Mangroves

 Mangroves make up a group of plants that connect me deeply with my coastal SW Florida roots. Mangrove" is a collective term for a variety of unrelated species that share certain biological and structural traits which enable them to survive in highly saline and oxygen-poor soils. Three species in the U.S. are recognized as mangroves: the red mangrove, Rhizophora mangle, the black mangrove, Avicennia germinans, and the white mangrove, Laguncularia  racemosa.  Buttonwood, Conocarpus erectus, is considered a "mangrove associate" because it often grows on the land-most side of a mangrove forest. Red mangroves, with their conspicuous aerial and prop roots and often-contorted trunks, are probably the most familiar of the species. They also tend to grow the closest to the water's edge, but not always.

From the time I was 9 years old until I left for college I lived in a world bordered and somewhat defined by mangrove forests. Our house sat in a mixed palmetto-pine-scruboak habitat, but if was only about a mile by foot to the mangroves. By water they practically were next door, because it took only a few  minutes down our canal to get to the mangrove portion of the Estero River. Further upriver the mangroves gradually gave way to more terrestrial plants probably due to a rise in elevation. Boats of various sizes and types, including crude but effective homemade ones, were a huge part of our family life. We always headed downriver, toward Estero Bay, a half-world between water and land, rimmed by mangroves, dotted with mangrove islands, and rife with unmarked shoals and oyster beds.

Red Mangrove, Pen & Ink (in progress)

My father made aerial photographs of the mouth of the Estero River at low tide, and then marked the channel out into the bay with the most upright small black mangrove trunks he could find. I'm sure they've long been replaced by something more official. One woman who didn't know much about the way channels wind and bend commented once that the markers looked like they had been placed by a drunk. My father just chuckled and said that a little whisky helped when the work was cold and wet.

He got interested in canoes, and tried to make his own. They were clunky, tipsy craft made from plywood salvaged from some old signs he had. The first ones were impossible to balance, and we got lots of laughs from his capsizes in the canal, but he gradually worked out better proportions. They were still tippy, though, and he had to cajole me into going with him. Even wearing a life jacket, with him behind me, I felt my heart lurch with every paddle stroke. The boats were so short that the passenger had to wear a raincoat for protection against the steady "rain" of water thrown off from the double-bladed paddles.

Because my father wanted us back before motorboat began in earnest, we left before daylight, often in the dense predawn fog typical of the sw Florida coast. That made the experience even spookier for me. The mangroves seemed to form solid black walls above me, and the way forward was shrouded in mist.

It wasn't long before he bought 2 real canoes from Sears, Roebuck. They had wide, flat bottoms, and were difficult to capsize, and by then I had lost most of my fear of water, and had learned in Girl Scout camp how much fun capsizing canoes could be.

We scarcely were purists. My father had a genuine kayak paddle but didn't like the wrist motion. He made his own double-bladed paddles out of wood - crude things somewhere between 2x2's and 2x4's with notches for thumbs and a half-piece of soft pipe to cushion the inside of the fingers. Because he had knee trouble he sat up on the thwart, so we did too. We had 2 canoes, and sometimes my father and the three oldest of us children went out with him, exploring, racing, or just paddling. The one who drew passage with my strong, reliable father was in the catbird seat. Pairing with another sibling inevitably produced mutual accusations of slacking and ineptitude.

On lower-tide days our dog Trixie would follow us, and howl most piteously when the mangroves grew right into the water and blocked her progress. Taking her along was a dubious business, though, because she usually got seasick all over the boat. In those days there weren't many alligators around, so we didn't have to worry about her.

Mangrove Bay

When I was in high school my father and I "canoed" every morning before we had to leave for school, and went out most weekend mornings as well. Sometimes we talked; often we preferred to absorb the quiet as the skies lightened, and the dark walls formed by the mangroves flanking the river began to take form with leaves, branches and prop roots. At one point the river widened to a broad cove, and that was our turn-around place. We called it "Daybreak Cove," because our eastward turn revealed the brilliant pinks and golds of the rising sun flooding the sky and spilling over  the mangroves.

That was my first taste of a mangrove phenomenon that I truly love - the experience of coming out of a walled- in channel to emerge suddenly into pure space. It can be almost vertiginous - you feel you could just as well be floating high up in a volcanic crater instead of in a broad expanse at sea level. If it's windstill, the bay or cove's surface mirrors the sky, and the only sounds are of water quietly gurgling through the mangrove roots, or a bird's call. Even the distant drone of an airplane does not dispel the sensation of being in a primordial world, untouched by human influence.

Red Mangroves, Pencil Sketches 

Through college and the first years of grad school I returned home during breaks, and always found rejuvenation through canoe trips on the river and into the bay. Once my brother and I made it all the way to Estero Bay before the sun had risen fully. We beached on a mud flat and marveled at the rivulets formed by the outgoing tide flowing full of the dawn's rose-gold light.

Mangroves along the Estero River grow in a compacted peat substrate, and are somewhat stunted. When I first saw the majestic trees lining the Joe River in Everglades National Park years later, I didn't even realize at first that they were mangroves. Living in Miami, my husband and I loved to trailer our 16-foot motorboat to Flamingo, the southernmost tip of the park, and explore its rivers and trails. Whitewater Bay, the Joe, Roberts, and Shark Rivers were ours to discover. Often once away from the boat ramp, we would be the only boat around, especially in summer. Alligators loved to sun on the concrete ramp, so during the summer you had to take the best place to put in that was available.

Nearly 30 years later, after Hurricane Andrew blew us out of Miami and onto Florida's west coast, we still love the watery world bounded by the mangroves. By now we've acquired enough local knowledge to find our way, but we still carry a chart.  It never gets boring. Each trip reveals something new. We've gotten too old to sail, which is a blow, but we still can putt around in the backwaters. My parents moved to north Florida, along the Suwannee River, in the early 1970's. SW Florida had become too crowded. The Suwannee River has its own beauty, and my father loved it, but he never forgot the strange, flat world of the mangrove forests.

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!

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.

Fakahatchee Strand

Last week we visited the Big Cypress Bend Boardwalk in the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park. It's one of our favorite places, especially once the winter tourists have left. (Many seem to have heard it's an obligatory stop, so they clomp to the end and back, wondering what's so great about the place).

The best times to visit the boardwalk are dawn and dusk, but we always manage to get there in the middle of the day, when most of the animals are resting. Yet we've never  been disappointed.

Another World Awaits You

For me, the sense of this vast wilderness, not the details, is the draw. Once you are under the canopy, you are enveloped by a wonderful stillness that somehow is not disturbed by the slightly manic call of a pileated woodpecker, the crash of a falling branch, or the grunting of a frog. It is the beautiful quietude of a place unshackled by the clutter of our presence. (That is, if you're lucky enough to be there without the clompers. At least they never stick around long). It would be a mistake to think this place welcoming, though. Stray very far away from the boardwalk and you would be lost hopelessly.

For the plant lover, any time is a good time. I usually loiter behind my companions, pretty much justifying the complaint that I examine every leaf. This time the spherical flowering heads of buttonbush, Cephalanthus occidentalis,  perfumed the air. Cinammon-colored spores covered the backsides of giant leather fern fronds. Fruits were forming on the stems of myrsine. Ferns, mosses, swamp-lilies (chewed by lubber grasshoppers, which also hopped along the boardwalk) and vines grew exuberantly, vying for space and light. Cypress were sporting "spring" green new growth and dark green cones.

Buttonbush - Cephalanthus occidentalis L.

Every leaning or fallen tree becomes a new habitat for mosses, ferns, epiphytes, and the fauna associated with them. You have to go deeper into the swamp to see orchids, because such plants  close to any public path or boardwalk get picked. Out of reach, various tillandsias flourish. Royal palms, Roystonea regia, grow out of depressions, biding their time in the shade until they reach the top of the canopy. Cypress trees close to the boardwalk are so tall you have to hang onto the rail in order not to fall as you crane your neck backwards to see their crowns. Some of these venerable trees are struggling in the clutches of strangler fig; some have died. The slow, inexorable violence of that struggle is breath-taking.

 Cypress, Taxodium ascendens or T. distichum  - There is some discussion whether these are different species.  Strangler  Fig Root Descending

The Fakahatchee is a "strand" swamp, a type of swamp found only in Florida, and mostly in South Florida. Strands are elongated water courses that follow miniscule depressions in an otherwise flat landscape. When there is heavy rainfall the water overflows the depressions and spreads widely. The water in a strand is very slow-moving, and in the case of the Fakahatchee, eventually makes its way into the Gulf of Mexico. A strand ecosystem has a great variety of plant and animal species, because minor differences in elevation make a huge difference in  habitat, along a scale from species that must have standing water, those that can take some drying, those that can tolerate some flooding, and those that can not be flooded at all. (Ron Larson. Swamp Song. A Natural History of Florida's Swamps. University Press of Florida. 1995.pp.24-26)

We've experienced extremes of wet and dry around the boardwalk over the years. Last week it was moderately wet. In 2017 Hurricane Irma toppled a huge cypress along with its rootball, creating a small pool, which appears to be permanent. One life ends in nature, another begins. This time 3 small snakes were sunning themselves, though one swam away, taking its time. One was no bigger or longer than a pencil. The other 2 looked to be between 12 and 18 inches long. Dull brown-black with light reddish bands in a chain pattern. One had a pronounced chin stripe, which is a mark of the Florida cottonmouth, but the markings weren't conclusive enough for me to make a positive id.

Rootball Pool - Where Snakes Were Sunning 

The boardwalk ends in a sitting/viewing platform at the edge of a pond-sized alligator hole. We spend a lot of quiet time on the platform, trying to blend in, waiting to see what happens. At low water we once witnessed a large alligator systematically rooting things out of the mud with its snout. We couldn't tell what it was eating - turtles? frogs? fish? Periodically it would lunge from the water, twist, and fall sideways back in with ruthless speed and power.  It was a textbook illustration of the alligator's are a key role in the Florida ecosystem. First, they make holes or enlarge depressions to collect water to bide them over the dry winter, and in succeeding years continue to widen the holes, preventing them from filling in in the middle.

One year we saw baby alligators sunning on the back of a large turtle, perched on a log, also taking in the sun. Still another time, we noticed immature alligators - they still had their yellow stripes - ringing the pond. Suddeny they went into a feeding frenzy, leaping and pouncing on frogs. The pond was alive with the splashing of prey and the relentless hunters. We've also been hissed at by a 'gator that thought we were getting too close, even though we were on the platform. (We moved over). We've even witnessed alligators mating.

This time, even though we were very quiet, we inadvertently flushed a  great blue heron and great egret from the thicket of alligator flag ringing the pond. The great blue left, but the great egret just moved to another side. The noise of these birds in turn flushed something else on the opposite side of the pond. We never were able to get a good look at it, because it stayed partially hidden, but its general size and shape, overall beige -tan coloration with some faint striping on the belly, and a blue-black patch on the back of the head led us to id it at home as a least bittern. Probably the first and last bittern we'll ever see.

An obliging alligator eventually "flowed" into the pond from one edge, and just "hung out" semi-submerged. An anhinga flew into a high overhanging branch. It gradually moved lower and lower, until at last it flew to the opposite side and disappeared into the water. We saw its long snakey neck, up like a periscope, from time to time. Bright red cardinals flew overhead. Eventually it was time to go.

On the way back out the boardwalk we were startled by a flash of yellow and red-brown as a basking bird flew up from the boardwalk. My guess is a great crested flycatcher, given the habitat, time of year and colors. Apart from the birds we saw, we heard many more, chirping and chattering.

Alligator Hole Pond at End of Boardwalk

Though this parcel was in different hands and escaped the worst depredation, the story of the Fakahatchee is largely one of devastation, looting, and almost inconceivable regeneration. But that is a long story in itself and will have to be told in another post.

Nobody Loves a Lubber

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

Recently Emerged Lubber Grasshopper Nymphs

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

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

Roosting or Resting Nymphs

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

 Lubbers Hanging Down to Eat Lotus Leaves

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

Lubbber Nymphs Roosting on Periwinkle

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

Adult Eastern Lubber Grasshopper

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

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

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

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

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

Dead Lubber - Romalea guttata

Gopher Apple - Licania michauxii

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

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

Underground Stem- Horizontal Lines=Ground Level

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

Gopher Apple in Sand at Naples Preserve

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

Licania michauxii Fruit, Flowers

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

Flowers

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

Licania recently visited by Megachile

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

Gopher Apple in Bloom

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

Illustrations, article and photos by Jeanette Lee Atkinson.

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