Clean Sweep

I've never managed to keep a  neat garden, and neighbors and walkers tell me they like my flowers. Still, I worry that the subtext is, "Your yard is an unholy mess, but at least it's colorful." Finally, old age, an arm injury still lingering after cleaning up after Irma in 2017, and my general sleaze coalesced into the proverbial "perfect storm" landscape-wise, and I had to hire somebody to clear-cut the mess.

Chaos is the Opposite of a Garden

Phyla nodiflora, "Fogfruit," makes a wonderful flowering natvie ground cover that attracts many pollinators, the lovely white peacock butterfly included. It was invading the driveway, and  had crept, kudzu-like, over a stack of paving blocks, 6 bags of mulch, and a patch of wickedly spiny agave, itself out of control even though I had been attacking it regularly.

Phyla nodiflora - Good Pollinator Plant

Sea purslane, Sesuvium portulacastrum, another desirable native ground cover,  was smothering a pot of lotus and a nice patch of Heliotropium amplexicaule. It also presented a bad tripping hazard for anybody brave enough to make a foray into the "jungle." Thickets of scorpion-tail, scattered scarlet sage, and blue porterweed competed for light. Swaths of gaillardias and mounds of dune sunflower were flopping over onto the neighbor's driveway. The gravel swale, where I had nourished the fond idea of creating a meadow of blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium), was instead a mess of moisture-loving opportunists. A dead palm tree and deformed Red Geiger, both courtesy of Hurricane Irma, completed the picture of utter surrender.

Even the rosiest of glasses couldn't mask the reality. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and I called a garden center to restore the bare bones of  the landscape. Two truckloads of debris and over a hundred bags of mulch later, we have one of the neatest and most cared-for yard on the street, which has its pluses, but is not exactly my ideal garden.

New Look for the Front Yard

Although the yard hardly is bare, the new space comes with a cost beyond what the garden center charged. For years our yard has been one of the very few landscapes in our neighborhood to offer  significant amenities of pesticide-free shelter, food and water for animals. Now in its rather barren state those amenities, especially the shelter, are much-reduced.

 However, we do not want to return to what it had become, which was by no means a garden. One thing I have learned is that the garden is as much about space as it is about plants. Without space,  there is no focal point, no rest for the eye or the soul. If the garden is neither  pleasant for walking or viewing, it is a failure, regardless of the beauty of individual plants. The very word "garden" signals the imposition of some kind of order. A  "wild garden" is a contradiction in terms.

So now, I have to recreate some of the lost habitat without losing the harmony of the space. As the old plants begin to resurface through the mulch, I have to organize them into well-defined beds, augmented perhaps with potted specimens. The self-discipline to pull out the surplus will be hard for me to maintain, but if I don't, the mess will re-establish itself quickly. That should provide motivation enough, because the yard really had become horrible and impassable.

Pots for Color

Given the fact that the yard is so small, I also need to ensure that the majority of the plants do more than one job. The agaves don't exactly fit that requirement, though dragonflies like to perch on their upright leaves, and pollinators love the flowers when they appear finally. But we both love the sculptural quality of the plants. A Red Geiger volunteer seedling will fill the space left by the agaves, and all will have enough room for the next several years. Though not a native, the Geiger will be a multi-purpose asset, and deserves its own post.

Wish me luck!

North Carolina Interlude

 The first of November I spent a lovely week in the mountains of North Carolina with two of my sisters. The mountains were even more beautiful in fall than in summer and spring, my usual times to visit. The absence of summer haze meant a clear vista of slope after slope after slope, and the fall foliage was brilliant.

The famous plantsman David Fairchild titled his autobiography The World Was My Garden. Still, it would be a stretch to claim the mountains of western Carolina as an extension of my near-sea level back yard! I bought a new sketchbook just for this trip, so I'll review it here.

Over the past few years I've read a lot of rave reviews of the Stillman & Birn  sketchbook series, and I finally bought one. They come in various weights and finishes, and I dithered and dithered over which one to buy until I just took a deep breath and bought a Zeta, heavyweight (270 gsm), super-smooth, high-white paper.

For years my sketching standby has been Aquabee Super Deluxe Mixed Media paper (150 gsm), and the slickness of the Zeta took me by surprise. My pencils and pens seemed to slip  and slide all over the paper. Moreover, the  Zeta series paper doesn't immediately soak up moisture, and puddles of pigment tend to sit on the surface and take a good while to dry. However, this does make for some very interesting mixing on the paper effects, and wet in wet causes no breakdown of the surface, which can happen pretty quickly with other sketchbooks. There was some buckling of the paper where I got really sloppy, but that was mostly evident on the back side, and diminished some over time.

I did and still do have problems laying down an even wash on this paper without prewetting it. That could be me as well as the paper, though. So far, which isn't that far into the book, I still have problems hitting just the right amount of moisture. The sketch of the Japanese maple leaflet below shows my problems with washes.

Uneven Washes

Once I stopped fighting with the paper I really began to have fun. The top leaf in the next sketch is a sycamore, but I don't know what the other two are. The good old inner critic whom we all know and love, convinced me to give up on the bottom left leaf.  I couldn't get the beige-yellow of the beat-up old leaf correct, and I gave up in frustration. Once I got home I decided that regardless of the inaccuracy of the color, the sketch wasn't that bad, but I no longer had the leaf.

 I had more patience with my second attempt with a Japanese maple leaflet. I used multiple glazes of Winsor &Newton permanent rose, Daniel Smith quinacridone gold, and W%N quinacridone red, waiting for each layer to dry before adding another. The paper took all those layers, and likely would have taken more, without buckling or breaking down. I'm delighted with the clear, brilliant results I got.

Zeta is listed for mixed media, and back home I've tried it with both Prismacolor and Faber-Castell colored pencils. Despite the Zeta's lack of tooth, colored pencil goes on beautifully. Again, I had to modify my technique somewhat. I had to use hard pressure to make the pigment smear at all. Graphite, especially the softer grades, will smear if I'm not careful, but that is the nature of the medium.

The Zeta takes ink beautifully. The sketches above are done with  Pigma Micron, but I  have used a dip pen #104 at home with no scratching, skipping, bleeding or feathering. Even the juicy line of my medium nib Lamy Safari pen doesn't smear unless I deliberately and quickly get my hand or finger on it while it is still wet.

Now I know why other sketchers have raved about Stillman and Birn, though most seem to use the Alpha series. The main drawbacks of S&B over other sketchbook brands is that it is relatively pricey, and not as universally available.While it seems made for ink and watercolor wash, I don't know whether it would dry quickly enough for quick watercolor sketching on the go, especially for painters who like things wet. That might not be a problem in less humid areas.

The Zeta is very bright and very slick, even smoother, if possible, than Bristol plate. The most comparable watercolor papers to it that I know are Sennelier and Fluid hot press. It is ideal for the finely-detailed botanical illustration that I do back in the "studio," my dining room table. I am anxious to order some Zeta by the sheet, because even at this early point I like it better than Bristol and some watercolor papers.

My original plan was to start either with the Alpha or the Zeta, and work my way respectively up or down the series. I thought I might even try the roughest finish to train the frustrated landscape painter inside me because a rough finish would force me to deal in shapes instead of details. Stillman and Birn has recently come out with a sketchbook with toned paper, the Nova. I am so pleased with the clear, crisp images I can produce with multiple washes and patience on the Zeta, though, that I will have trouble keeping to my original plan!

Summertime Blues 2 - Blue Butterflies

More summertime blues - (although they fly all year) - are tiny butterflies. The Cassius Blue and Ceraunus Blue butterflies breed in the yard, and it's possible that we have had visits from Eastern Pygmy Blues, since we are not far from the salt marshes where they and their larval plants thrive.

Generally the Florida Blues fly very close to the ground. Their flight is fast and erratic, and they don't seem to perch long enough for me to id them. Blink and you'll miss them. Their underwings are drab, and they fold their wings when perching. But you glimpse flashes of startling blue when they flutter to another spot.

They are tiny butterflies. The Ceraunus Blue has a maximum wingspan of  0.7 - 1.2 inches. The Cassius Blue is the same size or a little larger at the bottom range. The Eastern Pygmy Blue, one of the tiniest butterflies in the world, maxes out at  0.7 -0.9 inches.

They are among the "Gossamer-Winged" butterflies, and the delicate iridiscent blue of their upper wings makes that a very apt description. Black and white banded antennae are another characteristic of butterflies in this family, Lycaenidae, which also contains the Hairstreaks.

Ceraunus Blues and Neptunia pubescens

The Ceraunus Blue is quite common in Florida. It breeds as far north as central Florida, west to Texas and California, and south to Central America and the West Indies. Both males and females have one eyespot on each hindwing. The eyespot is quite prominent on the underside of the wing because it is large in relation to the size of the butterfly, and partially ringed with bright orange. Males are a shimmery true blue on top, while females are darker and can appear almost black.

Garden abundance of Ceraunus Blues is said to be low, but we seem to have a resident population. One of its larval host plants is Neptunia pubescens, "Tropical Puff" or "Yellow Puff."  We have a large clump or colony on one side of the driveway. This prostrate spreading legume has a delicate fern-like appearance due to its bipinnately compound leaves and tiny leaflets. When it thrives it arches and tumbles all over itself, and from a distance looks dense. However its fine texture does allow grasses, sedges and other weeds to invade it, so it requires a little maintenance - no water.

When it gets ratty looking I cut it back to the ground, and it regenerates beautifully. Indeed, care should be used in introducing it into the garden because it can be difficult to eradicate. Surrounded by concrete and brick, ours is pretty well neutralized, but I do need to trim it periodically to keep it out of the roadway. Neptunia is a "sensitive" plant, and the leaflets collapse as soon as they are touched - that poses some problems in drawing it!

The butterflies lay their eggs on the flower buds. The eggs, larvae and pupae are so tiny I've never been able to find even one. Neptunia flowers occur in "powder puff" heads, with bright yellow petals and numerous stamens. It doesn't produce enough flowers at one time to be truly showy, but evidently it flowers enough to sustain the Blues.

Perching Cassius Blues can be identified by the "zebra" striping on their underwings. This may be hard to see in my photo, but I can't enlarge it more without losing even more detail. They have 2 eyespots on the hindwing. Both sexes are blue on their topwings, though the female is paler wiith more brown than the male. This species is common throughout Florida, excluding the panhandle. They also range from south Texas, the West Indies, and south to Argentina.

Cassius Blue on Plumbago scandens

They lay their eggs on various legume and leadwort species. I used to have more of them because I grew the Florida native Plumbago scandens. This plant is problematic in the yard because it  resists training and scrambles over anything and everything in its path. Its small white flowers are attractive, but the buds and seed pods are extremely sticky, and if you or your pet gets them tangled in hair/fur, the only solution is to cut them out. I took out most of it, but one plant somehow escaped my grim reaping, so I am going to try once again to train, or at least contain it, just for the butterflies.

Milkpea (see my Jan.8, 18 post), a plant I vainly try to eradicate in the yard, is another larval host for Cassius and Ceraunus Blues. I called a temporary truce until  they had a chance to bring up a brood or two, but the milkpea is getting totally out of control in some places, so that's going to end soon.

Blues like to nectar on Phyla nodiflora, "Fogfruit," among other flowers. Phyla is also a magnet for the beautiful White Peacock butterfly, which uses it as a larval host. This plant, another member of the Verbena family so popular with pollinators, can be trained into a beautiful hanging basket. One of my brothers had a trick of looping the flower stalk around itself and then sliding it up quickly to pop off the head. He used to shoot the heads at me while we waited for the school bus. I tried, but never managed the snap.

Phyla nodiflora and Ceraunus Blue

Sources: Butterflies through Binoculars: A Field, Finding and Gardening Guide to Butterflies in Florida. Glassberg, Minno & Calhoun. Oxford U. Press, 2000. Plate 16 and facing page, pp. 78-81.

Florida Butterfly Gardening. Minno & Minno. U. Press of Florida, 1999. pp. 75-77.

Florida's Fabulous Butterflies. Emmel & Kenney. World Publications, 1997. pp. 18-19.

Stink Daisies - Weeds I Like

Another weed I like is Spanish needles, Bidens alba, which my father called "Stink Daisies," so that's what we grew up naming them. I have no idea how the name originated - neither the flower heads nor the foliage, even when crushed, has much odor at all. The ray flowers are a bright, startling white, and the disk florets a deep orange-yellow. Foliage is bright yellow green. Many heads do not have a full complement of ray florets, giving them a cheerful "snaggle-toothed" appearance.

Bidens alba

I have tried, somewhat half-heartedly, to domesticate it by growing it in a large pot, but didn't have much success. The plant seems determined to follow its cycle of growing, flowering, and turning ratty, no matter where it is. An individual plant is not very floriferous, but a stand of Bidens alba makes a graceful clump of green and white. Pollinators of all kinds love the heads, just one of the reasons I don't pull all of the plants. I like them too. They just seem cheerful, and certainly are tough enough to take anything Florida can throw at them. When they get nasty-looking I pull them out, confident that they'll pop up again somewhere soon.

According to the USDA Plants Database, the species has a somewhat sporadic distribution. It is vouchered for all of the Southeast, except Mississippi, but shows up again in Louisiana. It also occurs in New Mexico, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Rhode Island. I can't imagine it hasn't crept into Texas and a few other places by now.

Apart from its determination to go ratty-looking fairly quickly, the plant has another annoying aspect - its seeds. The seed is  hard, not quite one-half inch long, with 2 hooks at one end. These hooks attach themselves to any clothing or fur that passes near them, and have a special fondness for  socks. They are persistent - don't wash out in the laundry, or if they do, they just reattach themselves to some other garment. They have to be picked off laboriously, one by one. Leave one in a sock and the hooks will be prickling you soon.

Graceful Form of Spanish Needles

Judging by the behavior in my yard, and what I have observed in disturbed or weedy areas, the seeds have great viability. Most times of the year you will find Spanish needles growing and blooming somewhere, even in pavement cracks.

Roger Hammer, in his book Florida Keys Wildflowers, writes that the  plant is used medicinally in the Bahamas, to bring down fever, settle the stomach, and to cure worms in children. (p. 147).  Lantz and Deuerling write in Florida's Incredible Wild Edibles that the petals can be eaten in salads, and that young leaves and stems can be cooked as greens. (pp. 9, 13). Lantz goes on to give more detailed cooking instructions in her Florida's Edible Wild Plants, (pp. 77-78), and also reports the claim that crushing the leaves and soaking your hands in the Spanish needles water will relieve the itching from fiberglass and prickly pear glochids. (p. 80).

A neighbor across the street, has mowed around a patch of Spanish needles. It looks nice. The neighbor next to him has left a clump at the base of his mailbox, and recently on Marco Island I saw another yard where the mowers had spared the plants. That tickles me no end.


Roger L. Hammer. Florida Keys Wildflowers. Falcon. The Globe Pequot Press. 2004.

Richard J. Deureling & Peggy S. Lantz. Florida's Incredible Wild Edibles. Florida Native Plant Society. 1993. 1995.

Peggy Sias Lantz. Florida's Edible Wild Plants: A Guide to Collecting and Cooking. Seaside Publishing. 2014.

Emilia fosbergii - Weeds I Like

Since I've been fulminating against weeds, I thought I'd mention some of the ones I like. One of them is Emilia fosbergii, or "Florida Tasselflower." Since there's no grass to compete against, it comes up everywhere in the yard, but it is easy to pull, so I leave it where I like it, and pull out the rest. (Or not. I am a lazy gardener).The ones that  haven't yet gone to seed go into the compost pot. Pollinators like it too.

The top and the bottom of Emilia sort of don't match. Tall, thin stalks end in delicate nodding, drooping, sometimes upright heads of rose-red disc flowers(more on this later). The anthers (pollen-bearing structures) and pollen are bright orange-yellow. The heads are around a half-inch long or a little more, depending on where the plant is growing, and about a quarter-inch wide at the base. The bottom of the plant on the other hand, is robust and vigorous.

Vigorous Bottom Portion of Plant

The stems and new leaves can be intensely hairy. Older leaves and "sepals" (phyllaries) show varying degrees of hairiness. The way the heads seem just to float above the foliage would make Emilia a nice plant to include in a mixed border. A larger plant with 8-10 flowering stems could even have the honor of a place in front, but since Tasselflower is a weed, its growth can be unpredictable. The flowering heads can be anywhere from 4 -to - 6 inches above the ground in young plants, up to around 20 inches above ground on older, larger plants. Growing conditions also affect the size and number of flowering stalks. The plants deteriorate after they set seeds. I haven't tried dead-heading to see whether I could prolong blooming, because the plant self-sows so vigorously.


The growth form of the plant is pretty cool. The first leaves on the stem are quite different from those farther along. They are roughly the shape of an inverted triangle on a long thin stem. The "stem" is actually not a petiole, but an extremely narrowed part of the leaf blade itself. As you move up the plant you get  intermediate leaf stages with increasingly shortened "stalks." The leaf itself becomes more oblong, and eventually arrow-shaped. At first glance it looks like the stem punches through the higher-up leaves, but a closer look shows that the base of the leaf clasps the stem.

Another leaf clasping a stem is formed between the "old" leaf and the main stem. This smaller leaf gradually enlarges to full size as the stem new itself grows longer. In the drawing below you can see the tiny leaf just to the right of the caption. The new stem elongates while the leaf enlarges, until you get the structure in the right hand of the drawing, in which the leaf and stem appear "on top" of the older leaf.

Another species, Emilia sonchifolia, "Lilac Tasselflower," occurs much less frequently in the yard. In general it seems a more diminutive and less vigorous plant, but that may be a function of its environment. The disk florets are a beautiful purple-pink instead of red. It is less common than its red cousin. According to the USDA Plants Database website, Emilia fosbergii occurs in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and California. Its origin is unclear, with Asia, Australia, and South and Central America all listed as possibilities.


Emilia is a member of the Aster family. What many people (and I used to be among them) think of as a single flower in this family is actually a conglomeration, or composite, of individual flowers or florets, called a "head." This might seem like a trick the botanists have come up with to  keep us amateurs out, but it actually makes sense once you start really looking hard. The things that look like petals are "ray florets," and the things in the middle are "disk florets." The first drawing, on the left, shows the entire head, with ray florets around the outside, and the disk in the center. The drawing on the far right shows a cross section of the disk, with opened disk florets near the outside of the circle, and unopened disk flowers near the center. I gather, and I may be wrong, wrong, wrong, that in a case like the one illustrated, the ray florets are sterile, while the disk florets are fertile.

Pityopsis graminifolia
"Narrow leaf Silk Grass"

To make things more complicated, some members of the Aster family have only ray flowers. In this case they are fertile, and they are called ligulate florets. Ligulate florets have teeth. In the drawing of Hieracium megacephalon, "Hawkweed," below, there is no central disk, only ligulate florets. The sexual parts of the florets emerge from the base, so are clustered in the center of the head. Notice the teeth.

Hieracium megacephalon
Coastal Plain Hawkweed

And, there are members of the family with only disk florets, like Emilia, Ageratum, or thistles.

Circium, sp. "Thistle"

I find the seemingly infinite variety of ways in which plants go about their business utterly fascinating, and I keep discovering new things every time I look hard even at familiar plants.

Another Weed from Hell

Not all noxious weeds are exotics. Native species can be just as unwelcome! You'd think I'd have learned by now to be suspicious of any new plant popping up in the yard, because so many have turned out to be pests. No, I wait until I've got an infestation before I decide they are unwelcome. 

 I first noticed Galactia, or Milk Pea, twining around some Pink Muhly Grass. It didn't seem to amount to much, and it  had a rather sweet little pink flower. I forgot all about it. Big mistake. They may seem delicate and innocuous, but they become a menace in a very short time due to their robust production of mostly-viable seeds. They twine around any and all support, blocking sunshine, and wrapping so tightly around stems that in some cases they start cutting off circulation. A good healthy vine has no trouble pulling a small-to-medium woody branch downwards.

Stems with the diameter of large thread prove surprisingly strong.  Over time the vine develops a relatively deep, carrot-like taproot, a series of taproots, or even a kind of colony of roots. Even in sandy soil it isn’t easy to dig them out.( Because of the long taproot, milkpea species would likely regenerate quickly after brush fires). It gets even more complicated when you want to avoid too much damage to the infested plant you want to save. Digging and pulling hurt the plants you want to save. Herbicide will kill the leaves, but the plant regenerates from the deep roots. And it is very difficult to avoid getting any herbicide on the "good" plant.

 After reading Guy L. Nesom's, Taxonomy of Galactia (Fabaceae) in the USA, (link below), I've concluded that the milk peas in my yard are either Galactia regularis, Galactia volubilis, or both. According to Nesom the taxonomy of Galactia is somewhat confused, even controversial, especially so when it comes to these 2 species. Both have alternate, 3-foliate leaves, with fruits and stems displaying varying degrees of hairiness. (A 3 foliate leaf looks like a cluster of 3 leaves, but actually is only 1. Lots of species in the "Bean" family have this characteristic).

The weed(s) show great variation in size in my yard, depending on exposure to sunlight and general growing conditions, and I made all  my drawings and sketches from different plants at different times before I realized I might be dealing with more than 1 species. However, the species in the drawing most closely resembles G. volubilis, due to its long flowering stalk, size of flower, and mostly oblong-to-lanceolate leaf shape. The seedpod as drawn may not be typical.

 According to Nesom's article, Milkpeas are widespread in Florida and much of the United States. The genus occurs mainly in the Americas, especially the southeast and south-central US, West Indies and Mexico. Four species are native to Asia, Africa and Australia. The genus name is derived from the Greek galaktos, “milk,” due to the milky sap in some species. (The Florida species do not have milky sap).  Nesom lists 21 species for the US, with 13 represented in Florida.

 Several plants of in a pot with a trellis could make an attractive display, and the flowers attract numerous small pollinators. However, great care would be necessary to keep it from spreading, given the  high germination rate of the seeds.  Birds and possibly insects eat the seeds. Grubbing animals like skunks might be able to  eat the smaller taproots, but it would take some "chompers" and cast-iron digestive system to get anything from the taproots once they become woody.

Milkpea is a legume, and most legumes are associated with nitrogen-fixing bacteria in their roots. So far I haven't been able to ascertain whether local species of Galactia are associated with such bacteria, though I haven’t seen any typical root nodules.

Minno and Minno (1999) list the milkpeas vouchered for Collier County as larval host plants for Ceraunus and Cassius Blues, the Gray Hairstreak, Silver Spotted Skipper, Zarucco Dusky Wing Skipper and the Long-Tailed Skipper. 


 Apart from personal observations or as otherwise noted, the information in this article is derived from Guy L. Nesom, (Fabaceae) in the USA. Phytoneuron 2015-42: 1-54. Published 15 Jul 2015. ISSN 2153 733X.  

Marc and Maria Minno. Florida Butterfly Gardening. University Press of Florida. 1999.