What Goes Around Comes Around - Musings from a Disjointed Year

 Or is it the other way around?

One evening in mid-March my husband remarked that there was something resembling,"a mocking bird on steroids," in the Simpson's Stopper. It was dusk, and all I saw was a dark silhouette flying off. I reckoned that it must have been a bluejay, though I really wasn't convinced. 

A few mornings later I had my answer when I startled a pair of brown thrashers that were searching for food by vigorously tossing bits of mulch with side-to-side, sweeping head motions. By the way, they made pretty deep holes. They left sometime in late April or early May - my last recorded sighting was April 27th.

We were visited by a pair of brown thrashers for the first time, as far as I know, in the winter/spring of 2018. The region was still recuperating from a direct hit by Hurricane Irma in September, 2017, and I attributed their presence to a general natural disruption. 

I hadn't seem them in the intervening years, but that doesn't mean they haven't been here. For one thing, our garden and the ones of our adjoining neighbors have recovered and filled out considerably, so these shy birds have a much better chance of hiding. 

For another, I haven't been outside as much. I injured my elbow cleaning up after Irma, so there are times that I physically can't do the down and dirty gardening I love. Increasing age and decreasing agility also meant giving up our beloved day-sailing activity. Instead of spending more time outside to compensate, I retreated indoors.

 For reasons that are not clear to me at all, I virtually stopped sketching outside. Botanical illustration requires an attention to detail largely unavailable in field sketching, but analyzing and depicting a part of a plant indoors doesn't produce the whole story. Field sketching includes context - what else is growing, what the weather and seasons are doing, what animals may be skittering around. After you've sat sketching for a while, birds either don't notice you, or decide you're not too much a threat to go about their business nearby. Small snakes have such a ground-level perspective that they just slither over my feet, but of course, disappear quickly when I jump from their touch. 

And field sketching, like sailing and gardening,  not only gets you out of the house - it gets you out of yourself, away from your own belly-button. It becomes a sort of meditation - not a meditation about anything - just a state of mind without thoughts - a pure sort of concentration on conditions around you at the moment. 

Encyclia tampensis 'alba' - Bloomed in May

Blame it on COVID isolation, politics, world events, old age  - whatever - I recently realized that instead of heading out into the yard with my coffee and sketchbook before and after breakfast, I turn on the computer to read about the most recent disasters. That has to change, but bad habits persist, while good ones are hard to re-establish. 

Apart from tanking my productivity and contributing to a general sense of malaise, this virtual life I've been leading has deeper implications. 

When I stopped recording the version of the natural world that exists in our own backyard, I lost touch with something bigger. Edward Wilson's philosophy in his very personal account Biophilia: The Human Bond with Other Species (1984), proposes that  our very humanity  is rooted in our co-evolution with and along with all other life forms. In that sense he arguess that conservation should be understood in terms of, "protection of the human spirit." (p.140). According to Wilson, and borne out by my own recent experience, we need to maintain contact with the natural world to feel fully ourselves.

The increasing digitalization and virtualization of our daily lives threatens dire consequences. How  much of the alienation behind homelessness, dropout rates, mental illness and even murder can be linked to our increasing estrangement with the organic world in which we evolved? The computer is sometimes called a "window on the world," but have we forgotten about just looking out a real window at a real universe? Tethered to our devices, we risk floating thorough our lives with no anchors at all. 

Simplistic sloganeering or "back to nature" campaigns won't do it. But somehow, as a society, we need to unplug from the sterile, technological ersatz world in which we've started living, and establish a connection and appreciation for what's left of the real. 

Ludisia discolor - Terrestrial Orchid (not native)

Back to local reality, we've had our annual visitation by flocks of Southern White and Florida White butterflies. The swallowtail kites graced our skies with their acrobatics, and too soon, returned to South America. Songbirds like the thrashers visited on their return migrations northward. The Jamaica Caper and Seven-Year Apple are again covered with fragrant blooms, and the brilliant red-orange blooms of royal poincianas justify their Spanish name, "Flamboyant." 

There is something deeply comforting in these rhythms and patterns. As much as we try, we still haven't quite destroyed the natural world. Weeds, even flowers, still sprout in cracks in the concrete, and the Gaillardias have reseeded faithfully in what I euphemistically call the garden. Winters are too warm now for my native iris to bloom, and rising tide levels are killing mangroves. But the tides still rise and fall acccording to their rhthyms, not ours. 

Not everything in the garden is lovely, but at least there still are fragments of that original garden, and if we only will go out and look, we may be graced by glimpses of it. 

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.