either male flowers or hermaphroditic flowers. Most of the white mangroves in Florida are hermaphroditic, with the frequency of males declining as you move northward along the peninsula. In Mexico, there are proportionately many more "male" trees. The sex difference between the 2 types of flowers is reflected by differing sizes and behaviors of the pollinators that visit. (3)

Propagules

Buttonwood will have to wait for another post. All this is probably boring for normal people, but for a plant nerd like me it is utterly fascinating.




Notes and Sources:

1; 3. Beverly J. Rathcke. Mangroves: Ecology and Reproduction. Laguna Bacalar Institute Symposium, 12/28/08. I can't get a link to work, but if you search for "The Wild and Wonderful World of White Mangrove" you should find the article.

2. Frank Craighead Sr. The Trees of South Florida. Vol !: The Natural Environments and Their Succession. University of Miami Press. 1971. P.71.

The Non-Doing Pear

My mother made the best pear preserves I've ever tasted. They were so rich and syrupy smooth you'd swear they had butter in them. As my University of Florida botany professor used to say (He was a mushroom specialist, and was talking about the culinary delights of some Florida fungi), "you'd think you'd died and gone to heaven" after eating them.

They were wonderful on a hot biscuit, but sometimes we just ate them out of the jar. And while they were deliciously sweet, they had just enough balance, without being tart, so you didn't feel like you needed to run for the toothbrush after indulging.

The fruits were hard and gritty, and she cooked them just soft enough, but never mushy. Part of the appeal of my mother's preserves was their wonderful brown color. The preserves were a maple-syrup, honey-brown, not the anemic white things I see on internet recipes. But all it was was sugar, water, pears and spices, cooked just right. I never had pears, and foolishly, never asked for her recipe.

I don't think the pears she used were much good for eating out of hand. Maybe she deliberately picked them early, or it wasn't the best variety for my parents' north Florida home, or just a manifestation of the tree's generally unsatisfactory nature. (More on that later).

I've often wondered if they were the same kind of pears that grew on my grandmother's farm in South Carolina. When I was little, taking the cows to and from the barn and pasture was a special treat. My Aunt Iola had us children "leading" Red, who not only was the dominant cow and knew perfectly well how to get where she was going, but also very affable and docile. My aunt really had to watch Jersey, a mean cow who would jump the fence into the cornfield at any opportunity.

Back to the pears. One of the delays in the daily journeys was caused by old pear trees. Their hard, inedible fruits littered the ground, and the cows scarfed down as many as they could before my aunt got impatient and hurried them along. They probably made good preserves if you got to them before the cows, but I was too young to wonder. Now that I'd like to ask there's nobody left to answer.

I am not sure if the pear tree my parents planted in north Florida every truly flourished. My parents said that they stood under it one winter debating whether to cut it down because it never "did" anything. Being unhurried folk, and not unkind, they granted it one more year, whereupon it bloomed and fruited gloriously, like it never had done before, and the whole family rejoiced over the resulting bounty of pear preserves.

Thereafter they made a ritual of standing under said tree every winter, threatening it gently or not so gently, with the prospect of ending it all. And from then on, as the story goes, the tree was a faithful producer in spite of its sorry appearance.

My mother has been dead for 4 years now, and my father even longer, but the pear tree remains - just barely. It's not so much clinging to life as gradually letting go. We survivors go back as often as we can, but there's nobody to give it a good scare, and worse, nobody to use whatever harvest there might be. So the non-doing pear tree persists -  a weathered sentinel from the golden-brown sweetness of a past time.
.....................................

I clipped this branchlet on a visit, but colored it after I returned to south Florida. I don't know whether the hard brown spheres were immature fruits or shriveled remnants. The leaves were bright green when I picked it, but turned their "fall" colors after a few days. Even though the sketch wouldn't be quite biologically accurate, I couldn't resist trying to capture these vibrant hues.

Oaks - It's Always Much More Complicated

I spent most of the 3nd week of September in North Florida, on a tract of land bordered by the Suwannee River. Though I have known this place for 40-some years, I never had looked really hard at the plants - apart from a few wildflowers.

It take far more focus and memory than I possess to see something thoroughly without drawing it. On this visit I decided I would try to figure out what some of the hardwoods are. I'm weak in hardwoods when it comes to my own neck of the woods, so this was a real challenge, especially when it came to oaks.

The German philosopher Ludwig Marcuse kept the framed motto "Es ist immer alles viel komplizierter" (It is always much more complicated) above his desk. It is a good motto for the amateur botanist - and it certainly proved true when it came to my identifying oaks.

I made  mistakes. An axiom the late botanist Robert Reed emphasized when he was teaching plant identification was, "Plants vary." I didn't follow his advice - didn't look at enough leaf samples from different parts of the tree, so what I had might or might not have been representative. I didn't label specimens, so later on I had no idea whether similar but slightly different leaves had come from the same plant. I didn't study the bark, and too late, I found out that bark can matter. I didn't study the habit and stature of the trees hard enough. The trees I was trying to id were growing in relatively crowded conditions. Still, I could have made useful observations about relative sizes and gotten some idea of the overall shape of the crown. I did not have a useful loupe. That's on my "to buy" list now, because I really needed one to study the undersides of the leaves.

I didn't get to all the oaks on the property - only 3 as a matter of fact. My ids are tentative. There were no acorns visible, and no flowers. Acorns, especially, would have helped a lot.

When I started sketching the trees  below I first thought it was just one tree. Soon enough I realized my mistake. Then I thought I had 2 oaks. Later I discovered that the smaller tree was an American elm.

Oak with American Elm
WC, Niji brushes, Aquabee Mixed Media 9x9, 93 lb

I'm used to drawing fine details, so trying for an entire tree was a real challenge, and I obviously need to get more practice, especially when it comes to getting the underlying structure. You can't just glob in a lot of green and hope a tree emerges. These trees were growing so close together it was very difficult to see which branches belonged to which trunk, but I was trying mainly for a general impression. The oak might be a live oak, Quercus virginiana. Though it doesn't show the massive horizontal branches typical of the species, the short, divided trunk  is typical of the species.

Who Am I?
same paper, ink, wc

This specimen, from the tree above, shows leaves of various shapes, but they more-or-less fit the profile for live oak. On the other hand, they are smooth on the underside, which rules out live oaks, which are quite hairy underneath. But perhaps I didn't look at enough leaves. The plant could be a Darlington oak, Quercus hemisphaerica. Then again, it could be something else. Nelson writes that Darlington oak sometimes is confused with the live oak. (p.209). I'll have to wait until I can get back to the site before I can go any farther.

Quercus nigra, Water Oak

I think I am on slightly firmer ground with what I am calling the water oak, Quercus nigra. The general shape of the leaf and the presence of fine hairs at the vein axils on the underside of the leaf argue for this identification.There is a slight problem, though. Gil Nelson doesn't mention any bristles on the leaf tips, but Richard Wunderlin includes it as a distinguishing characteristic. Guess what?

Water Oak? with Bristle-Tipped Leaves

Here's a specimen that clearly has bristles at the tips of some leaves. If I'd kept a record of which samples came from which trees, I'd have a much better case for arguing that both the drawing and the photo represent the same species. I think they probably do, but again, I won't know for sure until I can look again.

My final oak sums up my dilemma - total confusion. It has fine hairs in the vein axils like turkey oak and water oak, but it really doesn't look like any of the illustrations in my field guides. For now I am just calling it my "mystery oak."

Who Am I?

On top of everything else, oaks hybridize to some extent.  Marcuse was right. It's always much more complicated.


My references: Gil Nelson. The Trees of Florida. 2nd Edition. Pineapple Press. 2011. pp. 201-218.

Richard Wunderlin. Guide to the Vascular Plants of Florida. University Press of Florida. 1998. pp. 256-260.

Hermann Kurtz & Robert K. Godfrey. Trees of Northern Florida. University Press of Florida. 1962.

"Naughty" Names - Jamaica Caper Seed Pods

When the seed pods of the Jamaica caper first appear, the shrub looks pretty dowdy. The  skinny  lumpy, brown pods, which grow up to 6 inches long, make the plant look sort of bedraggled - at least to me.

 But when they open, often twisting dramatically as they display their bright red interiors it's another story altogether. The plant, gorgeous in spring, goes through another showy season.

The seeds are black, about the size of a peppercorn, and strung together on a red, gelatinous "string." The other day the "joint was jumpin" with mockingbirds (sometimes flying away with entire pods), a red-bellied woodpecker, and doves. Cardinals also like the seeds, but they weren't around that morning.

Seed Pods -( The red smears are from the "goo" connecting the seeds)

The plant is listed in the 1753 Species Plantarum, the  source of the oldest valid botanical names, which was compiled by Karl Linnaeus, as Capparis cynophallophora. I haven't been able to discover yet who sent the first specimens to Europe. It could have been Sir Hans Sloane, who traveled to Jamaica and surrounding islands in 1687, and brought a 7-volume herbarium of species, including Jamaica caper,  he collected there back to England.

 It also could  have been an unnamed plant explorer who sent specimens to Leonard Plukanet in London.  Plukanet was a member of the Temple House Botany Club, a group which "encouraged collection of plants iin foreign lands, their propagation locally, and their scientific study." (1) He began publishing a lavishly illustrated catalog, Phytographia, in 1691-1692. I was unable to find out whether it contains Jamaica caper. After Plukanet died in 1706, Sloane bought his papers and collections. Linnaeus relied heavily on Sloane's and Plukanet's work, as well as that of others, in devising his system of plant classification.

Around  1735 Linnaeus went to work for the wealthy banker George Clifford in Holland. Ostensibly he served as his client's personal physician, but his real job was to catalog the plants in Clifford's extensive gardens, hothouses, and "cabinet of curiosities." He published Hortus cliffortianus in  1738, and it includes Jamaica caper. Hortus Cliffortianus was the first published work to use Linnaeus' new binomial system of classification. (2)

Illustration of Magnolia by Georg Dionysius Ehret-Cover Illustration (see note 1) 

The renowned botanical artist Georg Dionysius Ehret collaborated with Linnaeus on this work, and contributed 20 of its 24 illustrations. (I haven't been able to find an image of jamaica caper by Ehret, which doesn't mean there isn't one). He also drew up a table illustration Linnaeus's new system of plant classification. The two had something of a falling out over who actually had advised whom on this collaboration, with Linnaeus taking the credit.(3)

The species nameof the plant, cynophallophora, is from Greek, and refers to a dog's penis. It doesn't take much imagination to see the resemblance in the seed pods.  Perhaps that is a little  graphic for  some people, but folks  in the 17th and 18th centuries tended to call things as they saw them, and some words that are "dirty" today were in normal use in previous eras. Besides, Linnaeus and his predecessors had an awful lot of new plants to name. And he was a bit of a rascal when it came to dubious puns.

Jamaica Caper Seed Pods

Whether it was in Swedish or Latin, Linnaeus wrote with a lively, graphic style. He was able to convey a superb naturalist's eye for detail with a never-failing sense of wonder at the marvels of the world, and the journals he wrote about his travels and discoveries in the Swedish landscape are considered part of the nation's literature as well as factual works. However, his style did lead him into some troubles, as we shall see.

Linnaeus is known today as the "Father of Taxonomy." (the science of naming and classification of a organisms). An explosion of voyages of exploration and scientific inquiry in the 16th and 17th centuries had led to an unworkable chaos when it came to describing species. Species were identified with long Latin descriptions, and the same plant or animal could have numerous differing descriptions, leading to much duplication and misunderstandings.

More Seed Pods - Fun to Draw

Calling himself "the Prince of Botany," Linnaeus set himself the task of establishing order in this mess, and he did. He didn't create his system out of thin air, but relied heavily on the work of contemporaries and predecessors. One of his greatest achievements was stabilizing the principle of what made up a genus by arranging the genera into groups based on the number of reproductive parts in the flower. (4) He then established a hierarchy, which still stands in modified form, by breaking down organisms into ever-smaller groups, from kingdoms to orders, classes, genera and species. He was by no means the first naturalist to use a binomial system of classification, but the first to apply it consistently.

Linnaeus based his classification purely on the sexual arrangements of the flowers. To oversimplify, he determined classes of plants by the number of stamens and pistils, which he termed "husbands" and "wives" repspectively. He also described the structures of the stamens and pistils in terms of human sexual anatomy. This was bad enough for the faint-hearted, but his classes with one "wife" shared by multiple "husbands" was utterly beyond the pale. The class Dodecandria, for example, had one unfortunate - or lucky -  "wife" with up to 19 "husbands."

Not one to stop at half-measures, Linnaeus pushed the envelope further by using overtly sexual and erotic language. In 1729 he wrote, "The flowers' leaves... serve as bridal beds which the Creator has so gloriously arranged, adorned with such noble bed curtains, and perfumed with so many soft scents that the bridegroom with his bride might there celebrate their nuptials with so much the greater solemnity..."(5)

His contemporary, botanist Johann Siegesbeck, blasted this system as "loathsome harlotry," but Linnaeus got the last laugh by naming an ugly little weed, Siegesbeckia, after his detractor. In 1807, in her Fifty Plates of Green-House Plants,  botanical illustrator Henrietta Maria Moriarity, while acknowledging Linnaeus' genius,  declared that the Linnaean system was dangerous for young minds. (6)

Current judgement of the man ranges from tongue in cheek accusations as in "The way we name species was invented by a botanical pornographer,"(7) to more serious criticism that Linnaeus "was a bit of a sexual obsessive," and that {he and}... his sex-obsessed work would almost be laughable if they hadn't been so influential." Citing Capparis cynaphallophora, the author also referred to the botanist's "decided knack for the unsavoury image." (8)   The very down-to-earth writer Sue Hubbel, (whose work I admire), called Linnaeus "an unpleasant man" who gave "mean namings." In particular she was offended by his pun on a Latin vulgarism for a part of the female anatomy in his naming of a marine invertebrate. (9)

Be that as it may,  the man was responsible for naming somewhere between 7,000 and 9,000 plants and even more animals. Many of these names, published in Species Plantarum in 1753, and the 10th edition of Systema Naturae in 1758, are valid today, as is the classification hierarchy and convention of binomial nomenclature he established. Today he probably would be diagnosed with bipolar disorder, because he alternated between bouts of almost superhuman energy and periods of deep depression, but the energy was enough to carry the day.

Quadrella jamaicensis - new name for an old favorite

But back to Capparis cynophallophora, I have to lament that that is no longer the accepted name for the plant in our backyard. Nowadays plant taxonomists are more likely to grind specimens up in a blender for DNA sequencing than to examine them under a microscope. Although they did it using traditional taxonomic methods, Iltis and Cornejo broke my "Jamaica Caper" out of the Caper family entirely and relocated it in the related family, Brassiciaceae. It gets more complicated. Apparently there is an entire "caper complex" with regard to this plant. Capparis cynophallophora still is accepted as the name for the plants that grow in Jamaica, but in Florida we have a new species altogether - Quadrella jamaicensis, "Quadrella" being an old genus name retrieved from the taxonomic attic. (10)

We move with the times, but I hope we do not become so technically refined that we forfeit the color of the past.


Notes:
(1) James L. Reveal. Gentle Conquest: The Botanical Discovery of North America. With Illustrations from the Library of Congress. Sherwood Publishing, 1992, p. 26.
(2) Gill Saunders. Ehret's Flowering Plants. The Victoria and Albert Natural History Illustrators. Webb & Bower, 1987, p. 12.
(3) Kerry Grens,"The Sex Parts of Plants." The Scientist.Home/Archive/January2015/Foundations.
(4) Reveal, p. 45.
(5) "Carl Linnaeus." https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/linnaeus.html
(6) Jack Kramer. Women of Flowers. Stewart, Tabori & Chang. 1996. pp.146-149.
(7) Diane Kelly. "The Way We Name Species was Invented by a Botanical Pornographer." 6/25/2015.  (I couldn't create a link; Search under the title will bring up page).
(8) Hanne Blank. Straight:The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality. Beacon Press. 2012. Could not create link. Cited from Google Books using search string linnaeus+dog+penis+sexuality+hanne+blank.
(9) Susan Hubbell. Waiting for Aphrodite. First Mariner Books. 2000, p. 121. cited from Google Books.
(10) Hugh H. Iltis & Xavier Cornejo. "Studies in Capparaceae XXVIII: The Quadrella Cynophallophora Complex." Journal of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas. 4(1): 93-115. July 2010.

Mangroves, Part II - Red Mangroves

I am incredibly lucky to live in an area dominated by mangroves. In fact, the watery mangrove landscape beloved by fishermen and naturalists alike has its own name around here, the "back country" or "back waters." This has been a good year for red mangroves. They are hanging heavy with "pencils," which any day now will drop off and float until they wash up onto a suitable growing surface.

Marco Island is considered the northernmost of the "10,000 Islands," the greatest concentration of mangroves left in the state. The development of Marco Island and my community, Isles of Capri, wreaked massive damage on the native flora and fauna, and mangroves in particular.  Fortunately there are a few places left in both areas where the mangroves  either escaped the devastation or have reestablished themselves. And both areas are now nestled within area protected by the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Sanctuary and Everglades National Park.

Undisturbed Mangroves Part of Rookery Bay Sanctuary

A warren of prop roots makes the red mangrove easy to distinguish. These roots stabilize the shallow-rooted trees, and  are vital in transporting oxygen. They possess numerous pores, lenticels, which admit oxygen and allow its transport to the feeding roots, and which close when inundated. In a dense growth of red mangroves it can be impossible to tell which roots belong to which trunk.

Prop Roots

The trees not only send down roots from the trunk, but also  long roots from large branches. The lenticels and the plant's low rate of transpiration make it possible for the plant to maintain high osmotic pressure in the roots, which allows them to take in water, but exclude the salt by a process of reverse osmosis.

Aerial Red Magrove Roots, Mixed Growth, HWY 952

Where hurricane action is rare, the trees can grow to 80 feet tall or more, with a girth of around 3 feet, but the frequency of storms in Florida keeps them much shorter and shrubbier. Some mangrove stands can show tall, straight trunks, while other trunks are contorted and can look even animate, tortured or ecstatic.

Red mangroves have shiny, slightly  yellow-green leaves arranged opposite each other on the branch. A special characteristic for the species is the long interpetiolar stipule. (Stipules in between the leaf stems, the petioles). At the very tip of the branch in this sketch the stipule has not fallen off yet.

Red Mangrove, Leaves, Stipules

The edges of the leaves are smooth. Undersides are paler than the top sides. They can get up to  a good 4 inches long, and an inch or more wide. Leaves are clustered at or near the ends of the branches, in order to harvest as much light as possible. There is not much understory in a red mangrove forest, but seedlings can get established where there are gaps in the foliage cover. They will stay in the seedling stage until enough light is created for them to grow larger.

Flowers are bell-shaped, with 4 waxy yellow sepals partly hiding 4 feathery white petals. The plant can self-pollinate. Pollen is wind-borne, but it is possible that some may be spread by insects.

Red Mangrove Flowers 

One of the criteria of inclusion in the "mangrove" group is viviparity - live birth.  The actual "seed" of mangroves germinates on the plant. The brownish-olive structures below are the fruits, with the propagules, the "pencils," beginning to develop.

When the propagules are mature they drop from the plants. Many land at the base of the plant, but others will float away, often in "rafts,"  with the next tide. Incredibly, the propagules can stay alive for a year. At first they float horizontally, but as they become waterlogged the heavier base begins to sink until the pencil is vertical. If it washes up onto a suitable site, it will send out roots and sprout leaves.

Red Mangrove Propagule

Propagule with New Roots Developing

It is impossible to overstate the importance of red mangroves, and mangroves in general, to the ecosystem. Their roots stabilize shell and mud deposits, provide anchoring places for microorganisms and mollusks, and serve as a nursury and shelter for small fish and other vertebrates. They, in turn supply food for wading birds and other predators. Roots, leaves and pencils are consumed by a variety of native animals and insects. The root region is rich in phytoplankton, the base of the marine food chain.

Mangroves absorb a huge amount of wind energy from hurricane winds and storm surges, often at their own cost. One needs only to see the path of mangrove devastation after a storm like Irma in 2017 to see the incredible force they absorb and deflect. Dense mangrove forests also provide places for birds to perch during the day and mangrove islands provide safe rookeries at night.

Mangroves are enormously effective at capturing and storing carbon. When mangrove habitats are destroyed, the environment gets a double whammy - first by the release of massive amounts of stored carbon, and second by the loss of a significant carbon-removing source.

In some regions red mangroves are used medicinally. They have proven antibacterial properties. Leaves and branches contain high levels of tannin, which is what makes the waters of estuaries and tidal rivers tea-colored. Around the world mangrove tannin is used for curing leather.

The very stuctures that allow the red mangroves to survive can also be their undoing. Lenticels can allow the entry of pathogens. If the lenticels are clogged by fine silt, oil or other clinging pollutants the plant will die. Large swaths of mangroves in Everglades National Park were killed by silt deposits by Hurricane Donna in 1960.

The plant also dies if water levels rise enough to cover the lenticels permanently. While mangroves are threatened in their native range by rising sea levels, they also are posing a threat to salt marsh habitats farther north. Previously these vital habitats were protected by the mangroves' intolerance of freezing weather, but warmer winters with fewer freezing epidsodes are allowing mangroves to invade. Red mangrove also is considered invasive in Hawaii, where it was introduced.

Red Mangrove Leaves and Stipules 

Sources: Frank C. Craighead, Sr. The Trees of South Florida. Vol I. University of Miami Press.
1971.

Ronald L. Myers and John J. Ewel, Eds. Ecosystems of Florida. University of Central Florida Press. 1990.

"Mangroves Against the Storm."

"Why Blue Carbon is REDD Hot."

Beverly J. Rathcke. "Mangroves: Ecology and Reproduction."

Mangroves

 Mangroves make up a group of plants that connect me deeply with my coastal SW Florida roots. Mangrove" is a collective term for a variety of unrelated species that share certain biological and structural traits which enable them to survive in highly saline and oxygen-poor soils. Three species in the U.S. are recognized as mangroves: the red mangrove, Rhizophora mangle, the black mangrove, Avicennia germinans, and the white mangrove, Laguncularia  racemosa.  Buttonwood, Conocarpus erectus, is considered a "mangrove associate" because it often grows on the land-most side of a mangrove forest. Red mangroves, with their conspicuous aerial and prop roots and often-contorted trunks, are probably the most familiar of the species. They also tend to grow the closest to the water's edge, but not always.

From the time I was 9 years old until I left for college I lived in a world bordered and somewhat defined by mangrove forests. Our house sat in a mixed palmetto-pine-scruboak habitat, but if was only about a mile by foot to the mangroves. By water they practically were next door, because it took only a few  minutes down our canal to get to the mangrove portion of the Estero River. Further upriver the mangroves gradually gave way to more terrestrial plants probably due to a rise in elevation. Boats of various sizes and types, including crude but effective homemade ones, were a huge part of our family life. We always headed downriver, toward Estero Bay, a half-world between water and land, rimmed by mangroves, dotted with mangrove islands, and rife with unmarked shoals and oyster beds.

Red Mangrove, Pen & Ink (in progress)

My father made aerial photographs of the mouth of the Estero River at low tide, and then marked the channel out into the bay with the most upright small black mangrove trunks he could find. I'm sure they've long been replaced by something more official. One woman who didn't know much about the way channels wind and bend commented once that the markers looked like they had been placed by a drunk. My father just chuckled and said that a little whisky helped when the work was cold and wet.

He got interested in canoes, and tried to make his own. They were clunky, tipsy craft made from plywood salvaged from some old signs he had. The first ones were impossible to balance, and we got lots of laughs from his capsizes in the canal, but he gradually worked out better proportions. They were still tippy, though, and he had to cajole me into going with him. Even wearing a life jacket, with him behind me, I felt my heart lurch with every paddle stroke. The boats were so short that the passenger had to wear a raincoat for protection against the steady "rain" of water thrown off from the double-bladed paddles.

Because my father wanted us back before motorboat began in earnest, we left before daylight, often in the dense predawn fog typical of the sw Florida coast. That made the experience even spookier for me. The mangroves seemed to form solid black walls above me, and the way forward was shrouded in mist.

It wasn't long before he bought 2 real canoes from Sears, Roebuck. They had wide, flat bottoms, and were difficult to capsize, and by then I had lost most of my fear of water, and had learned in Girl Scout camp how much fun capsizing canoes could be.

We scarcely were purists. My father had a genuine kayak paddle but didn't like the wrist motion. He made his own double-bladed paddles out of wood - crude things somewhere between 2x2's and 2x4's with notches for thumbs and a half-piece of soft pipe to cushion the inside of the fingers. Because he had knee trouble he sat up on the thwart, so we did too. We had 2 canoes, and sometimes my father and the three oldest of us children went out with him, exploring, racing, or just paddling. The one who drew passage with my strong, reliable father was in the catbird seat. Pairing with another sibling inevitably produced mutual accusations of slacking and ineptitude.

On lower-tide days our dog Trixie would follow us, and howl most piteously when the mangroves grew right into the water and blocked her progress. Taking her along was a dubious business, though, because she usually got seasick all over the boat. In those days there weren't many alligators around, so we didn't have to worry about her.

Mangrove Bay

When I was in high school my father and I "canoed" every morning before we had to leave for school, and went out most weekend mornings as well. Sometimes we talked; often we preferred to absorb the quiet as the skies lightened, and the dark walls formed by the mangroves flanking the river began to take form with leaves, branches and prop roots. At one point the river widened to a broad cove, and that was our turn-around place. We called it "Daybreak Cove," because our eastward turn revealed the brilliant pinks and golds of the rising sun flooding the sky and spilling over  the mangroves.

That was my first taste of a mangrove phenomenon that I truly love - the experience of coming out of a walled- in channel to emerge suddenly into pure space. It can be almost vertiginous - you feel you could just as well be floating high up in a volcanic crater instead of in a broad expanse at sea level. If it's windstill, the bay or cove's surface mirrors the sky, and the only sounds are of water quietly gurgling through the mangrove roots, or a bird's call. Even the distant drone of an airplane does not dispel the sensation of being in a primordial world, untouched by human influence.

Red Mangroves, Pencil Sketches 

Through college and the first years of grad school I returned home during breaks, and always found rejuvenation through canoe trips on the river and into the bay. Once my brother and I made it all the way to Estero Bay before the sun had risen fully. We beached on a mud flat and marveled at the rivulets formed by the outgoing tide flowing full of the dawn's rose-gold light.

Mangroves along the Estero River grow in a compacted peat substrate, and are somewhat stunted. When I first saw the majestic trees lining the Joe River in Everglades National Park years later, I didn't even realize at first that they were mangroves. Living in Miami, my husband and I loved to trailer our 16-foot motorboat to Flamingo, the southernmost tip of the park, and explore its rivers and trails. Whitewater Bay, the Joe, Roberts, and Shark Rivers were ours to discover. Often once away from the boat ramp, we would be the only boat around, especially in summer. Alligators loved to sun on the concrete ramp, so during the summer you had to take the best place to put in that was available.

Nearly 30 years later, after Hurricane Andrew blew us out of Miami and onto Florida's west coast, we still love the watery world bounded by the mangroves. By now we've acquired enough local knowledge to find our way, but we still carry a chart.  It never gets boring. Each trip reveals something new. We've gotten too old to sail, which is a blow, but we still can putt around in the backwaters. My parents moved to north Florida, along the Suwannee River, in the early 1970's. SW Florida had become too crowded. The Suwannee River has its own beauty, and my father loved it, but he never forgot the strange, flat world of the mangrove forests.

Clean Sweep

I've never managed to keep a  neat garden, and neighbors and walkers tell me they like my flowers. Still, I worry that the subtext is, "Your yard is an unholy mess, but at least it's colorful." Finally, old age, an arm injury still lingering after cleaning up after Irma in 2017, and my general sleaze coalesced into the proverbial "perfect storm" landscape-wise, and I had to hire somebody to clear-cut the mess.

Chaos is the Opposite of a Garden

Phyla nodiflora, "Fogfruit," makes a wonderful flowering natvie ground cover that attracts many pollinators, the lovely white peacock butterfly included. It was invading the driveway, and  had crept, kudzu-like, over a stack of paving blocks, 6 bags of mulch, and a patch of wickedly spiny agave, itself out of control even though I had been attacking it regularly.

Phyla nodiflora - Good Pollinator Plant

Sea purslane, Sesuvium portulacastrum, another desirable native ground cover,  was smothering a pot of lotus and a nice patch of Heliotropium amplexicaule. It also presented a bad tripping hazard for anybody brave enough to make a foray into the "jungle." Thickets of scorpion-tail, scattered scarlet sage, and blue porterweed competed for light. Swaths of gaillardias and mounds of dune sunflower were flopping over onto the neighbor's driveway. The gravel swale, where I had nourished the fond idea of creating a meadow of blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium), was instead a mess of moisture-loving opportunists. A dead palm tree and deformed Red Geiger, both courtesy of Hurricane Irma, completed the picture of utter surrender.

Even the rosiest of glasses couldn't mask the reality. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and I called a garden center to restore the bare bones of  the landscape. Two truckloads of debris and over a hundred bags of mulch later, we have one of the neatest and most cared-for yard on the street, which has its pluses, but is not exactly my ideal garden.

New Look for the Front Yard

Although the yard hardly is bare, the new space comes with a cost beyond what the garden center charged. For years our yard has been one of the very few landscapes in our neighborhood to offer  significant amenities of pesticide-free shelter, food and water for animals. Now in its rather barren state those amenities, especially the shelter, are much-reduced.

 However, we do not want to return to what it had become, which was by no means a garden. One thing I have learned is that the garden is as much about space as it is about plants. Without space,  there is no focal point, no rest for the eye or the soul. If the garden is neither  pleasant for walking or viewing, it is a failure, regardless of the beauty of individual plants. The very word "garden" signals the imposition of some kind of order. A  "wild garden" is a contradiction in terms.

So now, I have to recreate some of the lost habitat without losing the harmony of the space. As the old plants begin to resurface through the mulch, I have to organize them into well-defined beds, augmented perhaps with potted specimens. The self-discipline to pull out the surplus will be hard for me to maintain, but if I don't, the mess will re-establish itself quickly. That should provide motivation enough, because the yard really had become horrible and impassable.

Pots for Color

Given the fact that the yard is so small, I also need to ensure that the majority of the plants do more than one job. The agaves don't exactly fit that requirement, though dragonflies like to perch on their upright leaves, and pollinators love the flowers when they appear finally. But we both love the sculptural quality of the plants. A Red Geiger volunteer seedling will fill the space left by the agaves, and all will have enough room for the next several years. Though not a native, the Geiger will be a multi-purpose asset, and deserves its own post.

Wish me luck!

Butterfly Orchid

I always assumed that the Florida butterfly orchid, Encyclia tampensis, got its name because it looks like a stylized butterfly, but I likened it to a butterfly for the way its flowers dance and flit  in the slightest breeze. Reading up on the plant for this post, I found that this resemblance to the fluttering of the butterfly's ephemeral wings often is cited as the source of the name, so I wasn't as original as I had thought!

Encyclia Flowers Dance in the Breeze

Encyclia is a smallish genus in the orchid family. It once was included in the Epidendrums, and fairly recently taxonomists have split out Prosthechea from Encyclia, so the classification probably will change again.

The name "Encyclia" comes from a Greek word meaning "to encircle." That's because the outside of the lip of these orchids wraps around the column, the reproductive structure in the center of the flower. The Florida butterfly orchid was first discovered around the Tampa area, hence its specific name, "tampensis," but its range is much larger, from the Keys to north-central Florida.

Though it varies pretty widely according to growing conditions, Encyclia tampensis is a  small plant. One or two leaves are produced from a  swollen storage organ called a "pseudobulb," which can be round or more elongated. The pseudobulbs are anywhere from a quarter-inch to at most an inch in diameter, and a half-to-one and a half inches tall on average. The somewhat succulent leaves can be a few inches to 5 or 6 inches or more in length, depending on the individual plant and its habitat. Each pseudobulb produces one blooming spike, and slowly declines over the next 3-5 years. Some people remove the dead pseudobulbs. Otherwise they either fall off, or just become incorporated within new growth. Left to its own devices Encyclia tampensis eventually forms a mound-shaped colony.

Encyclia tampensis Pseudobulbs and Leaves

The butterfly orchid flowers from late spring through August, but its peak season is now - June. This plant in bloom can be spectacular A flowering branch can have up to 45 flowers, but the plant is lovely even with fewer blossoms. The flowers last a long time - about a month. I don't get too many seed pods, so the pollinator - a wasp or a bee - evidently doesn't visit our yard regularly or in great numbers.  The flowers close much more quickly when pollinators are active, so some people bring their Encyclias indoors to enjoy the blooms longer.

Seed Pods

 I bring some smaller colonies onto the patio to be enjoyed from inside the house, but leave my largest colony outside. It's happy where it is, and I can see it from the patio. Also, a large colony tends to have creatures living in it, and I hate for anoles to get lost in the house. They're next to impossible to catch, and inevitably end up dead. There might even be a small snake hidden amidst the pseudobulbs and leaves, and they don't do well inside either.

Encyclia tampensis Flowers

The bilaterally symmetrical flowers are an inch to inch-and-one-half wide and tall. Petals and sepals are a green-bronze, sometimes more  yellow, sometimes tinged with brown or maroon. They are quite attractive, though my attempts to render them in watercolor or colored pencil usually end looking muddy. The lip is clear white with a magenta or lavender splotch in the middle. The variety 'alba' has lime-green petals and sepals and an all-white lip.

Encyclia tampensis 'alba'

The flowers also have a delightful fragrance, which comes and goes during the day - the pattern with most fragrant blossoms. It sometimes is described as vanilla- or honey-scented. To me, it has an undefinable light sweet odor, not the heavy tropical fragrance of a gardenia.

Though once common, Encyclia tampensis now is neither common nor rare, and is protected by the state. Its natural occurrence continues to be depleted by illicit collection and habitat destruction. Collectors, even those harvesting plants from private property, and sellers must have a state permit to be legal. Fortunately there are several reputable nurseries offering this plant, so there really is no need for taking them from the wild unless it is a salvage operation.

This plant often is found in or around swamps. It likes to grow on trees such as oaks, pond apples, buttonwood, cypress, and more rarely, pine. Instructions for its care tend to emphasize maintaining high humidity, but I would temper that advice. The plant also occurs in scrub, and as a Florida native is adapted to seasonally dry periods. I have seen colonies in scrub that were so stressed they were purple-gray, but they still were very much alive. It should not be placed in potting soil. It's an epiphyte - the roots serve primarily to anchor it, not for nutrient and water uptake. Some of my butterfly orchids are in pots, but the substrate is lava rock, charcoal and large wood chips. The plant likes to attach itself to the terra cotta as well.

E. tampensis on Pine at Naples Preserve - A Scrub Habitat

My plants get very little TLC, and do just fine. In the dryest weather I check them for scale. They are in filtered light - protected from the worst sun exposure, but still in conditions bright enough to make blooms. Those in too much shade grow ok, but don't flower. If they are lucky they get a sprinkle of diluted orchid fertilizer once or twice a year. If I notice that there aren't many new pseudobulbs forming, I remount the plant, relocate it, give it a little more attention, or all 3. I don't worry that much about watering them during the dry season, but if we get prolonged hot and windy spells, I will give them an occasional sprinkle.

Encyclia tampensis Flower Closeup

A virtually pest-free, no-care native plant with spectacular long-lasting flowers and delightful fragrance  - does it get any better than this?

Article, photos,  and illustrations are the work of Jeanette Lee Atkinson, and are protected by copyright.

Fakahatchee Strand

Last week we visited the Big Cypress Bend Boardwalk in the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park. It's one of our favorite places, especially once the winter tourists have left. (Many seem to have heard it's an obligatory stop, so they clomp to the end and back, wondering what's so great about the place).

The best times to visit the boardwalk are dawn and dusk, but we always manage to get there in the middle of the day, when most of the animals are resting. Yet we've never  been disappointed.

Another World Awaits You

For me, the sense of this vast wilderness, not the details, is the draw. Once you are under the canopy, you are enveloped by a wonderful stillness that somehow is not disturbed by the slightly manic call of a pileated woodpecker, the crash of a falling branch, or the grunting of a frog. It is the beautiful quietude of a place unshackled by the clutter of our presence. (That is, if you're lucky enough to be there without the clompers. At least they never stick around long). It would be a mistake to think this place welcoming, though. Stray very far away from the boardwalk and you would be lost hopelessly.

For the plant lover, any time is a good time. I usually loiter behind my companions, pretty much justifying the complaint that I examine every leaf. This time the spherical flowering heads of buttonbush, Cephalanthus occidentalis,  perfumed the air. Cinammon-colored spores covered the backsides of giant leather fern fronds. Fruits were forming on the stems of myrsine. Ferns, mosses, swamp-lilies (chewed by lubber grasshoppers, which also hopped along the boardwalk) and vines grew exuberantly, vying for space and light. Cypress were sporting "spring" green new growth and dark green cones.

Buttonbush - Cephalanthus occidentalis L.

Every leaning or fallen tree becomes a new habitat for mosses, ferns, epiphytes, and the fauna associated with them. You have to go deeper into the swamp to see orchids, because such plants  close to any public path or boardwalk get picked. Out of reach, various tillandsias flourish. Royal palms, Roystonea regia, grow out of depressions, biding their time in the shade until they reach the top of the canopy. Cypress trees close to the boardwalk are so tall you have to hang onto the rail in order not to fall as you crane your neck backwards to see their crowns. Some of these venerable trees are struggling in the clutches of strangler fig; some have died. The slow, inexorable violence of that struggle is breath-taking.

 Cypress, Taxodium ascendens or T. distichum  - There is some discussion whether these are different species.  Strangler  Fig Root Descending

The Fakahatchee is a "strand" swamp, a type of swamp found only in Florida, and mostly in South Florida. Strands are elongated water courses that follow miniscule depressions in an otherwise flat landscape. When there is heavy rainfall the water overflows the depressions and spreads widely. The water in a strand is very slow-moving, and in the case of the Fakahatchee, eventually makes its way into the Gulf of Mexico. A strand ecosystem has a great variety of plant and animal species, because minor differences in elevation make a huge difference in  habitat, along a scale from species that must have standing water, those that can take some drying, those that can tolerate some flooding, and those that can not be flooded at all. (Ron Larson. Swamp Song. A Natural History of Florida's Swamps. University Press of Florida. 1995.pp.24-26)

We've experienced extremes of wet and dry around the boardwalk over the years. Last week it was moderately wet. In 2017 Hurricane Irma toppled a huge cypress along with its rootball, creating a small pool, which appears to be permanent. One life ends in nature, another begins. This time 3 small snakes were sunning themselves, though one swam away, taking its time. One was no bigger or longer than a pencil. The other 2 looked to be between 12 and 18 inches long. Dull brown-black with light reddish bands in a chain pattern. One had a pronounced chin stripe, which is a mark of the Florida cottonmouth, but the markings weren't conclusive enough for me to make a positive id.

Rootball Pool - Where Snakes Were Sunning 

The boardwalk ends in a sitting/viewing platform at the edge of a pond-sized alligator hole. We spend a lot of quiet time on the platform, trying to blend in, waiting to see what happens. At low water we once witnessed a large alligator systematically rooting things out of the mud with its snout. We couldn't tell what it was eating - turtles? frogs? fish? Periodically it would lunge from the water, twist, and fall sideways back in with ruthless speed and power.  It was a textbook illustration of the alligator's are a key role in the Florida ecosystem. First, they make holes or enlarge depressions to collect water to bide them over the dry winter, and in succeeding years continue to widen the holes, preventing them from filling in in the middle.

One year we saw baby alligators sunning on the back of a large turtle, perched on a log, also taking in the sun. Still another time, we noticed immature alligators - they still had their yellow stripes - ringing the pond. Suddeny they went into a feeding frenzy, leaping and pouncing on frogs. The pond was alive with the splashing of prey and the relentless hunters. We've also been hissed at by a 'gator that thought we were getting too close, even though we were on the platform. (We moved over). We've even witnessed alligators mating.

This time, even though we were very quiet, we inadvertently flushed a  great blue heron and great egret from the thicket of alligator flag ringing the pond. The great blue left, but the great egret just moved to another side. The noise of these birds in turn flushed something else on the opposite side of the pond. We never were able to get a good look at it, because it stayed partially hidden, but its general size and shape, overall beige -tan coloration with some faint striping on the belly, and a blue-black patch on the back of the head led us to id it at home as a least bittern. Probably the first and last bittern we'll ever see.

An obliging alligator eventually "flowed" into the pond from one edge, and just "hung out" semi-submerged. An anhinga flew into a high overhanging branch. It gradually moved lower and lower, until at last it flew to the opposite side and disappeared into the water. We saw its long snakey neck, up like a periscope, from time to time. Bright red cardinals flew overhead. Eventually it was time to go.

On the way back out the boardwalk we were startled by a flash of yellow and red-brown as a basking bird flew up from the boardwalk. My guess is a great crested flycatcher, given the habitat, time of year and colors. Apart from the birds we saw, we heard many more, chirping and chattering.

Alligator Hole Pond at End of Boardwalk

Though this parcel was in different hands and escaped the worst depredation, the story of the Fakahatchee is largely one of devastation, looting, and almost inconceivable regeneration. But that is a long story in itself and will have to be told in another post.