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.

March Madness in the Garden - Part I

March is winding down, and too much is going on to document it all. The growing season is pretty much year-round here, but March still marks the end of the cycle for some plants, and the beginning for others. Soon the tropical hardwoods like gumbo limbo, mahogany and fish-poison tree will shed their leaves, with new buds anticipating summer's rains. 

As usual, it's windy and dry. Fire season is well underway, with between 17,000 and 18,000 acres burned so far in two brush fires that merged into one megafire. Both were started by lightning. High wind and low humidity made the foresters' and firefighters' jobs even harder. Thick smoke enshrouding everything meant very little outside activity, and portions of US 41, the "Tamiami Trail," and I-75, "Alligator Alley," south and east of Naples had to be closed at times due to poor visibility. 

Choking Haze of Smoke

Much of Florida's flora, and indirectly, fauna, is either fire-dependent or fire-resistant. The question that I have not seen addressed is whether all the branches and trees downed by Hurricane Irma made the fuel load high enough to make the fire truly destructive and allow it to get into cypress strands and hardwood hammocks, which burn much less frequently under natural conditions.

Gardeners mimic fire by cutting back native ornamental grasses hard either after they bloom or before new growth resumes in spring. I cut  back the Pink Muhly Grass this March. I also get down on my hands and knees to reach under the clumps and pull out old rotting thatch, which goes onto the compost pile. If we did not live in virtually de-natured suburbia, I would hesitate to do that, because a nice big clump of grass would be a great sheltering place for a pygmy or even bigger rattlesnake. As it is, I have gotten stung by wasps in hidden nests, so now I wear gloves and stay ready to run. 

Blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium) has bloomed vigorously for months, and is now going to seed, along with Tickseed (Coreopsis leavenworthii). 

Coreopsis leavenworthii

Gaillardias (Gaillardia pulchella)are at their peak, and it won't be long before I have to start pulling them out or cutting them back hard. Dry, windy March is aphid, mealybug and whitefly season, and the foliage of the Gaillardias is getting ratty. The plants also develop long leggy stalks that eventually fall over, and the whole clump tends to collapse on one side. They will regenerate sometimes if I cut them back hard and water them, but it's easier to pull them out, because they reseed so readily.

Quick Impression of Gaillardia Clump

 There is  something inherently cheerful about Gaillardias, and they are tough; extremely drought tolerant, need no fertilizer. They flower so heavily that dead-heading can be an arduous task. I do some before I just give up. 

Cheerful Gaillardias

This year they are everywhere in the yard, blocking even the rudimentary paths I have through the garden. Other years they aren't quite as dominant, but they always come back.

I Love Sketching Gaillardias

One of the agaves bloomed spectacularly, and is now declining. I don't know the name. It was given to me years ago, and I've kept it going via seedlings. This year I don't think any seedlings formed on the inflorescence, but I have a couple pots of the plant, so I don't worry about losing the species. The stalk resembles a huge, tough asparagus spear.  I couldn't reach any flowers while they were still open, and had to settle for the withered ones that fell to the ground.

Reminds Me of Jack and the Beanstalk!

Red Stopper and CocoPlum are putting out new growth in varying shades of reds. Seagrape leaves already have changed from translucent coppers to mature green.  Depending on light conditions the new leaves can look delicately pastel or flaming, almost black-red.

Eugenia rhombea, New Growth

I'll have to catch up with the rest of March in the next post. Life in the garden goes on, whether I'm able to keep up or not!

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