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

Coco Plum

More residents and tourists alike in South Florida probably have seen coco plum (Chrysobalanus icaco) more than any other Florida native plant. That's not because it is rampant in nature, but because it is the plant of choice for parking lot hedges more often than not. You don't have to get too far south of Tampa before it starts turning up in every McDonald's, Wendy's, and other fast food emporia, as well as home landscapes. It's too bad in a way that it makes such an excellent hedge, because left untrimmed and uncrowded it can become a very attractive shrub or small tree.

Recently-Planted Hedge Showing Red New Growth 

That it can survive these urban situations and the constant trimming by the mow-and-go gangs says a lot about its toughness. In fact, it occurs naturally in both salty and dry environments like the back of beach sand dunes and in inland swamps.

Chrysobalanaceae is a fairly small family with 400-500 species, and occurs mostly in tropical and subtropical climates. Coco plum is one of 2 species that occurs in the U.S., the other being gopher apple (Licania michauxii). Its range in Florida is limited roughly to frost free areas, or areas that experience below freezing temperatures for only very short times.

The evergreen leaves are mainly obovate ( narrow at base, very rounded at top) or orbicular (nearly circular). Some of the leaves have a slightly pointed tip. Leaves are smooth, tough and leathery. They occur alternately on the branch, with a very upright, even overlapping posture. New growth on the type most commonly seen here is reddish.

Chrysobalanus icaco - Leaf Posture, New Growth

Coco plum produces clusters of flowers in the angles between leaves and stem, and is blooming now. The tiny white flowers are said to be fragrant, but I can't detect a lot of scent from my neighbor's hedge. Perhaps the yard crew trims off too many of the flowers. Depending on the type, the round fruit is either purple or yellowish- white. I have seen a form with  pink fruit in a section of the Rookery Bay Reserve near where I live.

Pink-fruited Form

The fruits are edible. One source describes them as sweet and juicy, but the few I have tried have been pretty bland. Some people make jellies and jams from them. They are an important source of food for wildlife, and were/are important  in the diet of Florida's indigenous peoples. The fruits contain a single seed, which also is edible, and is oily enough to sustain a small flame. Seeds are dispersed via animal droppings or by water, flowing downstream from fresh habitats, or in ocean currents.

Fruits start out green, then turn reddish, and finally reach their full color. According to Dr. Daniel Austin a tea made from the bark or roots has been used to treat dysentery and as a general tonic.

Young Fruits

Younger stems are cinnamon brown with numerous lenticels - raised pithy and porous growths that aid in gas exchange.

Stem with Lenticels and Ripe Fruits

Sources:

Peggy Sias Lantz. Florida's Edible Wild Plants. Seaside Publishing. 2014.
Dr. Daniel Austin. Coastal Dune Plants. Gumbo Limbo Nature Center of Palm Beach County. 1991.
Daniel Austin
Walter Kingsley Taylor. Florida Wildflowers in Their Natural Communities. University Press of Florida. 1998.
Gil Nelson. The Shrubs and Woody Vines of Florida. Pineapple Press. 1996.

Parking Lot Potbelly

The potbelly airplant, Tillandsia paucifolia, occurs only occasionally in southern and central Florida, so imagine my surprise to discover a small cluster in the Winn Dixie (supermarket) parking lot on Marco Island! It was hanging by a splinter, upside down on a broken branch, just waiting for the next mow-and-go crew to whack it away. It must have been kismet, because I never park in that section of the lot.

Had its chances of survival been better I would have left it. As it was, it stood no chance at all, so I took it home with me, and after dunking it in a pot of rainwater, I put it under the Fiddlewood in a somewhat shaded, but basically bright spot. I hope it will flourish for me. Legally rescued Tillandsia fasciculata, Tillandsia balbisiana and Tillandsia flexuosa, all Florida natives, reproduce in the yard, so I am hopeful for the potbelly.

Tillandsia paucifolia - Potbelly Airplant

Tillandsias are epiphytes. Their roots serve mainly to anchor them to trees or sometimes rocks, and they absorb nutrients and water through their leaves. They often have a felty, scurfy, or downy appearance due to a covering of specially-adapted cells. Depending on exposure the species listed above appear in various shades of green in some shade, to gray-pink in harsh scrub.

The potbelly airplane is short and stocky, as its common name implies. It doesn't have as many leaves as most other Tillandsias, hence the species epithet paucifolia. Newer leaves may have subtle rose tints. The plant in the photo below looks like it is getting ready to send up a bloom spike. The bracts of the potbelly are pink, and the flowers a bluish lavender.

Potbelly in Naples Preserve 

The potbelly is quite tough, and will grow in oak scrub, as in the picture above, taken in the Naples Preserve in Naples, Florida.  The potbelly also occurs in the West Indies, Mexico, and Central and South America. (Richard Wunderlin. Guide to the Vascular Plants of Florida. University Press of Florida. 1998; Flora of North America).


Text, photos and artwork by Jeanette Lee Atkinson

Blackroot

Blackroot, Pterocaulon pycnostachym (Michz.) Elliott is a Florida native that doesn't usually attract much attention, but develops into a beautiful garden plant given a little TLC. In scrub, especially, it can look pretty sorry, but the fact that it survives at all in that habitat is evidence of its incredible tenacity. It also grows in pine flatwoods. It occurs throughout Florida except in a few of the northern and western counties, and mainland Monroe County, which is mostly swamp.  Since these areas are sparsely settled, even now, it may be that the plant grows there but has not been vouchered officially.

It's a perennial, and it does have a big black root. Its main charm is its foliage, not its flowers. "Not showy" is sort of an understatement, though the bloom spikes themselves are quite interesting. It is a member of the Aster family. Flower heads grow in a spiral around a long, rather spongy and felty stalk at the ends of branches. There are only disc florets, not petal-like ray flowers. The flowers themselves are pale white turning brown with age. Aster flowers  don't have a traditional green calyx. Instead, they have a ring of persistent chaff-like hairs (pappus) at the bottom. The pappus often aids in seed dispersal. Milkweed seeds are attached to a similar structure, though it is not related to the calyx. As the achenes (dry fruit consisting of a hard outer coating surrounding a single seed) mature, the pappi can become very noticeable. Blackroot's interesting texture and form, beautiful leaves and strange stems more than compensate for the bland flowers.

Numerous disc florets and pappi

One of the most interesting thing about the plant is its decurrent leaf bases. The leaves are not stalked, but attached directly to the stem, and the base of each leaf extends like a wing down the stem until it is interrupted by a different leaf, which starts the process anew. This gives the plant an even more 3-dimensional look, and certainly adds interest. The stems are soft and pithy, turning more woody with age. Pruning old, dry stems keeps the plants looking their best.

StemStudies

The veins, pronounced on the back of the leaves, show up as a delicate  white ornamental tracery on the top side. A dense layer of hairs that appear like a network of cobwebs under magnification make the green leaves look gray, silvery, or just blindingly colorless in sunshine. The undersides of the leaves are more cream-colored than green. The leaves are alternate, and their edges are slightly notched.

Detail of Veins, Pressed Leaf, Leaf Rubbing, Color Trials

Beautiful rose-pink new growth is also one of the plant's charms. The coloration appears on new leaves, flower spikes, and even stems.

Pterocaulon pyncnostachium is very tough, and can grow in extreme drought and sun, or in more moist and shady conditions. It also can be grown in a pot. In my yard it goes dormant or semi-dormant in winter, probably due more to lack of water than cold temperatures. It is not troubled by insects or diseases. Its stems grow both upright and in gentle arcs. It really is a very desirable plant for a naturalistic garden, but does not seem to be readily available. I got my plant from a friend, sadly no longer living, who had a small native plant nursery.

Pterocaulon pyncnostachium - "Blackroot"

An herbal concoction called "Blackroot" is available commercially . This is not made from the same plant, but instead, is a preparation of Veronicastrum virginicum, also called "Culver's Root." Just one more example of why scientific names are a good idea.


Text, illustrations, photos by Jeanette Lee Atkinson

Tomatoes Redux

Last year I complained about my sorry tomatoes. ("Trouble with Tomatoes," 3/19/18). This year has been a completely different story. We've been having sweet, red tomatoes for over a month now. As a former Master Gardener getting it right should have been a no-brainer for me, but it's taken me only about 25 years to start geting the hang of vegetable gardening in sw Florida.

I suspect that the main difference was much earlier planting. I also used better potting soil and a bigger pot, and positioned it close enough to the hose that it was easy to water. I bought an "Early Girl" start, and fertilized it with slow-release pellets. At the moment the plant is looking rather sorry, and apart from its last ripening fruits, has just a few flowers. There may be something wrong with it, but more likely, it may have run its course.

 Even though it is resistant to both fusarium and verticillium wilt, "Early Girl" is not listed as particularly well-suited to south Florida by the University of Florida, IFAS. However, it was recommended to me by an experienced gardener here, and I was familiar with it from earlier gardening days in Georgia. So far there's been no damage from birds, but the Grackles show up in force in late winter and spring. I suspect them as the main culprits. Insect activity also picks up with warm, windy and dry spring weather.

"Early Girl" Watercolor and Colored Pencil

Last week I planted 2 more tomato slips, and they already have produced small green tomatoes. It will be interesting to see if they have time to ripen before the weather gets too hot. Ditto for the lettuce and sweet alyssum seeds I planted along the rim of the pots.

I'm doing an online course in colored pencil with Wendy Hollander, organized by Karen Abend. It's just a little task each day, and so far I've been more or less able to keep up, despite a frustrating elbow injury. Along with the colored pencil technique itself, it's also a review of basic drawing skills, which certainly is not wasted on me. I'm very pleased with what I'm learning, if not by what I'm doing. I've got a long way to go with colored pencil, as my tomatoes below show. I was trying different colors for shading, and got much too heavy-handed with the dark sepia in the tomato on the left. In fact, two of the tomatoes look more like apples to me.

"Early Girl" - Colored Pencil

I still need to contact Harry's Tasty Tomatoes (see my 3/19/18 post  ). No matter what seeds I may get from him, I think I will keep "Early Girl" on my list of Florida favorites.

I also have beautiful kale under the Fiddlewood. (I need to do a post on that wonderful plant. It provides just the sort of dappled shade under which so many plants thrive, and is a favorite perch for the few songbirds we get here). I'm picking it young, so I can braise it with plenty of garlic and some broth, and then add it to sauces or stir fries. To my way of thinking, a lot of recipes underestimate the time it takes to cook "greens." That includes baby kale. I just keep checking until I think it is tender, regardless of the cooking time given. I don't mind a bit of crunch in most vegetables, but undercooked greens to me are about as chewable as grass clippings, which doesn't mean they have to be cooked "dead," either. The bigger and older the leaves, the longer they need to cook.

Kale Mix from Burpee

The wonderfully textured and/or crinkled leaves are endlessly fun to draw, as long as I don't grimly attempt to get every little curlicue right. This sketch started out as ink (Pigma Micron #005) and watercolor. I made the mistake of using yellow for the highlights, but that made the leaves look sickly, so I tried to brighten them up with watercolor pencil, which didn't work too well, and colored pencil, which worked better. Some of the varieties are very blue-green, which I didn't capture here.