Signs of Spring

Just a few days ago I heard the familiar lament, "I like Florida, but I really miss the change of seasons." We don't have jonquils and crocus, but  there are plenty of signs heralding the advent of spring in SW Florida. As for color signals, what more do you need than the show put on by flowering trees - deep yellow Tabebuia,cooling lavender Jacaranda, delicate pink masses of flowering almond - just to name a few.  

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.

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.

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. 

Dormant Frangipani Branch

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

Summer Fragrance

One of the things that defines the transition from spring into summer here in the garden is fragrance. It starts with the Gardenia, whose heavy tropical fragrance  envelopes you like humidity, feels liquid enough to drink. Gardenias seem to suggest a seductive beauty, sultry southern nights, the songs of Billie Holiday. Sticking your nose into a gardenia flower and inhaling is near-intoxicating, as "high" as I need to be.


Since gardenias love acid soil, keeping one remotely happy in our alkaline conditions is a constant struggle, and Irma's salty winds set it back even more, but it still bloomed.  Right now it is teetering between permanent decline and slow recovery. Perhaps I should just replace it. The front yard, more protected from salty winds and a little shadier, might be a better location, but the front is crowded already. I would have to redo the area by the front door or dining room window (same area) so that we would be able to enjoy the perfume. Just one of the many landscaping dilemmas one runs into in a  garden, especially one as small as ours.


If the gardenia is like a heavy wine, the frangipani, Plumeria sp., is more like a refreshing sip of lemonade. Plumerias practice deceit pollination. Their light, sweet odor promises nectar, but the flowers don't deliver. Insects, especially the sphinx moth, keep looking for the nectar in vain, thereby transferring pollen.  Traditional Hawaiian leis are made of frangipani blossoms.

Yellow and White Blossoms Are More Frangrant Than Reds and Pinks

Frangipani copes with winter drought and cold by losing all its leaves, and the turgid, lumpy, leaf-scarred stems look dead. The first new growth and the flowers sprout from the very tip of the stems, and have an oddly other-worldly effect when in bud, like some growth out of science fiction.

New Leaves and Flower Buds

Frangipanis typically grow wider than tall. Thanks to Irma, our frangipani is leaning pretty badly. I may try to stake it, or just leave it as is, pretending I'm striving for a more picturesque effect. Before I do anything, I have to remove a mass of Gaillardias, but they're still blooming vigorously.


The flowers of Jamaica caper (Capparis cynophallophora) and 7-year apple ( Genipa clusiifolia) begin opening about the time the gardenia peaks. Just breathing near these 2 shrubs on a warm, late afternoon is a sensuous - even sensual - experience. This is when the white flowers begin serioiusly releasing their fragrance, sending olfactory signals to lure the moths that will pollinate them overnight. They are visited by day-flying insects and butterflies as well, and emit periodic bursts of fragrance throughout the day.

"Morning After" Pink Flowers

When in bloom Jamaica caper is one of our most beautiful native plants. White 4-petaled flowers open in late afternoon or early evening and in the course of the next couple of days morph through a suffused pink to deep maroon before falling. Numerous long stamens whose filaments go through the same color progression as the petals radiate out from the flower's throat, creating a startling beauty.  During the day the flowers can be humming with bees and small flies. I have noticed monarchs nectaring on them as well.

Jamaica Caper in Bloom

The plant's glossy evergreen leaves, which reflect light strongly, make the plant attractive even when it is not in bloom.  Rufino Osorio writes, "The leaves are an extremely dark green .... The effect is hard to describe - the plant appears both dark and bright at the same time." (A Gardener's Guide to Florida's Native Plants, p. 239). Numerous scales give the undersides of the leaves a scurfy appearance. New twigs are cinnammon brown, and older wood is gray.

Jamaica Caper Inflorescence

The seed pod is a brown pod 4 - 8 inches long. The pods on my shrub are more like 3 - 4 inches long. Linnaeus thought they resembled a dog's phallus, hence the species name, cynophallophora. Folks in those days apparantly were less prudish than we are, despite  our foul language, and called things as they saw them. The inside of the seed pod is bright red, and the open pods extend the decorative  phase of the shrub. Cardinals and mockingbirds relish the seeds.

Open Seed Pods

Jamaica caper is an absolutely "cast iron" landscape plant in frost-free areas of Florida once it is established. An inhabitant of coastal hammocks, it is both drought and salt-tolerant. It is untroubled by disease or pests. Occasionally ours shows some light damage from the leaf-rolling larva of some insect. Only  once in the past 20+ years has it become noticeably defoliated, and it recovered quickly and completely. I never water it, though since it is close to the seawall, its roots no doubt reach into the brackish water table. During a close pass of a hurricane years ago, salt/brackish water 1-3" deep covered the root area for several hours during high tide without doing any damage.


Our Jamaica caper was not damaged much by Hurricane Irma. Again, the root area was under water until the storm surge subsided. In fact, much of the back yard was covered during the surge, but no plants suffered any noticeable dmage from the inundation. (The surge line didn't reach the gardenia). I can't remember if or how badly the Jamaica caper was defoliated. There was just too much other stuff going on. There were very few broken branches. In any event, now you'd never guess it had been through a hurricane, while the eastern side of the bougainvilleas in the front yard is still not completely leafed out.


I haven't made a  satisfying watercolor of the Jamaica caper flowers in all the years we've lived here. My quick studies don't capture the glossiness of the leaves or the combination of grace and sturdiness that characterize this lovely plant. But I try.

Jamaica Caper

Next up : 7-year apple.