Butterfly Orchid

I always assumed that the Florida butterfly orchid, Encyclia tampensis, got its name because it looks like a stylized butterfly, but I likened it to a butterfly for the way its flowers dance and flit  in the slightest breeze. Reading up on the plant for this post, I found that this resemblance to the fluttering of the butterfly's ephemeral wings often is cited as the source of the name, so I wasn't as original as I had thought!

Encyclia Flowers Dance in the Breeze

Encyclia is a smallish genus in the orchid family. It once was included in the Epidendrums, and fairly recently taxonomists have split out Prosthechea from Encyclia, so the classification probably will change again.

The name "Encyclia" comes from a Greek word meaning "to encircle." That's because the outside of the lip of these orchids wraps around the column, the reproductive structure in the center of the flower. The Florida butterfly orchid was first discovered around the Tampa area, hence its specific name, "tampensis," but its range is much larger, from the Keys to north-central Florida.

Though it varies pretty widely according to growing conditions, Encyclia tampensis is a  small plant. One or two leaves are produced from a  swollen storage organ called a "pseudobulb," which can be round or more elongated. The pseudobulbs are anywhere from a quarter-inch to at most an inch in diameter, and a half-to-one and a half inches tall on average. The somewhat succulent leaves can be a few inches to 5 or 6 inches or more in length, depending on the individual plant and its habitat. Each pseudobulb produces one blooming spike, and slowly declines over the next 3-5 years. Some people remove the dead pseudobulbs. Otherwise they either fall off, or just become incorporated within new growth. Left to its own devices Encyclia tampensis eventually forms a mound-shaped colony.

Encyclia tampensis Pseudobulbs and Leaves

The butterfly orchid flowers from late spring through August, but its peak season is now - June. This plant in bloom can be spectacular A flowering branch can have up to 45 flowers, but the plant is lovely even with fewer blossoms. The flowers last a long time - about a month. I don't get too many seed pods, so the pollinator - a wasp or a bee - evidently doesn't visit our yard regularly or in great numbers.  The flowers close much more quickly when pollinators are active, so some people bring their Encyclias indoors to enjoy the blooms longer.

Seed Pods

 I bring some smaller colonies onto the patio to be enjoyed from inside the house, but leave my largest colony outside. It's happy where it is, and I can see it from the patio. Also, a large colony tends to have creatures living in it, and I hate for anoles to get lost in the house. They're next to impossible to catch, and inevitably end up dead. There might even be a small snake hidden amidst the pseudobulbs and leaves, and they don't do well inside either.

Encyclia tampensis Flowers

The bilaterally symmetrical flowers are an inch to inch-and-one-half wide and tall. Petals and sepals are a green-bronze, sometimes more  yellow, sometimes tinged with brown or maroon. They are quite attractive, though my attempts to render them in watercolor or colored pencil usually end looking muddy. The lip is clear white with a magenta or lavender splotch in the middle. The variety 'alba' has lime-green petals and sepals and an all-white lip.

Encyclia tampensis 'alba'

The flowers also have a delightful fragrance, which comes and goes during the day - the pattern with most fragrant blossoms. It sometimes is described as vanilla- or honey-scented. To me, it has an undefinable light sweet odor, not the heavy tropical fragrance of a gardenia.

Though once common, Encyclia tampensis now is neither common nor rare, and is protected by the state. Its natural occurrence continues to be depleted by illicit collection and habitat destruction. Collectors, even those harvesting plants from private property, and sellers must have a state permit to be legal. Fortunately there are several reputable nurseries offering this plant, so there really is no need for taking them from the wild unless it is a salvage operation.

This plant often is found in or around swamps. It likes to grow on trees such as oaks, pond apples, buttonwood, cypress, and more rarely, pine. Instructions for its care tend to emphasize maintaining high humidity, but I would temper that advice. The plant also occurs in scrub, and as a Florida native is adapted to seasonally dry periods. I have seen colonies in scrub that were so stressed they were purple-gray, but they still were very much alive. It should not be placed in potting soil. It's an epiphyte - the roots serve primarily to anchor it, not for nutrient and water uptake. Some of my butterfly orchids are in pots, but the substrate is lava rock, charcoal and large wood chips. The plant likes to attach itself to the terra cotta as well.

E. tampensis on Pine at Naples Preserve - A Scrub Habitat

My plants get very little TLC, and do just fine. In the dryest weather I check them for scale. They are in filtered light - protected from the worst sun exposure, but still in conditions bright enough to make blooms. Those in too much shade grow ok, but don't flower. If they are lucky they get a sprinkle of diluted orchid fertilizer once or twice a year. If I notice that there aren't many new pseudobulbs forming, I remount the plant, relocate it, give it a little more attention, or all 3. I don't worry that much about watering them during the dry season, but if we get prolonged hot and windy spells, I will give them an occasional sprinkle.

Encyclia tampensis Flower Closeup

A virtually pest-free, no-care native plant with spectacular long-lasting flowers and delightful fragrance  - does it get any better than this?

Article, photos,  and illustrations are the work of Jeanette Lee Atkinson, and are protected by copyright.

Southern Gothic - Spanish Moss

 No Southern Gothic movie would be complete without the other-worldly festoons of Spanish moss, Tillandsia usneoides. It certainly can convey a mood of eerie loneliness and mystery, but for southernors it pretty much just blends into the background. That's a shame, because as garden writer Rufino Osorio puts it, "were it not so common, (S. moss) would rightly be considered one of the wonders of the plant world."*

Spanish Moss Hanging from  Strangler Fig - Rookery Bay Reserve 

Spanish moss is the ultimate epiphyte. Osorio writes, "It has come as close to an aerial existence as a plant can get without sprouting wings and flying." *  The plant is much-reduced, consisting only of a few alternate leaves in a typical Bromeliad rosette wrapped around a long, wiry stem, which produces another rosette in an endless chain.

Tillandsia usneoides - Habit

The leaves produce tiny flower spikes. The flowers also are tiny - maybe 3-4 millimeters across, and very easy to miss. The 3 petals are yellow-green. The flowers are said to be fragrant, but I have trouble detecting an odor. They are pollinated by tiny insects. My plants are flowering now, but not abundantly. 

Flower - Much Magnified

Tillandsia usneoides gets its name from the "Old Man's Beard" lichen, Usnea, which it resembles superficially. The photograph below shows a colony of Usnea that has benn blown to the ground in a scrub area of Rookery Bay Estuarine Reserve.

Usnea - Probably Usnea florida

Like other epiphytes ("airplants") Spanish moss gets its nutrients from rainfall and throughfall, rainwater filtered through leaves and other structures. For this reason it can be used to measure heavy metal pollution in urban areas.** T. usneoides is covered by a layer of specialized umbrella-like scales. The scales are made up of dead cells, with a living stalk. The dead cells soak up water and dissolved nutrients, which the stem then transports down into the mesophyll, the tissue sandwiched between the top and bottom epidermis.

Habit, Specialized Moisture-Absorbing Scales  Right Center

The plant propagates itself by seeds, or by wind and animal dispersal. Birds may use it to build nests. It can tolerate anything from the extreme drought and heat of Florida scrub, where it likely survives on dews and fogs, to shadier and wetter situations. If a strand ends up in a favorable site, even a utility wire,  it will start growing. "My" Spanish moss was left behind as a few strands by the previous homeowner, and I have divided it as it flourished. Twenty-odd years later I have 3 large colonies.( I'm not sure whether the festoons are one plant curled and twisted around itself, or several plants). 

Ecologically it has value as a nutrient recycler, and as habitat for small insects and arachnids. Certain birds and at least one species of bat use it for hiding/roosting. Birds use it to construct nests. Some people think that it is parasitic and that it kills trees, but that isn't so. Healthy trees can produce new leaves faster than the Spanish moss can grow, but a declining tree provides an ideal habitat, so that it might look like the plant has killed it. That said, a heavy growth might make survival harder for a declining plant, because it would shade some of the leaves. Sometimes the colony can get so large and heavy that it breaks branches. 

Spanish moss is widespread in the United States - throughout the Southeast through Texas, and north to Virginia. It also occurs in the Caribbean, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Mexico, Central America and South America down to Chile and Argentina. In some of these areas it is restricted to the coastal plains or lowland and swamp habitats. 

T. usneoides on Scrub Oaks - Naples Preserve, Florida

Spanish moss was, and to some extent, is still used by America's indiginous people for many purposes. Camp bedding, medicines, balls for sports, plugging leaks in dugout canoes and  fire arrows are just some of them. Stripping off the outer layers of the plant leaves a tough, black "wire," which could be used for making cloth or rope. ***

Pioneers used it it many of the same ways. Up until around the 1920's harvesting Spanish moss provided much needed cash for subsistence southeastern farmers. They gathered it, composted it to remove the outer covering, and took it to "ginneries" to be combed and baled. It was sold as upholstery stuffing. The last "moss" factory in Gainesville, Florida, burned in 1963.

It was hard, sometimes dangerous work, as people needed some kind of long pole with a hook to snag it from trees, and sometimes brought down snakes and insects along with the moss. Moss gathering is still practiced in some southern states, a tradition handed down from one generation to another. Now the primary market for Spanish moss is horticultural or for florists' arrangements, either dried or green. **** Several cultivars are available commercially.

Spanish Moss on Oak, Hickey's Creek, Lee County Florida

Spanish moss is an integral feature of the southern landscape. Long may it wave!


Sources:

* Rufino Osorio. A Gardener's Guide to Florida's Native Plants. University Press of Florida. 2001. p.310.

**Oxford 400.Oxford 400

***Bradley C. Bennett. "An Introduction to the Seminole People of South Florida and Their Plants. Part11: Seminole Plant Use." The Palmetto. Fall/Winter, 1997. pp. 16-17, 22.

****Kristine Stewart, Ph.D. "Gold Mine of the Air: The Spanish Moss Industry of Florida." The Palmetto. Vol.21:1. (Nov. 2001).  pp.12-13, back cover.

The Palmetto is the quarterly journal of the Florida Native Plant Society.Florida Native Plant Society