The trees named above aren't native to Florida, but so much goes on in March in the natural world that I labeled 2 posts "March Madness" in 2017. This year has been a little crazy apart from the garden, and I have made many more scribbled notes than sketches. I hope to catch up on some of the later spring manifestations.
I used a variety of colored pencils to capture the gray-green, turgid look of these branchlets, which really do resemble dead fingers. The true color is something in between all my attempts. The large dry markings are leaf scars from previous seasons, and the squiggly maroonish things at the very tip are nascent leaves. New growth literally bursts through the skin. Buds and stems don't magically appear on the branches, but rupture the skin, leaving oozing wounds.
The return of the swallow-tailed kites is a sure sign that the winter has turned. I spotted my first one of this year in the second week of March. These striking white-and- black-marked raptors demonstrate how little color has to do with real beauty. No matter how many I've seen, a soaring swallow-tailed kite still takes my breath away. Author and artist David Allen Sibley talks of their,"unmistakeable; incredibly graceful, flowing flight."(The Sibley Guide to Birds, p. 111). The birds don't use just their tail feathers for maneuvering, but also can twist their entire lower body to execute their aerial acrobatics.
Swallow-tailed kites nest in tall trees in hardwood forests, and due to development, especially intense timbering and replacement of mixed forests with pine plantations, their range in the U.S. has shrunk drastically. They used to nest as far north as Minnesota. Now they are limited to peninsular Florida, and the coasts of Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and eastern Louisiana. They return to South America in the fall.
They pluck their prey - reptiles, amphibians, insects and small birds from the treetops or catch and eat them in flight. I haven't read that they do so, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that they also rob nests of other species. Perhaps that is calumny, but "Mother Nature" isn't kind, and she doesn't always go by the rules.
Frangipani, Plumeria sp., isn't native to Florida, but it consumes few, if any, resources, and isn't invasive. It is a quintessential "pass-along" plant. I got mine from a sister, who got hers from a friend. All you have to do to grow it is stick a branch into the dirt, water a little, and watch it grow. Once it is established it needs no irrigation or fertilizer. (At least the one in our yard behaves that way). There are many species and varieties, but the only two I see around the neighborhood are a pink-flowered and a yellow-flowered one. Ours is yellow-flowered, and fragrant. Frangipani is one of the flowers traditionally used in Hawaiin leis.
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| Frangipani Flower Cluster |
Once the weather is good and dry, frangipanis lose all their leaves, and look completely dead and more than slightly creepy - like some sort of alien life form, which is just waiting to emerge and wreak havoc.
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| Dormant Frangipani Branch |
Last month, bloom stalks capped with numerous flower buds started rising from the branch tips, and now the first flowers have opened. The plant is a member of the Dogbane Family, and all parts, including the white sap, are somewhat poisonous. I haven't found the sap irritating, but I haven't gotten much on my skin, and other people might have a reaction to it.
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| Emerging Flower Stalk Maroon Structures are Young Leaves |
The Great Southern White and Florida White butterflies reappear in mid-to-late March. Both occur here about the same time, and I'm not quick enough to id them on the fly. When we first moved here in 1994, we would see great swarms of white butterflies, but now we see them singly or maybe in pairs. If you can get close enough to see them, the bright turquoise tips on the antennae are a dead giveaway for the Great Southern White.
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| White Butterflies: Great Southern White, Left, and Florida White, Right |
The emergence of lubber grasshopper nymphs is also a marker for spring. The nymphs start emerging in great numbers in February. So far they have defoliated one bougainvillea, and demolished the Crinums and Tradescantias. They'll all recover, with the possible exception of the Tradescantia. which really are happier in more northern sections of Florida. There must be many microorganisms that afflict the nymphs, because the number of adults I see later on is a fraction of the immature population. Both nymphs and adults allegedly are toxic to most predators.
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| Newly-Emerged Lubber Nymphs |
Just like "up north," perennials are forming new basal rosettes and resuming growth. Elephant's foot and rosinweed have made a fine beginning, while blackroot and Pluchea have resprouted directly. Native grasses like Elliott's Love Grass and Pink Muhley are sending out fresh, colored blades from what clumps of dried foliage from last year. Gaillardias sown by last year's plants are germinating here and there in the yard. I leave them where they don't block a path, and try to transplant others, even though it sets them back.
March brings persistent drying winds. Our last rain was the second week in February, and given the wind and increasing sunshine I have to water at least twice a week now, whereas during winter even the potted plants don't require a lot of attention.
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| Blue-Eyed Grass |
Blue-eyed grass made a magnificent display throughout late winter and early spring, but is going to seed now. The tickseed is also beginning to appear somewhat the worse for wear.
It's March Madness in the garden all over again. There is plenty more going on, but I have to stop for now.
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