Fall Behind

 Looking out the dining-room window, my frequent perch, I see an abundance of color in the front yard. The bougainvillea has burst into another flush of bright magenta bracts, with their tiny, enclosed white flowers. Scarlet sage, Salvia coccinea, is blazing with impossibly red flowers. 

I tried to establish this plant unsuccessfully for years. A while back, though, one of my sisters gave me a pot of something else with a Salvia straggler, and it has spread itself throughout the back yard as well as in front. When it gets leggy and unsightly, which it does,  I either cut it back to the last green leaf, or just break off the now-brittle stems.

Scarlet Sage, Salvia coccinea

Blue-gray Eliott's love grass has peaked.Now it's drying, and its multiple seed-laden inflorescences are brittle enough to break off in the wind. They also like to work their way up your pant leg.  Pink muhly blooms later, and is also now past its prime. Its multitudinous inflorescences are somewhere between pink, purple and magenta. A clump of muhley grass by itself is a grand specimen, and it is really stunning in a mass planting, especially when there is just hint of breeze. Mounds of it billow and blow in a highway median a few miles away. 

Goldenrod, Solidago sp., has been blooming since June. Mine was a pass-along plant from a now-deceased friend in the local native plant society, who warned me, "once you have goldenrod, you'll always have goldenrod." Every time I root out another clump of suckers - goldenrod has expansionist tendencies - I remember Freda and her down-to-earth wit. Right now it is growing intermixed with a large, spreading mauve lantana, and the color combination works. I didn't plan it that way, but the goldenrod moved in on the lantana, and the 2 seem to coexist reasonably well, perhaps because the lantana stays low and the goldenrod reaches for the heights.

Florida has  19 species of goldenrod, and apart from the few that don't occur down here, I'll be damned if I can identify mine. I'm probably overthinking the process, but every time I think I am keying it out successfully I find a characteristic that nullifies it. Besides, I think they hybridize fairly promiscuously. 

"My" Goldenrod from Freda

Even though it blooms all summer here, goldenrod still seems to symbolize fall like pumpkins, asters, and fresh apples. Its numerous bright, saturated yellow-gold heads are intensely attractive to insects. Butterflies do use it in our yard, but they are far outnumbered by the wasps and bees that find it irresistible. 

In the photo above, a leaf cutter bee, Megachile sp., gathers pollen. The photo doesn't show it, but these medium-size bees collect pollen on their abdomen. I don't think the megachile in our yard is native, but I can't see that it does any harm. This species builds cylindrical egg champers in underground tunnels. It also will use holes for oarlocks and unused garden hoses. It cuts uniform oval shapes for the sides, and perfect circles to close off the egg chambers. Each compartment is about an inch long and a quarter-inch in diameter. The bee will make several chambers in each nest. It doesn't matter if the entry hole gets covered, either by shifting sand or waterborne debris. I extracted a cylinder once and kept it in a plastic dish at my workspace. All the cylinders produced an adult bee within minutes of one another. I liberated the bees after they hatched. 

Paper wasps, Polistes sp., also love the flowers. In my experience, most bees and wasps aren't particular aggressive when they are feeding. Once, though, a big bumblebee traveled from at least 6 feet away just to sting me, so I don't know what its problem was. This wasp is in no peril, but its perch reminds me of times I've had one foot on the dock and the other one on a boat that was inexorably moving away. (There is no end of entertainment watching boats come and go at a boat ramp or dock. As long as nothing tragic happens, you can laugh, but you have to remember that sooner or later it will be your turn to look stupid). 

Goldenrod flowers and leaves have been used medicinally for centuries. In fact, the genus name, Solidago, means something like "to heal or make whole." It also is a traditional dye plant. I can't speak for all species, but this one is extremely forgiving of sandy pseudo-soil and drought. Its tall spikes could be staked, but I sort of like to let it sprawl and flop. It gets beaten flat by a hard rain, but usually more or less recovers. 

Alas! All my wonderful color is in danger of being obscured by rampant weeds and overgrowth of natives I have allowed to self-sow. Now that the weather isn't quite as hot, I need to get busy  before Code Enforcement shows up. Cleaning up the yard will be a great antidote to stress from COVID and politics. The Presidential race seems decided, but the country remains as bitterly divided as ever. We all need to chill out a little and go plant something.

This post is woefully late. Sometimes life just happens. Eta scared us, but gave us a miss, though we had winds strong enough to flatten the goldenrod, coreopsis, and Elliott's asters. Most are now trying to straighten out, but I probably will have to cut the coreopsis back because its stems are so incredibly thin it's hard to imagine that they hold up a whole flower  head even in the best of circumstances.

I haven't figured out how to make links in the new Blogger format, but for more information you can refer to the posts listed below.

Native Grasses: "Yes, Florida Has Seasons." Nov.14, 2017.

Leaf  Cutter Bees: "Leaf Cutter Bees." Oct. 30, 2018.

Elliott's Aster: "Elliott's Aster." Jan. 23, 2019.

Elliott's Aster

Elliott's Aster, Aster elliottii, (or now Symphyotrichum elliottii) is still blooming, though not as robustly as a month ago. For me it usually flowers in late fall through early winter, but if spring were not so dry here it probably would keep going for one more season. It is one of my favorite native plants, even if I constantly have to contend with its expansionist tendencies.

I was playing around with the concept of "negative painting" in this loose sketch.

 Though it seeds profusely, in moist or wet soil it spreads enthusiastically by rhizomes to form dense colonies. An individual plant starts out from a basal rosette, which by and large disappears as the plant matures. Plants reach 2and one half to 5 feet tall. Mine never get more than 3 feet tall, probably because they don't get any extra water. (They grow in a section of the yard that stays relatively damp most of the year). Spring is windy and hot here, and my asters go fairly dormant until the rains return in summer, when I have to start pulling them out to contain their spread.

Bottom Part of Plant - Basal Rosette Has Disappeared

 Heads are produced at the ends of stalks and branches. They consist of both ray and disk flowers. The ray flowers are a purplish-lavender. The ray flowers in our plants are quite pale, but can be considerably darker in others.

 Leaves are alternate and lance-shaped, with the widest part near the tip (oblanceolate). They become progressively smaller as you move up the stem. The leaf margins have teeth.


I allow Elliott's aster a little corner of the front yard. Perhaps I should let it take over, but I don't find it that attractive out of bloom - just a thicket of green. However, a colony of Elliott's aster in bloom puts on a real show.

Colony of Elliott's Aster in Bloom- Photo by Jeanette Lee Atkinson

The plant  is named for Stephen Elliott (1771-1830), a fascinating and remarkably accomplished individual. He was born and died in South Carolina, and was educated at Yale. He enjoyed a productive career in the South Carolina legislature, where he was instrumental in passing laws establishing a public school system and a state bank. He was a major influence in the creation of the Medical College of South Carolina, where he lecturerd on natural history and botany.

Like many educated people of his day, he was an avid natural scientist, and corresponded with leading colleagues in both the U.S. and Europe. His  A Study of the Botany of South-Carolina and Georgia, which appeared  between 1816 and 1824, is considered one of the most important botanical works in the United States. (This biographical information is taken from an article by George Rogers in the South Carolina Encyclopedia, www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/elliott-stephen).

Elliott was so respected that the genus Elliottia was named after him. In Florida alone no fewer than 12 plants have his name as their species epithet. One of the most beautiful, Elliott's love grass, Eragrostis elliottii is shown below.

Elliott's Lovegrass - Jeanette Lee Atkinson

Elliott's aster occurs in moist conditions throughout the southeast and west through Louisiana. It is very popular with pollinators, and it never has suffered from insects or diseases in our yard. It lasts a reasonable time as a cut flower.

Elliott's Aster, Top Part of Plant, Graphite Pencil

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. 

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