Signs of Spring

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

The trees named above aren't native to Florida, but so much goes on in March in the natural world that I labeled 2 posts "March Madness" in 2017. This year has been a little crazy apart from the garden, and  I have made many more scribbled notes than sketches. I hope to catch up on some of the later spring manifestations.

The return of the swallow-tailed kites is a sure sign that the winter has turned. I spotted my first one of this year in the second week of March. These striking white-and- black-marked raptors demonstrate how little color has to do with real beauty. No matter how many I've seen, a soaring swallow-tailed kite still takes my breath away. Author and artist David Allen Sibley talks of their,"unmistakeable; incredibly graceful, flowing flight."(The Sibley Guide to Birds, p. 111). The birds don't use just their tail feathers for maneuvering, but also can twist their entire lower body to execute their aerial acrobatics.

Swallow-tailed kites nest in tall trees in hardwood forests, and due to development, especially intense timbering and replacement of mixed forests with pine plantations, their range in the U.S. has shrunk drastically. They used to nest as far north as Minnesota. Now they are limited to peninsular Florida, and the coasts of Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and eastern Louisiana. They return to South America in the fall. 

They pluck their prey - reptiles, amphibians, insects and small birds from the treetops or catch and eat them in flight. I haven't read that they do so, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that they also rob nests of other species. Perhaps that is calumny, but "Mother Nature" isn't kind, and she doesn't always go by the rules.

Frangipani, Plumeria sp., isn't native to Florida, but it consumes few, if any, resources, and isn't invasive. It is a quintessential "pass-along" plant. I got mine from a sister, who got hers from a friend. All you have to do to grow it is stick a branch into the dirt, water a little, and watch it grow. Once it is established it needs no irrigation or fertilizer. (At least the one in our yard behaves that way). There are many species and varieties, but the only two I see around the neighborhood are a  pink-flowered and a yellow-flowered one. Ours is  yellow-flowered, and fragrant. Frangipani is one of the flowers traditionally used in Hawaiin leis.

Frangipani Flower Cluster

Once the weather is good and dry, frangipanis lose all their leaves, and look completely dead and more than slightly creepy - like some sort of alien life form, which is just waiting to emerge and wreak havoc. 

Dormant Frangipani Branch

I used a variety of colored pencils to capture the gray-green, turgid look of these branchlets, which really do resemble dead fingers. The true color is something in between all my attempts. The large dry markings are leaf scars from previous seasons, and the squiggly maroonish things at the very tip are nascent leaves. New growth literally bursts through the skin. Buds and stems don't magically appear on the branches, but rupture the skin, leaving oozing wounds. 

Last month, bloom stalks capped with numerous flower buds started rising from the branch tips, and now the first flowers have opened. The plant is a member of the Dogbane Family, and all parts, including the white sap, are somewhat poisonous. I haven't found the sap irritating, but I haven't gotten much on my skin, and other people might have a reaction to it.

Emerging Flower Stalk
Maroon Structures are Young Leaves

The Great Southern White and Florida White butterflies reappear in mid-to-late March. Both occur here about the same time, and I'm not quick enough to id them on the fly. When we first moved here in 1994, we would see great swarms of white butterflies, but now we see them singly or maybe in pairs. If you can get close enough to see them, the bright turquoise tips on the antennae are a dead giveaway for the Great Southern White.

White Butterflies:
Great Southern White, Left, and Florida White, Right

The emergence of lubber grasshopper nymphs is also a marker for spring. The nymphs start emerging in great numbers in February. So far they have defoliated one bougainvillea, and demolished the Crinums and Tradescantias. They'll all recover, with the possible exception of the Tradescantia. which really are happier in more northern sections of Florida. There must be many microorganisms that afflict the nymphs, because the number of adults I see later on is a fraction of the immature population. Both nymphs and adults allegedly are toxic to most predators. 

Newly-Emerged Lubber Nymphs

Just like "up north," perennials are forming new basal rosettes and resuming growth. Elephant's foot and rosinweed have made a fine beginning, while blackroot and Pluchea have resprouted directly.  Native grasses like Elliott's Love Grass and Pink Muhley are sending out fresh, colored blades from what clumps of dried foliage from last year. Gaillardias sown by last year's plants are germinating here and there in the yard. I leave them where they don't block a path, and try to transplant others, even though it sets them back. 

March brings persistent drying winds. Our last rain was the second week in February, and given the wind and increasing sunshine I have to water at least twice a week now, whereas during winter even the potted plants don't require a lot of attention. 

Blue-Eyed Grass

Blue-eyed grass made a magnificent display throughout late winter and early spring, but is going to seed now. The tickseed is also beginning to appear somewhat the worse for wear.

It's March Madness in the garden all over again. There is plenty more going on, but I have to stop for now.

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