Royal Conundrum - Killing the Monarch Butterfly with "Kindness"

The monarch butterfly population has been in serious decline for years now, something many gardeners know. To compensate for habitat loss, gardeners have been encouraged to plant more milkweeds, the insect's larval host plant. But this has led to unforeseen negative consequences, especially in warm winter regions of the U.S.

Native milkweeds can be hard-to-impossible to find, so the tropical, showy "scarlet" milkweed has become ubiquitous in garden centers across the country. This plant, Asclepias curassavica, is native to the American tropics and has spread to pantropical regions worldwide. It has become invasive in some areas, and threatens to become a pest in South Florida. 

Many monarch butterflies harbor a protozoan, Ophryocystis elektroscirrha (OE), that can weaken the adult, prevent the pupa from emerging from the chrysalis, or deform the wings. Monarchs visiting milkweeds deposit spores when they visit milkweeds. Normally, migration culls weakened individuals, and the OE spores die when the plants die back in winter. The plants grow back in spring and summer with fresh, uninfected leaves. But in areas with warm winters tropical milkweed grows all year, thus maintaining high levels of OE spores. Areas of Georgia, coastal Carolinas, Florida and the Gulf Coast have become hotspots of infection.

Monarch on Scarlet Milkweed

Apart from the immediate threat to individual monarchs, year-round milkweed is also, probably more ominously, threatening the migration itself. The presence of the milkweed affects the butterfly's hormonal balance, and works as a trigger to make it reproduce. So monarchs that find themselves in areas with warm winters don't migrate, and a year-round population gets established. With increasing warming trends this area of permanent, sickly individuals will only increase. 

Migration plays a critical role in maintaining a robust gene pool, for it culls badly infected individuals, which simply don't survive the trip. But migration may play other vital roles as well, in ways  we haven't discovered. 

Some organizations like the Xerces Society and the Florida Native Plant Society actively campaign against the use of tropical milkweeds. Some people, though, citing the drastic declines in the monarch population, feel that keeping the numbers up is of primary importance. 

Weaning gardeners away from tropical milkweed is going to be a monumental project, especially since it was promoted so aggressively as a solution to monarch population decline. 

Monarch on Asclepias curassavica

In and of itself, I'm not particularly heartbroken over the loss of scarlet milkweed in our yard. Due to neglect, they've sort of died out this spring anyway. It is a water hog, and the stems quickly get leggy and woody. It also is a magnet for aphids and spider mites, which would make any self-respecting female monarch look for greener pastures. 

Aphid-Infested Milkweed

Finding natives or even native seeds, is going to be a long, drawn out process. Some mail order nurseries offer native milkweed species that theoretically would grow here, but I'd have a better chance with offspring originating  much closer to home. 

Even though they might be the same species, a plant grown in the mid-Atlantic or Midwest would be quite different genetically from one that has adapted to South Florida conditions. They might not even look the same, they might not  survive, and they certainly wouldn't do anything to maintain genetic diversity. Ecologically even North Florida differs greatly from the southern part of the state.

Asclepias incarnata, "Swamp Milkweed," a Native

But there's a further complication!

Whether it comes to weather patterns, the density of bear fur, and many other things, matters often are much more complicated when it comes to the southern peninsula of Florida. It seems that there is an established, non-migratory monarch population south of Lake Okeechobee.  The most-studied migration routes don't cover us, especially on the sw coast, though we might get a few strays. I have had basically year-round monarchs since I began butterfly gardening around 1995. Over the years I have seen newly-emerged monarchs with deformed wings, but not a lot. Even without the scarlet milkweed, all of our native milkweeds might not go completely dormant during our winters, so a small population could persist theoretically without our help. The assumption has to be that the infection rate in our monarch population is close to 100%. 

So, in a way, it doesn't matter whether we keep planting Asclepias curassavica, but it goes against the grain now that I'm aware of a problem. While I don't like the plant, and getting rid of it would not stop the problem of diseased butterflies, it still seems somehow that replacing it with its cousins that "belong here" would be ethically as well as esthetically better. Now comes the hard part - actually doing it. 

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

 

The Comfort of "Exceptional Images"

It's been a while.

I have been coping (not very well) with serious health issues in my family for a couple of months. We seem to have turned a corner now, though we're not out of the woods yet.

While the crisis was building I felt utterly helpless. I was drawing frantically - somehow drawing was one of the few things I could do. Otherwise I felt as if I were walking in deep sludge. Even the most basic activities seemed to take enormous effort.

A Dead Dragonfly (Saddlebag)?
My husband found it and brought it to me to draw.

Drawing was a way of blocking out feelings, a way of mitigating, if only temporarily, the desperation and frantic torpor that threatened to overwhelm me. But once I put the pencils down, the anxiety returned with a vengeance.

Then I read the post Art and Nature are My Healers by Elizabeth Smith. She described her path to reconciliation after her mother's death, and it seemed as though she had written it for me. She quoted a passage from Clare Walker Leslie's Drawn to Nature, in which Leslie recounted losing her own mother, and the solace she gained from drawing: "Every day, while my mother's illness progressed, I would find one image outdoors that I could hold onto, like a marble in my pocket that I rubbed for nourishment and balance. This looking out at the world helped my looking in, towards my own pain."

Shell and Horseshoe Crab Molt 

In her post Elizabeth detailed her search for, and sketch of a "daily exceptional image," and how it is helping her to deal with her own grief. When I read it something fell into place, and I realized what I was missing.

I needed to stop blocking, and start opening myself to the wonder of what I saw, even if it left me more vulnerable to fear and anxiety. Strangely enough, the process has been comforting. The weather then wasn't conducive to outside exploration, so instead, I searched my sketchbooks for drawings that had meaning for me, and finding them gave me a glimpse of happiness again. I have sprinkled some of them throughout this post.

Elizabeth's blog reminded me of the first peaceful day I remember after my mother's death, which was devastating.  I sat outside in the shade and drew Gaillardias. It took a long time to make this very simple line drawing. I  meant to color it in later, but decided it was better as it was. My mother was not one for frippery or fuss. She had a clean, simple esthetic. She loved a handful of flowers in a jar much more than a florist's arrangement. Drawing these cheerful flowers became an act of devotion, a simple moment of celebration of all my mother had meant and forever will mean to me.

Gaillardias - for me and my Mother

Anxiety and grief never really go away. But drawing with an open heart, not drawing to block out reality, is grounding. The drawings don't have to be perfect; they don't even have to be good, but the very act of recording something that has impressed us with its beauty, its form, its simplicity, whatever it may be - can give us the serenity to keep going. As Elizabeth wrote, "I could be mindful about something exceptional that did not cause pain, but instead promised something more." Thank you, Elizabeth and Clare.

June Beetle

Two of my favorite books by Clare Walker Leslie :

Nature Drawing: A Tool for Learning. Prentice-Hall. 1980. Revised Printing, Kendall/Hunt. 1995. - This is one of my favorite books, period. I often go to it when I feel like I am in a slump, or need an infusion of energy and enthusiasm.

The Art of Field Sketching. Prentice-Hall. 1984. Revised Printing, Kendall/Hunt. Another great book to get you motivated, up and outside.

Clare Walker Leslie's books are available at Amazon, and probably other vendors.

Leaf Cutter Bees

A week or so back I was delighted to see the chewed margins of this pipevine (Aristolochia sp) leaf. Chewing is usually cause for alarm in the garden, but in this case it is evidence of leaf cutter bee activity, something to be welcomed.

A Leaf Cutter Bee Was Here!

The species I see could well be native to Florida. It also could be Megachile rotunda, the "alfalfa bee," imported into the U. S. after the 1930's to: you guessed it! pollinate alfalfa fields. Honeybees are not efficient pollinators of alfalfa. This useful little critter has spread since then to much of the U.S.

The family of leaf cutter bees, Megachilidae, contains at least 2,000 species, and occurs virtually worldwide. Around 63 -75 species can be found in Florida alone. Another common leaf cutter bee, the "mason bee," Osmia sp., constructs its egg chambers with leaves and mud. Osmia bees are produced commercially and can be ordered over the Internet.

The Megachile bee is about the size of a honeybee. It does not sting unless provoked, and the sting is said to be less painful than that of a honeybee. It is somewhat chunky, with black and white bands on the abdomen and black on the upper thorax. Both sexes are generalist pollinators - they like just about everything. Only the female nests. Instead of packing pollen into leg pouches like honeybees, she carries it on the underside of her abdomen.

Megachile on Heliotropium polyphyllum 

She will nest in just about anything the right size and shape - oarlocks, unused hoses, rotten wood, hollow twigs, burrows, or manmade nesting boxes. In Florida the bees also like holes drilled in stucco for fastening hurricane shutters! Nests in underground burrows don't seem to be affected by short-term inundation, or by getting gradually filled in.

Once she has found a suitable nesting place, the female cuts a round bottom plug, and then builds up the chamber with overlapping oval pieces of leaf. She cuts  these sections out of leaf margins one at the time. She works smoothly and precisely, taking only a few seconds. She's so fast that you're lucky to catch her in action. She carries the leaf section slightly curved, under her abdomen, to her nest. I've timed a bee in action, from entrance to exit from burrow.  She takes 60 to 90 seconds to get the new leaf section in place.

Megachile Carrying Oval Leaf Section

When the chamber is complete she packs it with a mixture of nectar and chewed pollen, lays a single egg, and departs to cut the circular seal, or plug. This is when the closely related cuckoo bee. Coelioxys sp., may make her move. She crawls into the nest, and lays her egg, which will hatch and eat both pollen and competing larva.

The  Megachile bee makes a series of chambers, one atop the other. The resulting cylinder is said to resemble a cigar somewhat. It would have to be a cigar no bigger in diameter than a straw. I extracted one from an oarlock one year and kept it in a dish. After a month or so, a faint, persistent buzzing told me that something was happening, and sure enough, one bee, followed quickly by another, emerged. At this point I took the bees and the rest of the cylinder outside where they belonged.

Leaf cutter bees live only a few months. The female dies after she completes her egg-laying. The larva pupates and overwinters in the nest as an adult until it emerges in the spring.

Megachile on Goldenrod

If you're trying to grow a prize rose or dahlia for exhibition, the leaf cutter bee could be a nuisance. Otherwise, since they are solitary, not part of a colony, the damage they do is minimal, and I think just adds interest.

There is a wealth of information on the Internet about leaf cutter bees. The Honeybee Conservancy site has great info, pictures and video. Click the following link to get to the site. leaf cutter bee. The University of Florida also has a good article. Go to edis.ifas.ufl.edu/in619. Another of my favorite sites is from the BeeInformed organization. https://beeinformed.org/2014/07/30/alfalfa-leafcutter-bee-.

Megachile Work on Gopher Apple, Licania michauxii

Honeybees  have the reputation of being the best crop pollinators, but that is not necessarily the case. Our native bees are vital in the pollination of crops, ornamentals and our native flora. I don't know whether the one in my yard is a native or the imported alfalfa bee, but either way it is more than welcome.

Summertime Blues I

Blues and purples have a calming effect in the garden, maybe because they suggest shadows and cool water. I have begun consolidating the blues scattered through our yard to maximize their impact - to create mini-oases amidst the reds, yellows, oranges and hot pinks that abound.

Waterlily "Tina"

The tropical waterlily Tina has been blooming like mad, in spite of the fact that I haven't fertilized it in over a year. "Her" pot is in a half-barrel nestled in the dappled shade of a Fiddlewood, one of the most valuable plants in the yard  because of the partial shade it affords.

A clump of chalky-blue Elliott's lovegrass has sprung up beside the waterlily pot, thriving from overspill. Grackles swoop down from the fiddlewood to bathe here because they can perch on the rim of of the pot within a pot, throwing out arcs of water with every wingflap. The grass loves it. I have the frame for an old hanging basket over the waterlily crown to keep them from destroying the plant, but when the grackles are active, I need to add water to the pot every day, and the grass gets a little drink in the process.

Elliott's Lovegrass in Bloom

Dwarf golden dewdrop, Duranta repens, is also good for cooling things down. Lucious racemes of white-edged, deep purple flowers droop from arching stems. I have to keep it in a pot to protect it from root knot nematodes, the bane of southern gardeners, and an especially bothersome pest in South Florida. If it is in full sun, the leaves get too yellow, so it needs some dappled shade to let the flowers and foliage thrive.

Golden Dewdrop

 Duranta used to be considered a Florida native, but isn't classified as such now. At any rate, it is certainly "Florida friendly" in terms of water and fertilizer usage. There is a non-dwarf form, but given the small size of the yard, I need to look for small varieties. The plant's name comes from the golden seeds (poisonous)  that follow the flowers. A member of the Verbena family, it is highly attractive to many butterflies. It blooms periodically throughout the year. I have moved its pot beside and a little in front of another Tina waterlily in the front yard. I like the effect of the branches drooping over the water, and I hope the purples will "talk" to each other.

Blue porterweed (Stachytarpheta jamaicensis), another member of Verbenaceae, would be my choice if I could have only one nectar plant. It attracts not only many butterflies and other insect species, but also hummingbirds. We see very few hummers, only during their spring and fall migrations, but they love the blue porterweed almost as much as the traditional red flowers like fire bush coral honeysuckle, and red geiger. (I remember hummingbirds nectaring at the blue balloon-flowers (Platycodon sp) I had in a rock garden in Georgia).

Native Blue Porterweed

It is hard to convey the beauty of blue porterweed in a photo or small drawing, since each flower spike has only 3-6 pale blue flowers open at a time. Each plant produces multiple spikes, though, so a mature plant, or even better, a clump of porterweeds, will have an abundance of blues dancing above the foliage.

There is a great deal of confusion in the trade over blue porterweed, and many nurseries unwittingly purvey a non-native form, Stachytarpheta urticifolia. This plant does attract butterflies, but also gets woody and scraggly with time. It has a minutely quilted leaf surface, and its flowers tend toward purple. The native porterweed has much smoother leaves, blue flowers, more compact habit, and smaller stature. Naturalist Roger Hammer has been instrumental in clearing up the confusion, at least within native plant circles.

I treat it as something like a long-lived annual or short-lived perennial. I cut it back when it starts to decline, but eventually it is easier for me to pull out the decadent individuals and foster the new ones that have sprung up in the yard. Without grass competition it self-sows actively, but not so much that it becomes a nuisance.

Carpenter Bee(?) on Native Blue Porterweed

Under very wet conditions the leaves may be attacked by a fungus. I have been able to keep this under control by pruning or removing diseased plants.  The porterweeds at a nearby nature center where I volunteered years ago were sometimes attacked by a stem-boring insect, but so far the ones in our yard have been free from this. They do get mealy bugs and spittle bugs, especially the older plants, but essentially are trouble free. They are growing scattered throughout the yard, and also in large pots.

Since we still have had no rain for over a week, fungus is the least of my worries. It rains all around us, and most days the skies get gray and even livid purple, with thunder and some lightning, but it passes us by with nary a sprinkle.

Sahara in South Florida?

June did not waste any time coming and going, and we're already pushing mid July.

Though it's been raining about a mile inland, we've been unusually dry here on the coast. The westerly seabreeze from the Gulf is keeping the summer storms from making it to us. According to our rain gauge, we got only 2.39 inches of rain in June, and most of that fell in one enormous thunderstorm. The rest of the rain fell in increments of a few hundredths of an inch, not enough to wet more than the very top layer of sand.

 So far in July, we've had 1.01," with little chancce of more before the end of next week. ( I have to be careful about what I wish for. I was lamenting the drought in May, and we ended up with over 15 inches here at the house). I save as much rainwater as I can, but I have containers for only 40-50 gallons, and I've used it all. I irrigate as little as possible, almost on a triage basis, but if this dry spell lingers too much longer I definitely will have to drag the hose around.

Dune Sunflower, Helianthus debilis, a semi-vining, scrambling beach native.  It takes  major drought to slow it down.

It's hot. Hot and humid, with heat indices in the 100's for most days. The whiteflies are going to town, and it's time to dispose of  expiring tomato and pepper plants. Native plants are far from immune, one reason I pulled out bushels of spent Gaillardias about a month ago. In Florida Weather, Morton D. Winsberg writes, "... air over Florida in summer becomes so humid that conditions are similar to those during rainy season in the Amazon or Congo basins." (p.94). By afternoon in summer our skies typically are hazy, even milky due to the humidity.


The weather may have been keeping me indoors for much of the day, but life in the garden continues at a frantic pace. The Lignum vitae, Guajacum sanctum, completed a glorious flush of blooms the last week of June. The blooming period is short - only about a week - but the intensely blue-to-violet flower petals are so gorgeous that I can't mourn the briefness of their stay. Besides, there will be more flushes as the year progresses.

Lignum vitae, Guajacum sanctum

This very slow-growing tree has shiny evergreen compound leaves and deeply textured grayish bark. It will grow tall and spindly in deep shade, but given more sun, it often develops a somewhat spreading habit. The trunk of the one in our yard is virtually prostrate. It had to grow out instead of up to get the light it craved, and two hurricanes enhanced the lean.  The plant definitely adds to the garden even out of bloom. Birds love to perch in it. The ornamental seed pods remind me of small golden turbans. They open to expose shiny black seeds covered with a fire-engine red flesh which mockingbirds and cardinals relish.

Open Seed Pods and Shiny Red Flesh Covering the Seeds

Since this tree has such a slow growth rate, it's not surprising that the wood is extremely tough. It is so heavy it won't float. The high resin content - about 30% - means that items made from the wood are self-lubricating, and it has been used for centuries, especially in shipping, for bearings and pulleys, and in food-handling machinery to avoid contamination. Gil Nelson writes, "Hinges made from lignum vitae served the locks of the Erie Canal for over 100 years." (The Shrubs and Woody Vines of Florida, p. 371).

 The resin gives it great tensile strength as well. Belaying pins, cricket balls, croquet mallets, British police truncheons, and mortars and pestles are some of the many other items made from this wood. Lignum vitae wood was used for the "aft main strut-bearings for the USS Nautilus," the first nuclear sub in the world. An item of trivia : images of the flowers, which are the state flowers of both Jamaica and the Bahamas, were embroidered in Meghan Markle's wedding veil. (Most of this information is from the Wikipedia article on Lignum vitae).

The discovery of the wood's qualities coupled with the fact that its sap could be used to treat symtoms of syphilis, meant that from the 1500's on, vast quantities were cut and shipped to Europe. This native of tropical America, from roughly northern South America to the Florida Keys, is now endangered. Fortunately it can be grown from seed, and grows well in cultivation. If you ever get the chance to visit Lignum Vitae Key State Botanical Park, don't miss it! Lignum vitae key has one of the very few, perhaps the only, virgin tropical hardwood hammock left in Florida.

Now, back to the Sahara. In spring, summer and early fall, vast clouds of dust from the Sahara desert collect in masses 1-2 miles deep, and 5,000 - 20,000 miles high in the atmosphere. These clouds of dust can be as large as the continental US. The Saharan Air Layer, as it is called consists of hot, very dry dusty air containing much mineral dust, and can be associated with strong winds. It tends to weaken or depress tropical storms, especially tropical cyclones moving across the Atlantic. (article by Jason Dunion. I can't get a direct link to the article to work, but you can find it on the NOAA website. In the search box type "Saharan Air Layer," and it should take you to the article). Because it blocks the sun's rays, it also diminishes local convective thunderstorms, which along with seabreeze collisions are a major source of Florida's summer rain. While the SAL is in place, we can pretty much forget about rain. I don't think the SAL extends much farther north than South Florida in the U.S., but I haven't been able to confirm that yet.

For a fascinating overview of the contents of Saharan dust, and the effects it has on the earth, including fertilizing the Amazon and sequestering carbon in the ocean, read Jason Adetunji's article, "What Dust from the Sahara Does to You and the Planet." (I can't get a link to work for this article either, but it appeared appeared in theconversation.com. You can find the article by entering the title in the search box).


The reddish soil in an agricultural area in Miami-Dade County known as the "Redlands" is possibly the result of tons of deposited Saharan dust, which contains iron particles.

Scarlet Sage and Dune Sunflower

7-Year Apple

7-Year Apple, Genipa clusiifolia, is a wonderful native plant that should be used more in south Florida. It doesn't make sense that it can be hard to find, because it should be a gardener's and landscaper's dream plant. Though it bears individual flowers intermittently all year, the "big event" occurs in  spring and summer. Then it produces intensely fragrant white, star-shaped flowers over the entire shrub. Flower buds and the tips of petals are apricot-colored. Even out of flower, its large (up to 6 inches long), evergreen glossy leaves make it a good choice for a medium-to-large sized shrub/small tree. The smooth leathery leaves are slightly turned under along the margins, which lowers the transpiration rate.

7-Year Apple - Staminate Plant

 A lot of plants are said to be trouble-free, but this one really is. Nothing bothers it. It grows freely on the back side of the beach dunes here. It is extremely drought-and-salt tolerant, untroubled by diseases, and free of insect pests. It is listed as the larval host of the Tantalus Sphinx Moth, but ours has never shown any evidence of chewing. In general it is also wind-resistant. Ours came through Hurricane Wilma in 2005 with minimal damage. Irma, last September, though, tore it apart.

When we moved to our house on a barren lot I broke a cardinal rule of gardening - don't place shrubs and trees too close to each other. I knew the theoretical mature size and spread of the things I was planting, but could not visualize how the bare slips I was committing to the earth would ever reach those dimensions. Besides, I didn't expect everything to thrive. I planted a Jamaica Caper, the Genipa, and a Coontie (Zamia pumila) on 3-4-foot radii in the vicinity of a medium Christmas Palm. Then later, I added a Lignum Vitae (Guajacum sanctum) which had outgrown its pot because there seemed no other place to put it.

 For a few years everything in the garden was lovely, and then everything took off at once. The Coontie has formed a massive clump at least 5 feet in diameter, and the Jamaica Caper is 12-15 feet tall. The Lignum Vitae, which already had developed a spreading form in the pot, spread even more in competition with the others. The Genipa started getting shaded out. Genipa bears most of its leaves in clusters at the ends of its  branches, so it is sort of hollow "inside," but the growth is typically dense and compact enough to protect it from wind. The branches on ours had become so elongated and spread out that Irma's winds ripped the shrub apart. It is badly disfigured now, and the problem of too little space for too many plants remains. But it is blooming so profusely now that I can't bring myself to be rational and ruthless.

My main reason for loving it is its incredibly fragrant flowers. By now  the Jamaica Caper has ceased flowering, but the Genipa is still going strong, and I go out at least once a day, but usually more, just to get my "hit" from the fragrance. Butterflies, skippers, other small insects, and probably moths, love the flowers too. Ours started blooming in March and is still not slowing down.

Gulf Fritillary and Genipa

The plants are dioecious - that is each individual plant has either "male" (staminate) or "female"(carpellate) flowers. The staminate plants produce clusters of flowers, while carpellate flowers appear singly. When you buy a Genipa, it's the luck of the draw which one you get, same as with hollies. You'll get fruit only with a carpellate plant close enough to a staminate plant to be pollinated.

Immature Fruits

The immature fruit isn't quite so "deco neon" - I'm no master of Photoshop Elements! In spite of the name, the fruit takes about a year to mature. Fruit in various states of maturity can be found on the same bush. It starts green, turns yellow, and then dark brown when ripe. It is about the size of a Comice pear. It is vaguely edible, but not palatable.

Fallen Ripe Fruit

I've never eaten a fermented prune, but that's what came to mind when I tasted Genipa. The fruit is little more than a pulpy sac containing numerous seeds, which are said to be emetic. Mockingbirds apparently have developed a trick of pecking a small hole in the fruit and eating the inside goodies - leaving an empty sac still hanging on the branch. Other wildlife, especially raccoons, eat the fruit as well.

Smashed on a Concrete Walkway
Anybody Hungry?

7-Year Apple is native to Cuba, the Bahamas, Turks , Caicos, Bermuda, and southern Florida. It grows in sandy or rocky substrates. Why do garden centers concentrate on exotics that need coddling when there are natives like this?

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.

May - Prelude to Summer

(Just a reminder. All the writing, photos and artwork are mine unless otherwise noted, and protected by copyright. If you're interested in using any of the material, please contact me).


Where has May gone? I feel the time running through my hands like water. ( I stole that image from my sister-in-law,  E.).

Apart from a few afternoons, it hasn't been terribly hot yet; in that regard it clearly is not summer.

South Florida does have seasonal patterns. Things start happening by late February or early March, and the pace gets increasingly hectic until the onset of drowning rains and crushing heat of deep summer applies some brakes.

Every plant and animal seems intent on reproducing. For plants that means germination, growing, flowering, seed production all at a dizzying rate. I can't draw fast enough to record the abundance, much less the process.

Despite drought*, abundant sunshine and seemingly incessant wind, the yard is full of furiously blooming plants, crowding each other, sprawling over each other, all vying for the most light. White and lavender Heliotropium groundccovers, Gaillardias, Coreopsis, Dune Sunflower, Camphor Weed  (Pluchea rosea), Goldenrod, Blue Porterweed, Gopher Apple (Licania michauxii), Vinca, Scarlet Sage (Salvia coccinea), and Bidens alba are all vying for attention up to a few feet off the ground. Frangipani, Jamaica Caper, 7-Year Apple (Genipa clusiifolia), Red Geiger, Bougainvillia, and Simpson's Stopper round out the list for flowering trees and shrubs.

Intensely Fragrant Genipa clusiifolia

Coral Honeysuckle and the bizarre flowers of Pipevine represent the vines. Not to  mention a few blooming Tillandsias and orchids. And this is all happening on a 60 x 110-foot lot that also holds a house, driveway and sidewalks. Apart from a few boat trips back into the mangroves, I haven't managed to get out into the natural world for several months, but things are happening there, too.

The first tiny Easstern Lubber grasshopper nymphs, which popped out of the ground in early February, have turned into adults. Birds are nesting. Osprey "chicks" have mostly fledged by now. Tropical hardwoods like gumbo limbo and mahogany are shedding their leaves in anticipation of summer's rains.

Lubber Grasshopper Nymphs. These individuals have molted several times already.

Adult Lubber. It was crawling up a screen. Don't know why I didn't sketch  that.

Monarch caterpillars are devouring milkweed faster than I can coax it to grow. Even if you can find plants in garden centers, by now they usually already have caterpillars or eggs on them. I feel like a factory worker in the old Soviet Union. As soon as he met his quota for the month, the reward was a higher quota to meet. And on and on. It's the same with the caterpillars - raise one or two successfully, and before you know it you've got multiple broods chomping down leaves and even stems. If I can't find some more milkweed, some of my caterpillars are going to starve.

I would like to use native milkweeds instead of the West Indian scarlet milkweed (Asclepius curassavica), but they just aren't available. Even my trusty native plant nurseryman hasn't had success bringing them through our hot and humid summers.

Asclepias perennis. I can't bring it through our summers.

Perhaps we butterfly gardeners are pushing the monarchs' range farther south than it should be, and encouraging them to stick around instead of migrating, but we are in the range of their cousins the queens and soldiers. The fact that both have been around for a while makes me think that there must be some native milkweed(s) surviving further inland. White twinevine  (Sarcostemma clausum) is one possibility - I've seen it growing in several locales, but it wouldn't provide a great deal of forage, so there must be others.  For some reason the queen population in my yard has crashed. I used to have swarms. Last year I had just a few, and I haven't seen any at all so far in 2018.


The downside of all the vegetative abundance in the yard is that there are far too many plants for it to be a garden. At present large parts of this small plot are virtually impassible for anything other than rodents, reptiles and birds. I hate to rip out perfectly healthy plants, but from time to time I have to harden my heart. It would be nice to have a garden again.

A Riot of Color; Not So Good for Moving Around

*Our drought has been replace by heavy rains. We've had over 9 inches in just one week here at the house, and plenty more is in the forecast. Just another way Mother Nature turns things upside down.

Weeds I Like III - Southern Fleabane

Erigeron quercifolia, "Southern Fleabane," or "Oakleaf Fleabane," bloomed vigorously all through March and April, and has gone to seed now. Individual plants will bloom sporadically throughout most of the year, but spring is the time for the big show.

"Big show" is misleading, because this diminutive annual is one of the quiet bloomers. It just does its job, does it well, without fanfare, and in general is overlooked completely. However, in March and April masses of it adorn roadsides bordering ditches and  brackish bays. The pale heads seem to float above the ground like a layer of dew-bedazzled spider webs. Pollinators like it, but most homeowners who know it regard it only as a turf weed, if they are aware of it at all.

I've always liked this plant, yet I can't find any photos or notes, and I have precious few sketches of it.

The heads (see my post from Jan. 25, '18) are no bigger than a dime. Over 100 tiny white or slightly lavender ray flowers surround a central disk packed with bright orange-yellow disk flowers. The plant arises from a basal rosette, with clasping, often lobed, leaves with hairy undersides and edges.  A many-branched inflorescence, with each branch ending in a single head, arises from a central stalk, which is hairy to sandpapery in texture. Leaves on the inflorescence are sparse and smaller than those in the basal rosette. The entire plant grows 8 to 10 inches tall, possibly taller in particularly favorable  habitat.

Erigeron is a large, cosmopolitan genus in the family Asteraceae, or Composite.  The USDA Plants Database shows Erigeron quercifolius growing throughout Florida, west through Louisiana, and north through Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina, but the Flora of North America limits it to the southeast. It likes moist to wet situations, and Tobe, Burks, et. al. classify it as a wetland plant. (Florida Wetland Plants. 1998).

 It actually seems able to cope with fairly dry conditions as well. Though it grows only in part of my swale -  the lowest point on the property, where there must be at least some moisture beneath the rock - it still blooms vigorously in our dry, windy spring conditions.

Canadian fleabane, Erigeron canadensis, is well known in herbal medicine with both external and internal uses. Some of the conditions reportedly treated by it include coughs, lack of appetite, hemorrhages, diarrhea, and kidney and liver problems. The common explanation of how it got its common name is that people thought that the dried plants repelled fleas. A more likely origin is Culpepper's description of the seeds as black, shiny and small like fleas in his 17th century herbal.
(A Comprehensive Description of Nearly All Herbs with their Medicinal Properties and Directions for Compounding the Medicines Extracted from Them. 1652). Southern fleabane probably shares some of these medicinal qualities, though it doesn't seem to have been studied.

This charming little annual probably is a little too wild to be a reliable part of a flower border, but might be a good plant to give interest to a moist meadow. Next year I'll be careful to pay more attention and sketch it more.