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.

Nobody Loves a Lubber

Starting in February, tiny, inky-black lubber grasshopper nymphs emerge from the underground egg cases where they got their start the previous fall. These little critters will go through several molts  - usually 5 - until they reach their final form - very large, up to 3 inches long, and OSHA orange. I should stomp them, spray them, or feed them parasite-laced baits while they are still small, because once they reach adulthood they are pretty well immune to anything except a heavy boot. But I normally haven't feltl that murderously inclined. In the past  they haven't done much damage in the garden, and by the time they reach adulthood their numbers have shrunk dramatically.

Recently Emerged Lubber Grasshopper Nymphs

This year may be different. There seems to be an awful lot of nymphs, and an awful lot of bigger and bigger nymphs. I am wondering whether my laissez-faire attitude toward them is coming around to bite me in the backside.

So far they've eaten my swamp lily (Hymenocallis palmeri), something they do every year. It survives, and sometimes even blooms if we get enough rain. Anyhing in the Amaryllis family, which includes Hymenocallis, is a lubber delicacy. If I don't bring the potted amaryllis into the screened patio they will devour it, including the bulb. This year the nymphs did a pretty good number on a dendrobium orchid before moving on, and they chewed a couple of tomatoes until I got smart enough to protect the fruits with mesh bags or cheesecloth. (They don't seem very interested in the heirloom cherry tomato "Chocolate Cherry").  They are stripping the kale, but it had begun to get tough, so I've let them have it in hopes of deterring them from eating something more dear to me.

Roosting or Resting Nymphs

Later on, the adults will find the lotus and waterlily leaves in the water garden irresistible. They will hang onto overhanging vegetation with their hind legs and dangle over the water to get at them. Sometimes I find them floating around, so I fish them out if they are still alive. I can be hard-hearted, but I don't like to let creatures drown.

 Lubbers Hanging Down to Eat Lotus Leaves

Lubbers definitely do not like rain. Both nymphs and adults climb relatively high off the ground before dark, and scramble for height with the first raindrop. They aren't active in cloudy weather either. The gregarious nymphs will roost together. They usually don't seem to eat the plants they use for roosting.  No matter, a gaggle of lubber nymphs all over a plant is something of a shock first thing in the morning. Apart from mating, adults seem to be solitary. The sketch above is actually the same grasshopper in different poses.

Lubbber Nymphs Roosting on Periwinkle

The typical adult lubber is OSHA orange with black, red and yellow markings. The wings are a beautiful deep rose. There also is a much lighter form, nowhere near as pretty. Females can reach a good 3 inches in length.

Adult Eastern Lubber Grasshopper

Apart from parasites and diseases, lubbers don't suffer a lot of predation because they are toxic. I have  heard that loggerhead shrikes will impale them and come back to eat them when the toxins allegedly are gone, but I've never seen shrikes go after the lubbers in our yard, and I haven't found any references to back up the rumor. Because they are "pure poison," they can afford to be lazy. Adult lubbers seem to spend a lot of time just hanging out on a screen or a plant stalk, occasionally extending a leg for an exquisite stretch, or waving their antennae.

They seem slow and cumbersome, but powerful hind legs can propel them quite a distance. Their half-size wings are too small for flight, though they may help with jumping.

If handled they may hiss, spit out a brown "tobacco juice" or expel an irritating foam. When I was a kid we sometimes played with them to see if we could get them to spit the brown yuck.

A nice dry summer with just enough rain to keep weeds growing is ideal for a good crop of nymphs the next year. If we have a normal rainy season, the lubber population is kept in balance. Outbreaks can be spectacular, though. Back in the 1980's my husband and I were bicycling at the Shark Valley Everglades National Park site. The lubbers were all over the road, so thick that there was no way of avoiding them. The asphalt was slick from all the lubbers killed by cyclists and the trams.

Lubbers live for one season only. Mating is an hours-long process in which wild gyrations and gymnastics alternate with long periods of seeming inactivity. The female digs a hole in the ground into which she inserts her abdomen to lay eggs. She is pretty-well gone by then, and sometimes ants do not wait for her to die before they attack. Mother Nature is very grim when you get down to it.

Dead Lubber - Romalea guttata

Gopher Apple - Licania michauxii

Gopher apple, Licania michauxii, is in full bloom now. Licania is a genus in the coco plum family (Chrysobalanaceae), which once was included in the rose family because the flowers and fruit are so similar. Maybe one day a "lumper" will put the two together again. Who knows?

It is an incredibly tough plant, forming colonies in the deep sand of sandhills, pinelands and scrub. It is  impossible to transplant, given the fact that it grows from an underground stem. The plants in a colony are probably genetically identical. It also will grow from seed. My colonies started from a couple of small plants I bought at a Florida Native Plant Society sale.

Underground Stem- Horizontal Lines=Ground Level

Rufino Osorio describes its growth habit as similar "to that of a large subterranean woody shrub with only its branch tips growing out of the ground." This underground stem allows the plant to withstand extreme drought, unmitigated sunshine, and fires. *

Gopher Apple in Sand at Naples Preserve

Apart from its role in stabilizing fine "sugar" sands, gopher apple is a valuable food source for animals like the gopher tortoise, raccoons, and opossums. I don't have these animals visiting my suburban yard (now and again a raccoon) as far as I know, but birds do peck at the fruit. The fruit, green when young, matures into a beautiful rosy pink. It has a single large seed, like its former cousins cherries and plums. The fruit is edible, but I find it dry and tasteless.

Licania michauxii Fruit, Flowers

The flower panicles, which occur at the ends of the branches remind me of snowcones. Flowers have 5 petals and 15 stamens, which are attached to the petals. Flowers are a creamy white with a deep yellow-orange throat. They also are a little fuzzy. They attract numerous pollinators, including butterflies.

Flowers

Leaves are opposite, and may vary wildly in size. They are a bright yellow-green when unstressed, leathery, and have a slightly uneven margin. During the dry season in habitat they turn very yellow, and may even wither as in the second photograph. They are a favorite of the alfalfa bee, Megachile sp., which cuts out sections of the leaves to build its underground egg chambers.

Licania recently visited by Megachile

Licania michauxii occurs in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. It makes a very tough, basically trouble-free groundcover, and is especially attractive in bloom. It is not take foot traffic, however. I have to weed a little occasionally, especially since the gopher apple is in the area of my yard invaded by torpedo grass. Otherwise, the only maintenance I do is cutting it back periodically to keep it contained.

Gopher Apple in Bloom

*Rufino Osorio. A Gardener's Guide to Florida's Native Plants. University Press of Florida. 2001. pp196-197.

Illustrations, article and photos by Jeanette Lee Atkinson.