Weedy Euphorbias: Field Notes

 Almost ten years ago I got very interested in the weedy spurges popping up all over the yard. I had let the mulch groundcover evaporate under the unremitting Florida sunshine, and it seemed that members of this genus, Euphorbia, were colonizing every available sandy spot, of which there were many, and also growing in between cracks between the bricks in the driveway.  

I started drawing them because their gracefulness and complexity intrigued me. I also attempted to decipher their structure and identify the different species. It seems that I am attracted particularly to subjects so tiny and complex that I nearly blind myself trying to sort them out, and my weedy Euphorbias are a perfect example. 

Unidentified Spurge

The ones I have tend to be small and multi-branched, which can make drawing them rather tedious.  Deciphering and depicting their very complicated blooming structures, called "cyathia, " is a huge challenge. 

It's a poor workman who blames his materials, but I got discouraged by the drawbacks of the magnification available to me, and the project sputtered to a halt. I also lost confidence that I was drawing accurately.

I noticed the plants again a few weeks back as I was strolling around with no purpose, and thought about resuming my old project. You have to get down to, or practically down to, groundlevel to appreciate these diminutive weeds. Getting down isn't so much a problem, but years later, getting back up is increasingly arduous! 

I dug out my old sketches, and was surprised by how far along I actually had gotten. Some were basically diagrammatic, but others showed, although crudely, a hint of the plants' innate gracefulness. In fact, I was gratified to go back to my field guides and discover that the common name of one, Chamaesyce hypericifolia, is "graceful sandmat."

Euphorbia  hyssopifolia?
Eyebane

This plant is graceful, but it seems more to resemble the species hyssopifolia than hypericifolia. The leaves as depicted bear some resemblance to hyssop leaves, which are about the same shape. It also resembles plants of this species as shown in Internet images. But my notes give no hint about the color of the cyathia, stems or leaves. I drew the 2 bottom-most  leaves seem with toothed margins, but I drew the margins as all the other leaves as smooth (entire). I also made a note about this, which could prove important. The drawing is pretty primitive, but it does show that the inflorescences are on stalks, and that they sit just above a pair of leaves or bracts.

Now the plot thickens. The descriptions of this plant that I can find show that it has finely serrated leaf margins. Is this another species? Did I not draw it correctly? I also have no notes about where it was growing. Most of our yard is dry and sunny but there are parts that are more moist and shadier. I have a note that the leaves have stipules, but I haven't drawn them, and that could be important. I didn't draw any seed, either, and now I find that seeds can be identifiers in Euphorbias. I also discovered that the plant has been reclassified as from Chamaesyce hyssopifolia to Euphorbia hyssopifolia.

The stems between leaves (internodes) look a little zig-zaggy, but I didn't make a note whether the plant was wilting or had a sort of drooping habit. At least I recorded a date, Nov. 11, 2015.

Is this the same species? Months later - Regardless, it is quite pretty.

This might or might not be the same species. Often drawings give more information that photos, and this photo clearly shows colors, serrate leaf margins, a slightly oblique, or unequal base, and a cymose inflorescence.  Since the photo is from the top, looking down, it doesn't give a good idea of the habit. If I had made more notes when I made the pencil drawing, I might be able to id both.

Now let's look at a sketch that has some color.

Euphorbia hypericifolia?
Graceful Sandmat?

Here the stems appear red and hairless. The stipules look magenta, which is characteristic of hypericifolia. The leaves have slightly toothed or irregular margins. The base of the leaf is not even, "oblique" in botanese, and are wider than the tip.  I have no notes regarding the hairiness or smoothness of the leaves.  I show a little of the branching pattern, but not enough to convey a clear idea of the habit. While it appears  to be upright, I don't indicate whether the specimen is the whole plant, or just a part.  There's no note as to whether it is multi-trunked, spreading, weeping, etc. The only thing I can glean about the inflorescences from this sketch is that they appear to be at the ends of the stems. 

One more sketch.

Details of Inflorescence

Even though the page is disorganized, at least I have recorded some hard information, such as relative sizes, notes about the seeds, and  a quick habit sketch. The leaf margins seem toothed or somewhat serrate, and the inflorescence is clearly cymose. Even so, I don't quite have enough information to make a solid identification. 

I know a lot more about botany and scientific illustration now than I did when I made these drawings, though one never knows it all. I have pages of such studies/sketches, and hundreds of photos. Since I have an actual body of work to evaluate, I can see clear deficiencies in my sketches and notes, and can start improving my work considerably. 

Some of my takeaways:

I need more patience and self-confidence while I am sketching and drawing. My old drawings of weedy Euphorbias in our yard aren't "bad," but they don't go far enough. If I'd had a little more patience, and a little more faith in my ability to record things accurately, I'd be much farther along.

I need to make detailed written notes along with my drawings, or at least label extensively and clearly. What seems clear at the moment may look ambiguous later - are there fine hairs on the stem/leaf/etc. or is my pencil line just blurry from the friction of the other pages in the sketchbook? More importantly, writing a summary first really would make me look at the plant that much more in detail and in its totality. 

I need to pay attention to all the parts, to the extent possible. I can't uproot a specimen in a protected area or cultivated garden, but if I don't recognize the plant, I don't know which details are going to be critical in the identification, so I need to record as much information as I can, and not just be seduced by graceful form, color, or leaf pattern. Obviously, I am not going to be able to find all stages from young leaves to seed on every plant I draw at any given time, so I need as many reference points as possible to connect later drawings to earlier ones.

The sketchbook format is not conducive to an intensive study of a species or genus. I love my sketchbooks, but when I am trying to zero in on specifics, I can't have dozens of disconnected drawings scattered through various pages and various books. I'm not going to give up my sketchbooks, but if I realize I am on the way to getting "hooked" I need to start keeping a specific portfolio, organized by real or tentative ids. That would mean drawing on separate sheets of paper that can be collated, revised, and stored so that the drawings don't get worn or fuzzy from rubbing against each other. I am reluctant to cannibalize my existing sketchbooks, but it may come down to that, too. 

I'm excited, though I'm not quite sure how I am going to develop my work, how to make the pages less random and more esthetically pleasing, and also how to integrate written comments with graphic notes. I also need to exert discipline so that it is clear which drawings are of the same specimen, and include dates. I have to discover a practical way of relating photos to specific specimens and drawings, and also to make notes on how and when and where the photos are taken. I've got to beef up my technical skills to find out what options my digital camera and smart phone offer in that regard.

I don't know whether I'll eventually make any contributions to the very real category of Citizen Science, or even who might eventually want to look at my work. I may be reinventing an old wheel. But regardless of those ends, I will be expanding my own education and enjoyment, and that in itself is worth every minute.

Dune Sunflower - Why Draw

 Dune sunflower, Helianthus debilis, sometimes can be a victim of its own success. It's showy, tough, and flowers enthusiastically year round in frost free areas. A goodly mound of it, with its bright yellow-green leaves, and undiluted yellow ray flowers ringing purple-brown disk florets, brightens up the garden considerably. It wants no pampering. All it asks is space - and there's the rub. 

Space is an increasingly rare commodity in contemporary home sites around here. Lots generally are small, and the houses are built all the way to the 7.5' setback on the sides.( Higher floors sometimes are built all the way out to the property line, curiously reminiscent of medieval street scenes of tall buildings towering over dark, narrow passages). 

The plant is readily available, and some people, municipalities and road authorities have planted it to their chagrin. This is a plant that survives on the pure, sugar sand of Florida's beaches, buffeted by salty coastal winds, and subject to extreme drought while in full sunshine. The average yard, even unfertilized and unirrigated, can be an Eden in comparison, and granted this largesse, the plant takes off.

It doesn't grow as fast as kudzu, but over a period of months a healthy plant will overrun anything in its path, and certainly will outgrow a narrow median strip. Judicious pruning will keep it pretty for a long time. It has to be pruned along the edges, not from the middle, or center. Pruning gets trickier once the  plant has begun to mound over itself. Its long, creeping branches intertwine, so it's pretty impossible to see what belongs to what.

As the plant tumbles over itself, the higher leaves and stems shade out lower levels. A luxuriant-looking mound, may well be completely bare in the middle, with just a veneer of new growth over a scaffolding of aging, woody, leafless stems. It looks atrocious if it is hedged, which is about all most "mow-and go" yard crews know how to do.

Badly "Pruned" Dune Sunflower

This mounding habit makes it particularly attractive in large pots, from which its flowering branches can cascade around it. Eventually the bottom parts of the stem in the pots get woody and bare, which means it's time to cut back hard or pot up another plant. Dune sunflowers transplant easily if they aren't too big. They also root readily and self-sow vigorously if there isn't too much competition. (I wrote more about the dune sunflower in my blog post of Feb. 21, 2021, "January - Not the Greatest New Year.")

All From One Plant, One Pot

 The plant's energetic, uppreaching and semi-vining  habit make it an ideal subject for line drawings. I like drawing better than painting generally. Yellow is a particularly vexing hue for me, because it is so easy to "dirty" it with shading, which destroys its luminance unless you get lucky.

 1-Line Gesture Drawing; Color Study
(Yellow Is Too Light and Greenish)

Part of the definition of line, as it applies to art, is"...an identifiable path created by a point moving in space."("The Elements of Art," J. Paul Getty Museum website: www.getty.edu/for_teachers/building...lessons).

I love this definition because it also seems to denote the action of a growing plant. Attempting to follow that delightful dance of a plant's characteristic energy never fails to engage me.

Dune Sunflower, Pencil Sketch

Drawing is often frustrating and boring, and it requires hours of practice. But succeeding in capturing  movement in the sinuous curve of a stem, or the baroque undulations in a leaf's edge, be it just for an inch, makes all the failed attempts fade into insignificance. I'll never stop trying - and failing -  to get there.

Of course, a line drawing cannot capture the entire being of a plant - in this case, the sandpapery  texture of its leaves, the range of greens and yellows, its volume en masse, even its "non-fragrant" odor. That is a problem of all 2-dimensional media - it can't accomplish everything in one go. But artists and writers of all abilities attempt to capture and communicate something of the innate "truth" of an object or landscape. 

Texture- Dune Sunflower

I looked for answers on "why we draw" on the web, and all I came up with was articles on chemistry -  substances produced by the brain that make us feel pleasure and/or reward. But nothing on why one person is compelled to take pencil to paper while another is driven to put in hours learning to dance, make something, design a building, or throw a ball through a net. Apparently the chemicals are the same, and when you get down to it, they really don't tell us much. And why do some of us want to communicate so badly? It's more than what my husband calls, "teaching your grandmother to suck eggs." It's more like a toddler desperately wanting others to appreciate the wonderfulness of his latest toy. Drawing plants, for me, has something to do with joy, with sharing, with gratitude. But basically, I really can't say.

Once You Have Goldenrod . . .

 "Once you have goldenrod, you will always have goldenrod," was the cryptic remark of a stalwart in the Naples chapter of the  Florida Native Plant Society when I took home a specimen she had potted. I asked what she meant, and she just gave me a wry smile, and said, "You'll see."

It didn't take too long. Look up "goldenrod" on a search engine and you'll find topics like, " How do I control goldenrod in my garden," and "How do I get rid of goldenrod in my garden."

Besides being tough as nails, the species I got from Freda spreads vigorously by rhizomes. Pot it up, and it creeps out through every drainage hole. Pull it out, and it shows up across the path, or in a neighboring bed after a few weeks. It produces thousands of seeds, but they don't seem to be all that viable, because the plant doesn't jump all the way across the yard, but stays mainly in the general area where I first planted it. Maybe the seeds are mostly for the little creatures that must eat them.  

"Our" goldenrod grows outside the easterly wall, which is remarkably deficient in windows, so I don't have a good idea of what goes on with it. Still, I get the idea that the butterflies and skippers that visit us generally find other flowers in the yard more attractive. On the other hand, I rarely pass by it without seeing some manner of wasp or bee vigorously stuffing itself or collecting pollen. Often there may be several species feeding at the same time.

Paper Wasp on Goldenrod

The plant in our yard seems to fit the description of Solidago fistulosa, "Pinebarren Goldenrod," better than any others, but I'm making no guarantees. There are over 100 species of goldenrod worldwide, and they hybridize readily. On the other hand, according to the 1998 edition of Wunderlin's Guide to the Vascular Plants of Florida, only about 5 species occur naturally in southern Florida, and it doesn't really look like any of the other possibilities.

Goldenrod, Pen & Ink

It doesn't form a classic basal rosette like many members of the Aster Family, including some goldenrods, but just pops straight out of the ground, and reaches for the sky, unburdened by any side branches. Narrow, lance-shaped leaves, sometimes with toothed margins, alternate around a bristly stem. The leaves are attached directly to the stem, with no petioles. As the stem elongates, the lower leaves wither and may or may not fall off.

The inflorescence is somewhat pyramidal, and made up of graceful, arching wands, alternating around the stems, and bearing numerous saturated yellow heads. The heads have both disc and ray florets, but the latter are a little sparse. The stem usually forms just one inflorescence, at its end, but if you cut off a faded inflorescence, the remaining stem sometimes will produce more blooming wands on its sides. It won't make a new, blooming "pyramid." 

Goldenrod Sketch

The stems can get up to 6 feet tall (though mine don't get that high), and the leaves die from the bottom up, so eventually you have a cluster of dead heads and seeds atop a bare stalk irregularly flagged with withered leaves. That's definitely when it needs to be cut back hard, but being a negligent sort of gardener, I rarely do that in a timely manner. This trait could be masked a bit if the goldenrod were placed behind lower-growing plants. Some of ours have spread into a clump of lavender lantana, but it stays too low to hide the stems completely when they get unsightly. 

It's often windy here, and I should stake them. If our yard were bigger, and the  garden beds wider I could let the goldenrods droop,  but as it is, they flop over and obstruct the path, and become something of a nuisance. It's a magnificent plant, and I wish I had space for a grand swathe of it, bending and bowing in the breeze, instead of my constrained, small patch. But I wouldn't do without it. For one thing, it reminds me of the wisdom,humor, and lop-sided smile of a long-dead friend. 

Megachile Bee on Goldenrod

 

Mistletoe Cactus

When it comes to mistletoe cactus, Rhipsalis baccifera, there's not much "there" there, to steal a phrase from Gertrude Stein. It certainly is not a show-stopping plant. It doesn't even look like a cactus. Its white berries and slender stalks give it a very superficial resemblance to mistletoe, but mistletoe has leaves and is a parasite, and not even distantly related to cacti.

Pendant Stems of Mistletoe Cactus

Rhipsalis baccifera is an epiphyte that has adapted to the extremes of sea-level mangrove swamps and the high altitudes of the cloud forest, and everything in between. The general assumption among botanists is that cacti are exclusively New World plants, and have evolved relatively recently. Mistletoe cactus fits that theory, being native to 2 counties in southern Florida, the Caribbean, eastern Mexico, Central America and throughout much of tropical South America. But it also is widespread, and considered native in tropical Africa, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, and parts of India. How it got there  has had scientists scratching their heads for generations.

  Rhipsalis the largest genus of epiphytic cacti, and Rhipsalis baccifera has numerous subspecies. The classification probably needs cleaning up, but the fact remains that the species is highly polymorphic (appears in many different forms). The vast differences in geography and habitat would account for these differences. It even varies on the cellular level, with most New World species being diploid, while Old World species are commonly tetraploid. 

 Like other so-called "airplants," it uses its roots mainly for anchoring and stabilizing rather than for absorbing water and nutrients. It sometimes also grows on rocks. Trailing stems of my plants have rooted in the upper layers of potted plants standing lower on my shelves, which makes me think that it would creep happily in a layer of humus or porous light soil at ground level. Rhipsalis baccifera, subsp. baccifera is the form found in Florida and much of the New World tropics.

The stems of the Florida native are about the diameter of cooked spahgetti, hence its second common name, "spaghetti cactus." Stems of other subspecies may be thicker, angular, or flattened. The stems can grow up to 9 meters long, though they generally are shorter. My plants have stems only about 2-one-half feet long, but that is because I haven't found a good place for them, and they don't grow as lushly as they should.

The stems hang downward and may branch into multiple stems, which also branch. They are tender and succulent, though become somewhat woody at the base. The main feature that distinguishes cacti from other spiny species is the presence of an areole, a generally raised, cushion-like structure from which the spines arise. The stems of mistletoe cactus have only rudimentary areoles, which tend to disappear with age. With a hand lens you can see a few hairs emanating from these very basic structures. New growth is reddish, and quite spiny/hairy. 

Areoles on Opuntia (Prickley Pear  Cactus)

In all the years I've had my plants, I've never managed to catch them in bloom. That's mainly because I've just left them under a tree or bush and forgotten about them. In fact, I'd forgotten I even had them until  Hurricane Irma in 2017 exposed one clinging for life in a crotch of a defoliated 7-year apple (Genipa clusiifolia). By all accounts the flowers are small and insignificant, though with the aid of a hand lens, "insignificance" sometimes can spring into beauty. Translucent whitish berries are borne directly on the stems or on a very short stalk. Birds eat the berries, helping to disperse the species. 

Adventitions Roots, New Growth, Rudimentary Areoles

In fact, the plant is so unassuming, yet vexing in its variability, that a specialist named Ken Friedman wrote, "So many species are named R. baccifera that it is almost impossible to tell an original. Four or five  growing in my greenhouse  have different vegetation although the flowers are similarly inconsequential. If anything, they are large weeds that take up more room than they are worth." 

So how did this modest plant colonize such a large portion of the globe? The theories that exist are not exactly convincing on their own. 

The least likely theory is that the  plant was spread by the shipping trade in the 15th century and onward. But the plant is widespread into interior regions of the Old World, and not limited to the port areas. That kind of spread normally wouldn't occur in a matter of hundreds of years. Even more problematical is the fact that Old World subspecies differ significantly from the "ur-type," R. baccifera, and such evolution normally requires eons, not centuries to occcur. The plant also is prominent in Ayurvedic medicine, which some believed began as early as the Bronze Age. It is possible that it was a later addition, but it still takes a long time for something to become entrenched in regional  medical lore.

The next theory involves continental drift. This theory holds that the plant was well-established before the breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana. The fly in the ointment here is that Gondwana probably began to break up around 180 million years ago. If cacti as a group didn't evolve until some 30 million years ago, as is generally accepted, that leaves a huge gap. In that case Rhipsalis would have to be an atypical, extremely ancient genus. Since cacti leave few, if any, fossil records, nobody really knows when Rhipsalis evolved, but it probably was well after Gondwana's destruction.

That leaves us with birds, which we know are frequent vectors of plant dissemination. It certainly makes sense for the distribution within the New World. Many of Florida's native plants were brought by birds  from the Caribbean and the Bahamas. A problem with this theory is that most birds migrate north to south or the reverse. I'm not aware of any seed-eating birds that currently migrate over the Atlantic from the Americas  to Africa and beyond. That would be a vast distance for a seed-eating bird to traverse, and also a vast distance for a seed-eating bird not to poop. We don't yet have any fossil record of any ancient bird prototype that would have been up to the trip either.

The "answer," if there is one, is probably a combination of continental drift and the birds. The breakup of Gondwana didn't exactly occur overnight, but over the course of millions of  years. In fact, we are still moving. What eventually became Africa and South America would have been much closer at varioius points in geological history than they are today, and there most likely would have been islands and mountaintops that are now submerged or destroyed. Then island-hopping by birds would make sense.

Personally, I rather like the "space aliens" theory put forward by "Laidback Gardener" Larry Hodgson, who suggests that, "millions of years ago, space aliens moved the plant around, just to mess with scientists trying to understand how R. baccifera got around." Why not?

Further Reading:

“The Cactus That Traveled the Globe.”Larry Hodgson. Http:/laidbackgardener.blog/2018/12/03/the-cactus.://

Rhipsalis baccifera (JS Meuller) Stern. In Cactus Journal (Croyden) 7:107 (1939). With comments and photographs by Ken Friedman. www.Rhipsalis.com/species/baccifera.

“I Havana a Clue How I Got Here; Cactus Goes for a Drink in Cuba, Wakes Up in Cape Town.” Jan. 27, 2014 by alieyres. http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/2014/01/rhipping-yarns.

 

 

Peeling Bark - An Attractive Feature of Simpson's Stopper

Peeling bark is just one of the many charms of the  Florida native plant, Simpson's Stopper (Myrcianthes fragrans). The specimen in our yard, which I have "limbed up" and trained into a multi-trunked large shrub, is shedding its bark now. It doesn't happen all at once, but seems to start at the base of the trunks, and progress upward through the branches. 

Old, papery bark peels back to reveal vividly-colored new surfaces which beg to be touched as well as seen. They are smooth as though sanded, and the hands itch to experience their fullness. The new wood gradually will fade to a pale beige, but for a time will display nuances of siena, gold, and even hints of green. 

The old bark, mottled with dirt and remnants of lichens may be held in place for a time by the scar of a fallen branchlet. It looks riveted in place. 

My photo below shows that my watercolor sketch doesn't exaggerate the colors.

Healthy plants shed their bark for a variety of reasons. It may be to facilitate growth, to get rid of harmful organisms, or even to aid in photosynthesis. Whatever the explanation, it is one more reason to marvel at the variety and beauty of plants.

Smooth, New Wood

Mahogany/Mahagony

 

Yet another Florida native plant that people know and don't know from parking lots is the Florida, or West Indian Mahogany, Swietenia mahagoni. I've always been puzzled by the discrepancy between the common name, mahogany, and the species epithet mahagoni. There must be an explanation, linguistic or otherwise, but I haven't found it yet, and I always forget which is which). 

I 've concluded that people are pretty blind to plants beyond vague perceptions of their presence. So while residents and tourists alike "see" many mahoganies in southern Florida, they really aren't aware of them. Besides, the trees they do encounter are generally mangled by storms, bad pruning, or both.

Typical Wind-Damaged Mahogany

But they can't help but notice when sometime in mid-to-late April the tree drops all its leaves, seemingly overnight. Then, the bare asphalt of parking lots is transformed into a sea of light brown leaflets, which form piles and swirls, ankle deep where they collect against curbing. 

You don't want to park under a mahogany tree this time of year, because the remaining fruits, hard and woody somewhat pear-shaped capsules, also drop. Kids call them "mahogany nuts," and the the less civilized in that age group find them great missiles for attacking each other, cars and mailboxes. 

Mahogany Capsule, Seed, and Cross Section

 

When the fruits hit the ground they break apart into segments, which make for bumpy, uncomfortable driving. I don't know whether they actually damage tires, but they can't do them any good, either. So after the leaf drop, you slide around on the leaflets and crunch over the pods until the leaf-blowing crew returns.

Not Much Fun for Drivers

A plant with this behavior is called "semi-deciduous," which is a new one for me. I always thought that a tree was deciduous or not, but it's more complicated. It turns out that "semi-deciduous" trees do shed all their leaves, but only for a brief period before new growth begins. So unlike hickories, many oaks, and other more northern trees, which are bare for months, semi-deciduous trees are leafless for only a brief time. Many of Florida's tropical hammock trees show this behavior. The late spring shed makes sense, considering that the rainy season is just around the corner. 

While mahoganies are very strong, and rarely toppled by windstorms, their habit of putting out branches at acute angles to the trunk makes them vulnerable to limb splitting. In their natural habitat they  had to push through to the top of the canopy, so perhaps didn't develop these weak joints so typical of cultivated specimens.  (A fascinating video, Chief Chekika's Not So Secret Island Hideaway in the Everglades, has footage of hammock mahoganies which tends to bear out my theory. See http://kayakfari.wordpress.com for the video).

Weak Joints on Mahogany Tree

Most of the planted mahoganies around here are still upright, but pretty mangled. They certainly don't have the elegant, rounded canopy that they should. Parking-lot and street trees suffer further indignities of having to exist in only a limited soil area, with asphalt or concrete covering what normally would the spread of the roots. They alternately gasp for moisture during dry seasons and nearly drown in wet seasons. The fact that they persist at all shows just how hard it is to kill plants in south Florida. 

Swietenia mahagoni, the "Florida," or "West Indian" mahogany, once grew in abundant stands in Florida, the West Indies, Cuba, Jamaica, the Bahamas and Hispaniola, but over-harvesting has made it rare in nature. As early as 1775, a book by Bernard Romans, A Concise Natural History of East and West Florida, noted about mahogany that, "little or none now remains here." (Cited by Florida Mahogany Project)*. The plant in the wild is considered "threatened and endangered" in Florida, and harvesting is illegal, though bits salvaged from storm-damaged trees may be sold. It also is illegal to import endangered Amazon mahogany, but apparently tons of it still get through into the US. Various species of Swietenia grow well in plantations, but it is said that the wood of cultivated trees does not have the rich red coloration of native specimens. 

Mahogany was valued highly for ship building, not only for its durability, but especially because it did not splinter. In the era of wooden ships, flying splinters were as lethal to sailors as cannon shot itself. The beauty of mahogany's deep red wood also made it ideal for fine furniture and interior ornamentation. 

Young trees have reddish bark, while the bark of older trees is greyer and more fissured. Flowers are inconspicuous, and supposedly  fragrant. I've never seen one, since they are high up on the tree. (I'll have to start looking for some young trees)! 

Mahoganies may not be suitable for small yards because of their potentially large size and aggressive lateral root system, but in the right situation, they are majestic, up to 60 feet tall, with a large, rounded crown. Some people think they are messy because of their annual leaf drop, but then some people evidently don't have enough to worry about. 

Because mahoganies have somewhat fern-like leaves - in botanical language, pinnately-compound leaves -  they cast dappled, not deep, shade. What looks like a leaf is actually a leaflet, and a complete mahogany leaf has 5-8 pairs of paired leaflets. The leaf itself is 4 - 10 inches long, with leaflets 2 - 2- and-a-half inches long and a half-inch to a little over and inch wide. New growth is purplish-pink, turning to spring green, and then throughout the summer assumes a deeper green. Leaflets are elliptical to lance-shaped, with asymmetrical bases, and slightly pointed tips. They are smooth and shiny on top, and slightly duller underneath. 

3 Young Mahogany Leaves 
Somewhat Atypical in number of Leaflet Pairs

The fruit is a woody capsule, slightly pear-shaped, 3-5 inches long, and around 3 inches wide at the base. It is held on a stalk, and when ripe, splits from the base upward. Inside, winged seeds are pressed tightly together around a central column. An opened capsule still containing its seeds is beautiful. Some people varnish them to keep them intact.

Opened Capsule Showing Seeds;
Central Column Removed

An ironic twist to the mahogany story is that while it is threatened in habitat, the Florida Native Plant Society reports that there are instances when it can become invasive outside its natural range. 

More information on the Florida Mahogany Project and be found on its Facebook page, and in an article on the website http//www.Floridajourneys.com.

Corkystem Passionvine

 Corkystem passionflower (Passiflora suberosa L.) is a mainstay of my butterfly garden. I just wish it would grow where I want it instead of collaborating with the birds to migrate to places where it is a pest. So far it has resisted my attempts to train it up a trellis or fence, yet it scrambles exuberantly in, around, through, and over shrubs and trees. If it has nowhere to climb, it spreads happily over the ground, especially where I have planted native heliotropium (Heliotropium polyphyllum). I could leave it as a ground cover, but since it is a vine, it presents a tripping hazard. I have a lot of digging out and potting up ahead, because I need to save at least some of the volunteers.

The genus Passiflora is the larval host for the zebra longwing, julia longwing, and much under-appreciated Gulf fritillary. The striking, orange Julias are uncommon in our garden. They tend to show up in a bunch and then disappear for years. We sometimes get zebra longwings, but they really prefer a shadier habitat than our yard offers. Zebra longwings roost in long chains at night, and the sight of such chains is absolutely breathtaking. The zebra longwing is Florida's state butterfly.

Gulf Fritillary Caterpillars on Passiflora suberosa

Zebra Longwing Caterpillar
Unripe Passiflora berries
Collier-Seminole State Park 

The beauty of a Gulf fritillary is hard to capture in paint or with my  very basic camera equipment. A newly-emerged adult gleams bright copper-orange, like the proberbial new penny. The undersides of the wings have a pattern of iridiscent silvery patches which reflect light spectacularly and brilliantly. 

The scanner cannot capture the silvery flash of the underwings.
These are dead individuals I have collected from the yard.

Passiflora suberosa is one of 7 species of passionflower native to Florida, but the purple passionflower, P. incarnata, is the only other one which occurs naturally in this area. Several exotic species, like the flamboyant scarlet passionflower ( P. coccinea) also flourish in the state. P. incarnata is a large vine, has a showy purple flower, and will get devoured by caterpillars. It dies back during our dry season.

"Maypop"  is another common name for P. incarnata. When I was a child we lived in South Carolina with my grandparents and unmarried aunt while my father served in the Korean War. I tagged along with my Aunt Iola, whom I called "Ant Ola." (I still pronounce "aunt" as "ant").

Even though I was afraid of the cows, who seemed awfully big, I liked accompanying my aunt when she took them out to pasture every morning. What I later realized was P. incarnata grew wildly in one spot. I asked her what they were, and she replied, "Maypops." When I asked her why, her answer was, "because they may pop and they may not." It is fascinating how certain little things can be preserved so vividly in our memories.

Zebra Longwing
Heliconius charitonius
Delnor-Wiggins Pass State Park

Corkystemmed passionflower is much more diminutive, and far less showy than its purple and red cousins. I agree with Rufino Osorio, who writes that while it first seems to have no obvious horticultural appeal, it's merits show themselves over time. The vine begins tender and green, and gradually adds ridges of corky material until it is enclosed completely.  Near the roots of an undisturbed vine the stem can reach a diameter of an inch or more, and certainly presents an interesting texture. 

Passiflora suberosa
Notice Corky Stem

The leaves have longish petioles and alternate around the stem. The surfaces are smooth, and the color varies from a yellowish green in bright sun to a more intense green in shade. The petioles have 2 raised "dots" opposite each other close to the base of the leaf. These are extrafloral nectaries. The plant  often displays "heterophylly," a fancy term for having leaves of different shapes. They can be simple and entire, or partially or deeply lobed. The presence of heterophylly in the plants in our yard varies, probably depending on what has been pollinated. Roger Hammer writes that lepidopterists surmise that the varying shape is a means to fool the butterflies so they don't lay as many eggs on the plant. The vine climbs and clings by tendrils emerging at the base of the leaves.

Heterophylly in Passiflora suberosa

The flower is small and delicate, about one-half to three-quarters inch in diameter. What look like petals, but really are sepals, are white or pale spring green. Pollinators of various sorts like them, because they produce a lot of berries throughout the year. The fruits start out green, turn blue, and then blue-black when ripe. Sometimes they have a chalky "bloom" like blueberries. They are roughly spherical and about a quarter-inch in diameter - about the size of a Spanish caper. They don't taste bad, but contain so many tiny seeds that they are mostly grit. Better leave them for the birds.

That brings us back to my struggle to keep the vine from eating the garden. The place it thrives most vigorously is all through and over a clump of bougainvilleas. The bougainvillea's vicious thorns and dense growth prevent me from getting at the passionvines' roots, and even if I did, the mockingbirds would reseed them promptly. They effectively cultivate the vine because they poop as they forage for the berries. The bougainvilleas aren't native, but they don't consume any resources beyond space and rainwater. The tiny white flowers nestled in the plant's hot-magenta-pink bracts attract a fair number of small pollinators, and the mess of bougainvillea branches and passiflora vines provides a prime nesting site for the mockingbirds. They have reared several successful broods there over the last few years. 

So it's a standoff. I can't beat it, so I settle for beating it back when it threatens, kudzu-like,  to suffocate the other plants. And I do like the butterflies.

Gulf Fritillary 
Agraulis vanillae
Nectaring on Blue Porterweed, Our Garden

 

Passiflora suberosa ranges from the Caribbean through Florida and the lower Rio Grande Valley, Mexico, and Central and South America. It has spread through much of the world, probably with the help of birds, and is considered an invasive exotic in serveral locales. It has a long history of use in folk medicine. It can withstand quite dry conditions if it has a little shade, but appreciates more water. It probably would not thrive in permanently soggy ground.

Sources:

Roger Hammer. Florida Keys Wildflowers. 2004. p. 127.

Rufino Osorio. A Gardener's Guide to Florida's Native Plants. 2001. pp. 290-91.

Richard Wunderlin. Guide to the Vascular Plants of Florida. 1998. pp. 443-444.

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.

Florida Elephant's Foot

I've been remiss in keeping my nature notes this year. The first reference to Florida elephant's foot (Elephantopus elatus Bertol.) in our yard is a sketch done on July 30th, but it already had been blooming so long that I was afraid it was now or never in terms of drawing it. My notes from 2019 mention it around the end of June, which is not to say that it wasn't flowering before then. It's late August now, and the flowering is still going strong.

Florida Elephant's Foot - Individual Florets at Bottom Right

The foliage is much grayer and hairier than depicted.

Unspectacular, even slightly ungainly, Florida elephant's foot belongs to that class of plants delightful mainly to the observant eye, for it easily gets lost in a crowd. A flat rosette of coarse leaves wider at the tips than at their bases sends up grayish, wiry branching stalks which can reach up to 3 feet tall according to the books. Mine are closer to 18-24 inches. Each branchlet (in botany language a pedicel)  ends in a pyramidal structure composed of 3 overlapping bracts packed with individual disk florets. Florets are a delicate pale lavender-pink. The florets in any given head open  somewhat sequentially, not all at once, so the effect is subtle, hardly spectacular. 

Florida Elephant's Foot - Habit

                                                

The gray-green clusters and delicate florets seeming to hover untethered over lower-growing plants, or  among grasses, give the scene a wonderfully airy and ephemeral effect. My plant is being supported by the grassy leaves of spiderwort ( Tradescantia ohiensis). Spiderwort isn't native to this part of Florida, but does pretty well - in fact, too well at times. I will have to thin this batch to keep it from overshadowing and outcompeting the elephant's foot. I suppose elephant's foot would have to be staked in a more formal garden, but loosely, so as not to destroy its peculiar charm.

There are 4 species of Elephantopus native to Florida, but elatus, the "tall elephant's foot," is the only one that occurs in SW Florida. This species is found in throughout most of Florida and parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. In Florida its status is "Threatened." It can take rather dry to reasonably moist situations, and is commonly found in pine flatwoods.The Florida Native Plant Society lists it as a "short-lived perennial." 

Though it is quite drought-hardy, and used to sandy soils, I find that the plant does better in our hot yard with a little moisture and shade. I don't need to water it in its present place where it gets runoff from the eaves and protection from the afternoon sun, but the ones I planted elsewhere, in full unabated sunlight, died out. 

A Head and Ray Florets
(I've rotated this photo several times and still can't figure out which end is up)

Over time, Florida elephant's foot will form clumps, like many plants in the Aster Family. It also grows from seed. In our yard it goes dormant in the dry season, disappearing entirely until the rains resume.

Though it works wonderfully blended with other plants, a large plot of Elephantopus alone in bloom is quite and quietly spectacular. When he was still in high school my much younger brother tilled up a section near the woods to grow corn. The raccoons got most of the corn, but there obviously was a dormant seedbank for elephant's foot, because it flourished in that spot thereafter. More than 40-50 years later, there are still scattered plants there in spite of repeated disturbance. In fact, the plant in our yard is a descendent of these north-Florida individuals.

Colony of Elephant's Foot  under Serenoa repens
Naples Preserve

Florida elephant's foot doesn't seem overly attractive to butterflies, but is very popular with wasps and bees. The photo below shows what I believe to be a spider wasp nectaring. Spider wasps paralyze spiders and inter them as food for their larvae. They can manipulate a spider far larger than they are themselves. Though they can sting, they usually aren't aggressive. This one didn't mind my getting up close. 

Florida elephant's foot is so named because from overhead, the outline of the basal rosette supposedly resembles the footprint of an elephant. That takes some imagination. For one thing, the elephant would have to have toes  all around its foot, not just in the front. 

A garden full of divas would be pretty jarring and incoherent. It needs a complement of modest and unassuming plants like Florida elephant's foot to furnish the backdrop so the stars can shine.