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Not your everyday flower

Tue, 15 May 2012 13:05:21 GMT

A day before opening fully. She produces a flower every other year, and this is her year to do so. She is Amorphophallus paeoniifolius, the voodoo flower whom we call Phyllis. (Phyllis the Amorphophallus has a kind of reverse alliterative quality.) We've had her for a number of years. She lives among bromeliads, beneath the shade of a foxtail palm. Although she goes dormant every winter, I've never dug up her tuber, but just allowed her to remain resting in place. Deni Bown in her...

The yearling

Tue, 01 May 2012 15:34:40 GMT

National Key Deer Refuge, Big Pine Key -- When born in April or May, a Key Deer fawn weighs about 2 to 4 pounds. When grown, a male may weigh up to 75 pounds, a female about 55 to 75 pounds. The little yearling we saw last weekend probably stood about two feet tall and weighed (my guess) 30 or 35 pounds. Key Deer are the smallest of 28 subspecies of white-tailed deer, and may number between 250 and 300. Highly endangered by development, dogs and automobiles, these sweet animals inhabit only Big...

Quite a sight

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:38:14 GMT

Every year, the Oncidium spachelatum in the front yard gets bigger and better. This year, it has a breath-taking abundance of flowers. Here it is. Fertilize every two weeks; let Nature do the rest....

What plants can tell you

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:21:07 GMT

Mama screech owl. Early this morning, I was watering some newly planted milkweeds, when I looked at a firebush and noticed some newly deposited bird droppings. Looking up, I discovered our mama screech owl, still sleeping in the early sun. Knowing that her nest is in our old avocado tree, I found two young owlets, very well hidden among new growth, but sitting out of the nest nonetheless. They stayed put long enough for me to photograph them. Take home lesson: keep a close eye on your plants,...

Borneo Expedition

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 17:07:41 GMT

By Noris Ledesma My first glimpse into the primeval land of Limbang, Sarawak, Malaysia; its people, and ultimately the wild mangos of Borneo, woke up the hidden memories from my past in the Colombian Amazonian. The heat and the humidity made everything so green and exuberant. I was still jet-lagged from my travels, when I came to my senses within this foreign, yet hauntingly familiar landscape. The different shapes and textures of the leaves and fronds brought me back to the realization that I...

Biologists find orchids on the move

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:59:10 GMT

Six years ago, an exotic little orchid, Eulophia graminea, popped up in some mulch in South Miami, half way around the globe from its home. Harvey Bernstein, a former Fairchild horticulturist, spotted it in his yard. The next year, it came up again, and FIU ecologist Suzanne Koptur, who lived close by, called it "an exciting botanical mystery." At the 2012 meeting of plant biologists of South Florida, Dexter Sowell, with the Florida Forest Biologist Scott Zona tookthis picture of the...

What to do with your new plants from the Spring Plant Sale

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 14:43:37 GMT

What to do with newly purchased plants After careful reading and perhaps some research, you have selected plants for your home garden. Most of the plants that Fairchild offers for sale have been grown in light shade to full sun. When you bring home plants do not stop on the way home and park your car in the sun. This will cook any plants that are left in the car. Go home, unload plants, make sure their soil feels moist and water thoroughly those that are dry. Place the plants in a lightly shaded...

Wildlife photos at ENP

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 20:21:02 GMT

News form Everglades National Park for wildlife photo fans: The Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center Art Gallery is currently hosting a collection of stunning wildlife photography by Kevan and Linda Sunderland. Sunderland image of black-necked stilt courting ritual. Kevan and Linda Sunderland have been photographing Florida's wildlife for more than 30 years. Their images have appeared in many magazines, including: Florida Wildlife, Wisconsin Wildlife, Wild Bird, Audubon, Nature's Best...

Repotting a Giant

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 16:09:59 GMT

The big plant in its old pot,its leaves bunched together. How do you repot a plant that's as tall as you are? With planning and with help. Anthurium schottianum is a large-leaf plant that I have grown on the back porch for about three years. It's so large, in fact, that it nearly touched the ceiling. As the stem grew taller, I wrapped it in sphagnum moss and surrounded that with a plastic container so the roots would not dry out as they emerged. This was only a temporary Band-Aid...

Edible plants for sale!

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 10:38:58 GMT

In just a few days, the 33rd Annual Spring Plant Sale will take place at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden on April 14 & 15 during the Food & Garden Festival. I will be posting some information about the plants that FTBG will be offering. How would you like to have fresh black mulberries in your breakfast cereal or mulberry cobbler for an evening dessert? Have you ever cooked steamed lemon grass crab legs or chicken satay with lemon grass? Would you like to make creamy lemon grass ice cream? We...

Available soon at the Spring Plant Sale!

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 13:00:09 GMT

In just a few days, the 33rd Annual Spring Plant Sale will take place at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. I will be posting some information about the plants that FTBG will be offering. Fairchild's 33rd Annual Spring Plant Sale will take place April 14 & 15 at FTBG during the Food & Garden Festival. We will have a huge variety available including 62 kinds of native plants, many which are wonderful butterfly or bird attracting species. Our native Senna's attract the beautiful...

One garden's tree is another's...

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:28:43 GMT

Monkey's apple, Mimusops coriacea, grows throughout the tropics but came originally from Mimusops coriacea. Madagascar, Comoros and the Seychelles in the Western Indian Ocean. It is the handsome tree encircled by the walk leading into the garden from the Visitors Center. Right now, it is dropping golf ball sized inedible fruit. The specific name means leather, and the leaves are quite leathery. While we may admire it, the plant has managed to work its way onto the Global Compendium of...

A royal vine

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:49:04 GMT

Petrea volubilis. Wisteria vines were in full flower last week in southern California, and while this member of the pea family can be invasive it also can be quite beautiful. Our Petrea volubilis or queen's wreath, is sometimes said to be the tropical version of wisteria, but its flowers are much more delicate. Petrea is winding down its late winter flowering, but pretty racemes of lavender/purple flowers remain around the garden house. And there are Petrea vines along the fence by the...

Top Orchid Specialist is Festival Speaker

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 10:45:46 GMT

Orchid specialist Tom Mirenda. Tom Mirenda, the Orchid Collection Specialist at the Smithsonian Institution for the last 10 years, will talk about orchid pollination at 1 p.m. Saturday at Fairchild's 10th International Orchid Festival At the Smithsonian, Tom cares for and curates an extremely diverse collection of 10,000 orchid species and hybrids from all over the world. He develops and produces huge educational exhibits visited by hundreds of thousands of visitors. Mirenda trained originally...

A cycad from the Philippines

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 10:46:34 GMT

Cycas wadei's female cone. On a recent Saturday visit to Leu Gardens in Orlando, I found many shrubs of Camillia japonica as well as roses in flower, but my attention was drawn to the beautiful female cone of Cycas wadei. It is known as Wade's pitogo in the Philippines, where it is native. By poking around the Internet, I learned that was named in 1936 by botanist Elmer Drew Merrill, the second president of Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden who spent 22 years working in the Philippines....

Blooms and roots

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:20:38 GMT

This flower is fabulous. The Brownea coccinea ssp. capitella growing next to the Hawkes Lab walkway, has been spectacular this year. Mary Collins, senior horticulturist, said it displayed seven flowers last week. This morning, four flowers and a bud were impressing visitors. There is a helpful sign next to the plant explaining that it is hummingbird pollinated and that its new leaves emerge to resemble a limp handkerchief, giving it the nickname "handkerchief tree." Meanwhile,...

Congratulations to Alex Fernandez

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 02:04:41 GMT

Congratulations to Alex Fernandez, an FTBG high school intern in his junior year at Christopher Columbus High School. He won the Fairchild award and an excellent evaluation for his entry in the South Florida regional science and engineering fair. His project entitled "Does salt accumulate in the fronds of the the mangrove palm Nypa fruitcans was started in my laboratory....

President's Day at FTBG

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 15:23:34 GMT

Great American Egret and blue herons....

At last

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:55:29 GMT

Raindrops cling tothis tomato's bottom. What's happier than a tomato in the rain? A whole garden in the rain. And perhaps even happier is this gardener. So we didn't get a cold snap, we got rain instead, and boy has it been a long thirsty stretch. Yellow lawns and droopy staghorn ferns are normal for April/May, not January/February. The tomatoes and broccoli relish the rain, and the bok choi grew visibly overnight. If rain continues for a few days, which is forecast, then we'll...

Late winter

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:46:17 GMT

Late winter Begonia petals are peekingout from their buds. Rhizomatous begonias are sending up flower spikes, a late winter phenomenon that always is welcome. These are plants that have stems on the ground or just beneath the mulch that produce leaves and flowers on top and roots beneath. There are many fine cultivars on the market suitable for landscape use, and their care is fairly easy. They like bright shade, even some early morning sun, moist soil and controlled-release fertilizer. As Tim...

A botanist in Chile

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 20:47:54 GMT

Auracaria aruacana in its Chilean habitat. Dr. Scott Zona's presentation, A Botanical Tour of Chile, mesmerized the Tropical Fern and Exotic Plant Society Monday night - not only because of the botanical knowledge imparted but also the fabulous photos (four of which he graciously allowed me to use here). Scott, a former palm specialist at FTBG, is curator of the Wertheim Conservatory at Florida International University. He traveled to Chile with fellow botanists Dr. John Tobe of...

Let the chocolate begin

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:00:35 GMT

Samples everywhere. A perfect winter morning got the chocolate festival off to a beautiful start Friday. Chocolatiers in the Garden House had such tempting samples on display that few could resist. Millie with her cake. But the food vendors had some scrumptous offerings, too. Millie, the M of M&L Carib Conchs, made a chocolate cake that seemed to epitomize the event. However, there also were vegan chocolates, teas and spices and kettle corn to sample. Oncidium Sharry Baby smelled as wonderfully...

Beautiful weather for the garden

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:05:50 GMT

Long-John, Triplaris cumingiana,is in its glory right now on the Triplaris cumingiana. west side of the Bailey Palm Glade. The tree's red (female) flowers are on long racemes, and against a brilliant blue winter sky, they are spectacular. Hailing from Panama, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Colombia, this flowering tree shows off every winter. The stems are hollow and inhabited by stinging ants when in their natural setting, so the tree is sometimes referred to as the ant tree. This slender, tall...

Grow your own lettuce - it is easy!

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 13:44:00 GMT

Earlier this month I attended a Miami-Dade County Cooperative Extension Service advisory board meeting. After the meeting, we went outside to see the raised bed gardens that Master Gardeners had planted. In some cases, unusual containers were used. Seeing this gave me a great idea! I have an old recycling bin. So the following weekend I went to my local gardening center and purchased some young buttercrunch lettuce and red lettuce plants along with some potting soil. I picked up a few collard...

Interior design

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 15:49:14 GMT

Dioon edule seed pod. Walking past the cycad circle recently I noticed that the end of a Dioon edule seed pod had fallen away, revealing a perfectly packaged interior. It reminded me of the exquisite symmetry of mahogany seed pods, which I love to find just barely opened so I can admire the design. See what you think. Mahogany seed pod....

Seeing anew

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 22:04:17 GMT

After many weeks away, it's wonderful to be back among good friends. Mt. Everest, second from right. The last posting on this blog was from Bhutan. From there, we journeyed to Nepal. It was a rather brief visit because of a cancelled flight, but we managed to view Mt. Everest from a small plane and then wander through the country's 210-acre national botanical garden on the outskirts of Kathmandu. Our guide said none of his clients had ever asked to see that garden before, and he...

The Keys to Growing Beautiful Bougainvilleas

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 09:40:46 GMT

Bougainvillea, in all the vivid colors of the tropics, is very easy to encourage blooming. The keys to promoting flowering in bougainvillea are: 1. Prune 2. Fertilize lightly 3. Less water. Remember this: bougainvillea blooms on new growth. Prune back your plant and lightly fertilize. This will promote new growth and flowering. On November 1, I pruned the bougainvillea next to my house. The next day I applied some 8-3-9 granular fertilizer and watered lightly. My bougainvillea on November 1,...

Autumn snow

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:18:36 GMT

The thanksgiving holiday is both a chance to give thanks, and to catch up on all of the things that can get set aside in the midst of a busy autumn. Fairchild is absolutely delightful this time year. The weather is perfect, the grounds are prepared for festivals and larger number of visitors, and there are cannonball tree flowers. Back in late October I had the opportunity to give an invited seminar at Swarthmore College in southeastern Pennsylvania. It was a good excuse to visit several sites...

The Himalayas

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 13:19:03 GMT

A summit on climate change in the Himalaya is emphasizing food security, energy and water security as well as biodiversity here in Thimphu, Bhutan's capitol. Representatives from India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan are working on a 10-year plan that will hopefully mitigate dramatic changes now affecting them. Glacial lakes are forming rapidly, and threaten to burst at any time as glaciers melt rapidly. In 2008, a major river here flooded, causing severe infrastructure damage in Paro, including a...

The Tiny Kingdom of Bhutan

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 13:05:40 GMT

We have come to the tiny landlocked kingdom of Bhutan, with a total population of 700,000, after spending three weeks in the world's second most populous nation. The country's single airport is here in Paro, pop. 10,000. What a refreshing change. It is the land of the thunder dragon, where the Dzong is both monastery and city administration center, where larch and spruce and pines reach through the clouds at 13,000 feet, but so do the prayer flags. The national tree is a cypress and the national...

Palace Flowers

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 18:17:22 GMT

In central India, the Mogul influence is seen in all the palaces and forts of Jaipur, Jodhpur and Udaipur, as well as the the Taj Mahal in Agraand Akbar's magnificent tomb there. What I have loved most about these splendidly decorated places is the flower motif found again and again. At first, I tried to identify them. Lilies and lotus are pretty easy, and I managed to see a daffodil-like flower, but it turns out that most are imaginative interpretations by Persian-influenced artists. Here are...

Tea Time and a Botanic Garden

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 14:58:30 GMT

Darjeeling,India--Tea gardens climb the hills beneath trees with delicate bipinnate leaves. Leaves gently fall among the tea plants acting as fertilizer while the trees provide just the right amount of shade for the shrubs that can live 50 years. Women are the tea workers, wearing cloth bags that quickly fill with leaves. These are hung from their heads, while their index and middle fingers are bound with strips of rags to protect them. This is the autumn or third and last picking of the year,...

Traveling in the Past

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 13:50:57 GMT

Village life in India remains as difficult as it was centuries ago. As we have driven through Central India, where the IT, steel and coal tycoons do not tread, we have watched grain being threshed and water being lifted from a Persian well by oxen. We have seen the same oxen pulling carts through village streets and women pumping water from roadside wells. Cattle, sheep and goats are herded on the roads as trucks, tut-tuts and ancient buses vie for the same narrow and rutted pavement. Donkeys...

A Fort and a Fair

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 19:33:50 GMT

The Pushkar Camel Fair The camels used in this part of the world are dromedary camels, each with a single hump. A camel develops one tooth a year (which is how you can age them) and can pull 2000 kilograms of weight. That's 4,400 pounds. A camel holds water in three sacks in its throat; the hump is fat. Pushkar, which is the site of a shrine to Brahma and has a holy lake in which pilgrims immerse themselves, is the scene of the annual camel fair. Located on the eastern edge of the Thar desert,...

Two Types of Temples

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 15:47:53 GMT

A vast plain of temples some 800 to 1,000 years old lies down the Irrawaddy River south of Mandalay. The plain covers 16 square miles and includes more than 2,000 temples. This is Bagan, the most important archeological site in the country of Myanmar (Burma). In 1287, Kublai Khan and his Moguls invaded and broke up the Burmese kingdom, which had one stretched from India to the Mekong River, and for several hundred years, the jungle grew and reclaimed the stupas and temples. In 1975, an...

The Taj Mahal

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 15:22:55 GMT

Agra, India―Seeing the Taj Mahal at sunrise strains one's vocabulary: stunning, elegant, magical, unworldly, transporting, lyrical and even poetic perfection of proportion in stone. Built by the Mugahl ruler Shah Jahan as a tomb for his wife Mamtaz Mahal, who died at age 37 after delivering her 14th child, the perfectly proportioned monument was begun in 1633 and completed 22 years later by some 20,000 workers and artisans working around the clock. The ultimate expression of Mughal architecture,...

Tiger!

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 16:41:57 GMT

Bandhavgarh National Park,India-- On our last safari, we were lucky enough to find a tiger. A gorgeous female, weighing about 400 pounds and measuring about 6 feet in length, was on a late afternoon hunt when we saw her. She had left her two cubs hidden in a cave. She emerged from the jungle and crossed a dry creek some 60 feet from us, a mere 20 yards! Elegantly striped, she walked steadily and purposefully, giving no indication that she resented our presence, but her ears turned back to us...

Banhargarh, India

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 19:20:03 GMT

Banhargarh,India-- We have one more chance to see a tiger this afternoon. So far we have come up dry--although we have seen an abundance of wildlife in Bandhargarh National Park. We head out at 5:45 a.m. The que for the park must wait for all papers to be authenticated before we can enter. In this part of the park there are specific routes that the guides must follow and they must carry papers attesting to their assigned routes. Half way through the morning's outing, we have to stop and have the...

The Burmese National Botanic Garden

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 15:32:02 GMT

Pyin Oo Lwin, Myanmar-- An enormous conifer, Araucaria columnaris, towers over the Burmese National Botanic Garden at a refreshingly cool altitude of 3,500 feet. Once a hill station to which the British retreated from Mandalay's heat, the garden was begun in 1915. It took us nearly 3 hours to reach it from the steamy plains of Mandalay, following enormous trucks around hairpin curves of the Burma Road on their way to China, only 350 miles away. Once at the little town of Pyin Oo Lwin, we...

The Toddy Palm

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:56:34 GMT

Borassus flabellifer is called the toddy palm. Toddy, or a potent wine, is made from the inflorescences of the palm. Climbers ascend bamboo ladders that are attached to the tall trunks, cut a section of inflorescence, and attach bowls to catch the draining juice. The palms are harvested of toddy from the age of 25 to 45, after which they can "retire." The toddy is OK for women and children in the morning, but by afternoon if has become a potent drink of 5 to 7 percent alcohol. A sugary candy...

Floating Tomato Islands

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:36:26 GMT

Inle Lake, Myanmar―This vast lake, which is 14 miles long in the center ofMyanmar, is home to 80,000 people, half of whom live in the lake itself. They fish, farm and go to school, living in stilt houses and getting around by canoe. Tomatoes are their main crop. To grow them, they scoop up mud from the lake bottom and mix it with seaweed to create floating islands. Then they insert long slender poles into the islands and train the tomatoes to grow between them. Floating tomato islands. Many...

Inle Lake, Myanmar

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:14:37 GMT

Inle Lake, Myanmar-- The lotus in both Burma and India is a sacred flower, associated with purity. In Burma, the fragrant lotus legend is that Buddha was offered a set of monk's robes by a Brahma who had found them in a lotus blossom. Nearly a century ago in a fishing village in Inle Lake, a woman experimented with the fibers she gently pulled from a lotus stem, forming them into thread and weaving thread into lotus items, such as scarves and robes. Cloth woven from lotus thread. There is no...

Pyin Oo Lwin, Myanmar

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 19:26:01 GMT

Pyin Oo Lwin, Myanmar-- An enormous conifer, Araucaria columnaris, towers over the Burmese National Botanic Garden at a refreshingly cool altitude of 3,500 feet. Once a hill station to which the British retreated from Mandalay's heat, the garden was begun in 1915. It took us nearly 3 hours to reach it from the steamy plains of Mandalay, following enormous trucks around hairpin curves of theBurma Road on their way toChina, only 350 miles away. Once at the little town of Pyin Oo Lwin, we squeezed...

Yangon, Myanmar

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 19:15:22 GMT

Yangon, Myanmar-- Smack in the middle of the most holy of Buddhist shrines, the Shwedagon Pagoda (seen below), is a toddy palm, Borassus flabillifer. It is the on the leaves of this palm that the Burmese developed an alphabet and writing. The letters, confusingly small circles, were developed to stay within the narrow segments of the palmate leaves and the writing continues to be plump to this day. Shwedagon itself is to Buddhists as Meccais to Muslims, and the enormous bell-shaped central part...

Traveling in Asia

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 18:03:49 GMT

Yangon, Myanmar -- For the next six weeks, I will be exploring Asia, beginning with Myanmar and proceeding to India, Bhutan and Nepal, hoping to share new worlds and natural places increasingly under threat. I will visit botanic gardens, preserves and Parks, looking for plants and their indigenous uses and meanings in these cultures. I have been taking lots of notes and photographs, and I hope you enjoy them!...

Notes from abroad

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 18:37:19 GMT

I recently had the opportunity to travel to Hyderabad, India. Traveling always provides a new perspective; my trip it provided some perspective on how we may view native plants here in South Florida. Some of my research is on the genetics of native plants, and some is on the genetics of crop plants. I was visiting ICRISAT, the International Crop Research Institute of the Semi-Arid Tropics. ICRISAT breeds improved pigeonpea, chickpea, peanuts, sorghum, and pearl millet, five important tropical...

They are baaaack! You can have them too!

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 10:25:26 GMT

I've been busily preparing for them for a few weeks now. I was filling my two feeders with white millet seeds, the favorite food of our most colorful bird native to North America. They come down beginning in late September and stay until mid April. Much to my delight, early evening yesterday, I looked through binoculars to my bird feeders in my back yard and saw three Painted Buntings! Two were the incredibly colorful males and the third was a 'greenie' either an immature male or a female. Some...

Musings on what it means to be a native plant

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 14:19:27 GMT

[A similar post was published previously in Tillandisa, the member magazine of the Miami-Dade chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society. The version is available on the Dade FNPS website: http://dade.fnpschapters.org/pastnewsletters/2011/09.php] South Florida is where North America meets the Caribbean and Latin America. This is as true culturally as it is botanically. We have many plant groups where there are members here from both North America and the Caribbean. But North American and...

A Plant for Everyone Who Loves Wine, Pudding, Cakes, Ice Cream, Rum.....

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 10:23:49 GMT

One of our 2011 distribution plants: Hibiscus sabdariffa is one of the most useful flowering shrubs in the Caribbean. Commonly known as sorrel or roselle, the fibers found in the stems are used to make jute, while the fleshy, red calyx are utilized in the West Indies and elsewhere in the tropics fresh for making roselle wine, jelly, syrup, gelatin, refreshing beverages, pudding, and cakes, and dried roselle is used for tea, jelly, marmalade, ices, ice-cream, sherbets, butter, pies, sauces,...

Tropical conifers

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 19:29:28 GMT

I've been working on a story about tropical and subtropical conifers, and just to pique your interest, I want to show you a bouquet of different conifer leaves. These samples come from the Montgomery Botanical Center, where botanist Chad Husby is building one of the largest collections of warm-growing conifers in the world. Clockwise from top: Calocedrus rupestris; Nageia wallichiana; Podocarpus elongatus 'Blue Chip'; Araucaria muelleri; Dacrydium nausoriense and the blue form of Cupressus...

First flowering of a small baobab

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 13:23:48 GMT

With pink curlicues and orange stamens, this Adansonia rubrostipa is a knockout. An exquisite flower opened on a young baobab that Roger Hammer bought about 15 years ago from Fairchild. Then it was called Adansonia fony. Over the weekend, Roger sent an email: ''The tree has grown to about 18 feet tall now, and is considered the smallest member of the genus. Yesterday it flowered for the very first time..." The tree has a new name today -- of course -- and is Adansonia rubrostipa. The flower has...

A flower of many meanings

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 17:09:34 GMT

Find the hooded cobra in the flower of thecannonball tree. The cannonball tree, near the cycad circle, is flowering profusely, offering a pleasant perfume to anyone who walks by. Couroupita guianensis is found in South America, but has been grown in India for centuries. Considered a sacred plant in India, the flower's complex structure is said to symbolize a hooded cobra protecting a Shiva lingam. Shiva is the Hindu god who is the Destroyer of life (only if life is destroyed can rebirth...

Keeping us on our toes

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 14:35:29 GMT

Irene gave us our first wake-up call of the 2011 hurricane season. Say "Good Night Irene," snag some extra water and canned goods at the store, and double check your storm plan. Remember what you should have on hand for the post-storm reckoning, and buy these now: extra shade cloth; copper-based and other fungicides; rope; chain saw with oil and gas; pruning and hand shears; gloves; hose-end sprayer and water-soluble fertilizer. Place orchids on groundbeneath shade house benches...

Pine rockland plants, poor things!!

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 10:32:24 GMT

I've often mentioned to my fellow horticulturist, nature-loving friends that plants growing in the pine rocklands of south Florida are stunted due to the poor growing conditions. We are growing many plants native to this special habitat in our nursery, the grounds of Fairchild and in our home gardens. It is simply amazing how different the same species looks when grown in good soil versus the rockland. Here is one example. The first photo is Ocimum campechianum, wild sweet basil, in pine...

iPhoneography and plants

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 13:46:50 GMT

Shirley Drevich was our instructor for the iPhoneography class series at the Garden, and she opened our eyes to new ways of seeing plants. Various apps downloaded into the iPhone4 can be used singly or in combination to create a vast array of results. Have a look. Water lilies. Agave. Dioon cycads. Bird of paradise....

Midsummer plant stress

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:14:27 GMT

A weird summer weather pattern has landscape plants really feeling the heat in gardens near the coast, where rain has been irregular and sparse. For orchid lovers, be sure to water your vandas twice a day, using a light mist in mid-afternoon if it's not raining. Fertilize weekly, adding extra potassium and magnesium sulfate or Epsom salt (1 teaspoon each per gallon of water) to improve cell health. At the 5th symposium of the Coalition for Orchid Species held recently at Fairchild,...

Summertime is the best time to........

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:36:47 GMT

We are definately in the midst of our summer, rainy season. This is a great time to take care of some gardening tasks. To avoid working in the heat of the day, work outside either very early in the morning or in the evening. This is the time to cut back shrubs which have become leggy. Plants such as beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) and firebush (Hamelia patens) can be cut back to promote a fuller, better looking plant. By trimming shrubs now, the plants will have time to put on new, more...

A peacock in the garden

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 09:47:59 GMT

Selaginella willdenovii shinesin the rainforest. Club mosses (also called spike mosses) had a rough time in the drought. Yet, with our high humidity and some squirts with a hose, Selaginella species can succeed until the rains become more regular afternoon events. In Fairchild's rainforest, there's a glorious Selaginella willdenovii. Its blue iridescent sheen makes this fern ally a wonderful addition to a shady and moist spot in the garden. It hails from Southeast Asia. The so-called...

Housekeeping

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 12:16:55 GMT

These Livistona decora,foreground, are among new palms in parking area. Visitors coming to the 19th International Mango Festival will find the lowland parking area sporting Livistona decora, Phoenix sylvestris and Veitchia species replacing the ropes used to define parking rows. New plantings also screen the area from the Visitors Center and the Lakeside Cafe. You'll also notice new palms at the garden's south entrance and the Garden Club of America Amphitheater, all donated by Manny...

Coffee grounds at work

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 10:37:55 GMT

Coffee grounds and coffee "tea" may be an answer to controlling the deadly cycad scale and mealybugs, warding off grasshoppers and even killing mosquito larvae. For the past several years, the Internet has been abuzz with stories about the effects of used coffee grounds on cycad scale that devastated ornamental cycads called the queen and king sago. Tom Broome, the newly elected president of The Cycad Society, brought the story to the recent Cycad Day at the garden. Broome, who owns...

A sigh of relief, maybe

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 13:53:34 GMT

Along the coast, we've been in a rain shadow for weeks. The interior and western suburbs have received downpours yet we parch on. So last Sunday's rain gave new life to some struggling tropical plants, especially the calatheas, which were practically panting last week in my garden. A calathea species refreshedby rain. Monday morning in the Fairchild Conservatory, the calatheas were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, with delicate flowers tentatively poking their noses out for air....

National Pollinator Week

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 21:43:16 GMT

A bee at work. How many pollinators are you caring for? How many can you name? Flies, sweat bees, leafcutter bees, digger bees, bumble bees, beetles, bats, moths, even lemurs are pollinators. But they are disappearing. So a few years ago, in response to the The Forgotten Pollinator Campaign, Congress set aside a week to focus on the big and little creatures that turn flowers into fruit, and put food on our table. Allow a few wildflowers and weeds to remain in the yard for the native bees and...

Beautifully grown plants on display

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 20:48:34 GMT

Every year, the Tropical Fern and Exotic Plant Society show features exceptionally well grown specimens including ferns, begonias, aroids, orchids and bromeliads. It's a plant lovers feast, really, and a chance to see how lovely tropical plants can look when given expert care. This year, it's hard to find an imperfect leaf. Many blue ribbons flutter among the fronds and flower spikes. Here are some really lovely examples: Elegant in its simplicity is thisAnthurium faustomirandae. Anthurium...

Baby Giant

Sun, 22 May 2011 17:30:04 GMT

Early instar of the Giant Swallow-tail butterfly. There are a Myer lemon and two Key lime trees in the back yard, potential larval host plants for the Giant Swallowtail butterfly. But a far-away small bowl of parsley did the trick. The reddish-orange and dark brown caterpillar with a saddle of white (more white will appear with age) found the parsley patch just right for nibbling. Hooray!...

Helping the pollinators

Sun, 22 May 2011 14:24:11 GMT

Native leaf cutter bees sleeping on southern beeblossom in the Garden's pine rockland section. Most of our native bees are not social, as is the exotic honeybee. Instead, said bee expert Steve Buchmann, "think of them as single moms with families to feed.'' Of the 4,000 bees native to the United States, 90 percent make nests in the ground, while the rest dwell in wood or plant cavities. A native bee mom digs a chamber, furnishes it with food for the young, then lays an egg on...

Connecting the ecosystem dots

Fri, 20 May 2011 23:27:32 GMT

With a temperate zone right out of Appalachia jutting into the Panhandle and a tropical zone from the West Indies wrapping around the southern tip of the peninsula, and everything from scrub to marshes in between, Florida is among the most biologically diverse states in the country. Because these ecosystems and their inhabitants have been so reduced in size as farms and cities have sprawled across the state, the Florida Native Plant Society's 31st annual conference is exploring how these...

Natives shrubs for shade...and insects

Tue, 17 May 2011 13:04:59 GMT

A Ruddy Daggerwing butterfly sips nectar fromflowers of wild coffee. Wild coffee, Psychotria nervosa, has been blooming profusely in recent weeks, attracting bees by the gazillion and nectar-hungry butterflies. The shrub that is native to South Florida is an excellent plant for shaded or lightly shaded areas, and can attain a good 10 feet in height if so allowed. It takes pruning wonderfully, however, and you can maintain it as a well-mannered hedge or allow it to billow. A leafy mulch...

If you're going to be red, be red

Mon, 09 May 2011 17:08:36 GMT

With blood red bracts and red-throated white flowers, a Mussaenda eythrophylla planted along the allee leading to the overlook is in glorious form. It was so startlingly bright that as I was hurrying along the allee on my way to an appointment I came to a screeching halt and went over to find out what was bleating at me with such vital color. Not a shy bloomer. In the coffee family, Mussaenda is particularly cold tender and several in my neighborhood have been killed over the last two winters....

Plants for table, garden at the fest

Sat, 30 Apr 2011 18:41:33 GMT

Farm fresh herbs and a mascot chicken. Organic herbs and veggies, worm farms, jars of honey, crisp fresh produce, and row after row of expertly grown landscape plants worked their charm on visitors to Fairchild's Food and Garden Shopping for Fairchild's plants. Festival Saturday. Perhaps if was Friday's rain that made everything seem so brilliantly colorful, but something nearly magical made the Food and Garden Fest special. Lectures on urban gardens in South Florida, cooking Buy...

A feast for the eyes

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 13:37:41 GMT

With each passing spring, our Oncidium sphacelatumbecomes more beautiful, perched in a Tabebuia. This dancing lady orchid, Oncidium sphacelatum, is a splendid example of how orchids thrive in trees. The three-foot flower spikes are loaded with hundreds of tiny yellow flowers that dance on the winds of Spring. Fertilized every two weeks with 15-5-15, this lovely specimen has large pseudobulbs to retain water, and it is seldom given extra irrigation (unless I happen to think about it). For ease of...

Flowers worth finding

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 19:20:29 GMT

Four plants are blooming now at the Garden that you should come and see. Napoleon's hat. One was noticed by Jason Lopez in the horticulture department, who planted it five years ago. This is Napoleonaea imperialis, or Napoleon's hat, and Jason sent an email to the staff saying it's worth a trip to plot 45 to find it. In his email Jason wrote, "This plant comes from west Africa and is found in the rainforest under story, where the twigs are used as chew-sticks, the fruits sugary...

Noble live oaks

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 19:36:00 GMT

Live oaks, such as this one at Maclay Gardens can live hundreds of years. Majestic is a description usually reserved for mountain peaks and California redwoods, but I vote to attribute the adjective to the native live oak as well. Truly grand live oaks are few and far between in South Florida, given our development and storms. There are a couple of wonderful live oaks at Fairchild that have been graced with epiphytes in addition to their natural coating of resurrection fern; there's a...

Is that thing really a flower?

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 11:01:00 GMT

Aristolochia is a genus of vining plants that produce some of the most peculiar flowers imaginable, if it weren't possible to say that about orchids, too. And like orchids, Aristolochia flowers have male and female parts in the same organ, called a gynostemium (or the column in orchids). Aristolochia littoralis with oneopen flower and buds on right. There are no petals on an Aristolochia flower, but the whole thing that can resemble a Dutchman's pipe or a pelican or a number of other...

Desert roses are flourishing

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:51:11 GMT

Adenium multiflorum flowers have yellow throats. Plants are spectacular right now. Adeniums, or desert roses, have fat caudices and weird, elongated branches, but they produce beautiful flowers. Adenium multiflorum has been quite the star for the last few weeks, blooming in front of the Gallery building. It is an African species, ranging from KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa to Zambia in the west of Africa. This slow-growing relative of the oleander does well in South Florida, Striped throat on...

Laurel wilt disease

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 17:03:27 GMT

Our native red bay tree (Persea borbonia) is a primary host plant for the Palmedes Swallowtail butterfly. The fruit also is eated by deer, songbirds, black bears and wild turkeys. Red bay is related to two other native trees, swamp bay (Persea palustris) and lancewood (Ocotea coriacea). These trees are in the laurel family, along with avocado (Persea americana). All of them are vulnerable to a disease that has spread from South Carolina down the coast and into Miami-Dade County. The fungal...

Peachy flowers, fallen flowers

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 22:10:23 GMT

Delicate flowers of the peach blossom cassia. It first appeared in South Florida in 2005, but has been a rock star ever since. This Cassia bakeriana, which the Garden is calling "peach blossom cassia," originally emigrated from Thailand as dwarf apple blossom cassia. It flowers from March through May, opening pink and fading to white. The Garden's young tree was planted in 2006. The tree, like most flowering trees, is drought tolerant once it has become established in the...

Don't let the jade fade...

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 13:03:25 GMT

Keeled claws of the jade vine. ... before you see it! Hanging in pendant clusters, the claw-like flowers of the jade vine are beautiful almost beyond belief. They are a striking aquamarine, opening with upturned keels. They are the color of shallow tropical seas, of rare tropical birds. And no matter how often you see them, you still gaze with wonder. Strongylodon macrobotrys is the botanical name of the Philippine vine that has three-lobed leaves and a strong woody trunk. This rainforest liana...

Honoring the Volunteers

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 13:52:58 GMT

Every year, the hundreds of volunteers at the garden are honored with a brunch. They receive pins for their years of service, accolades from the administration and an amazing amount of food prepared by the staff. It's a heartwarming party, full of good will and camaraderie. Here's an iPhone appreciation. Ann Schmidt helps setthe buffet table. Mary Neustein in the kitchen. Table decorations compliments of the horticulture staff. And the happy volunteers enjoying the feast!...

Quiet charm

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 19:59:03 GMT

Now that orchids have quit hogging the spotlight, begonias can take a bow. A pendant cluster of femalebegonia flowers. They have been blooming for several weeks, showing delicate white or pink flowers with understated charm. You'll find them in the Moos Sunken Garden, along the path near Standing Gorilla, in the rainforest and by the Visitors Center. They have eye-catching asymmetrical leaves and male or female flowers. The female flowers have winged inferior ovaries, just beneath the...

Rainclouds over Jamaica's Cockpit Country

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 02:17:59 GMT

Rain rain go away JAMAICA. Gray clouds met us at our field locale in the mountains this morning. Rain is not typical this time of year, but there are some southerly winds blowing through and bringing some precipitation with them. For the local farmers, the untimely rain may be a blessing for their crops - especially the unique varieties of local yam they're famous for- but for fieldwork in steep mountain terrain the rain is less than desirable. Despite being keen to get out into the mountains...

Celebrating beauty

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 20:21:06 GMT

Two days of splendid weather have made for such a happy orchid festival that it is tempting to call it a celebration of Nature's most fascinating flowers. One more day to bask in beauty. Lucky us. Linda Curle received an AOS Award of Merit for thisC. Hiromi Nishi 'Que Linda' They're called Doggles. Everywhere you turn, another photo to be taken. Happy shoppers. Slc. Jewel Box 'Ricardo' in theRainforest Orchid Plaza....

Orchidology: for serious collectors

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 21:52:39 GMT

Orchid cells have been to the International Space Station. Vandrame. Wagner Vandrame, associate professor of Environmental Horticulture with the University of Florida's Tropical Research and Education Center in Homestead, sent orchid tissue to the Space Station in 2007, and found that without gravity they do indeed grow faster than in our backyards. The experiment is part of a larger effort aimed at finding the best way to grow and conserve orchids threatened in the wild. Vandrame hosted...

Splendor in the Garden (House)

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 19:31:30 GMT

Orchid growers have outdone themselves at Fairchild's 9th Annual International Orchid Festival that opens Friday and runs through Sunday. There are leagues of glorious flowers on display, which undoubtedly will entice you to join the tribe of orchid lovers here in South Florida. Commercial growers have created table top displays that are works of art, and hobbyists have added a special vitality with multitudes of orchid types and colors. Here are some samples of what you will see. Grand champion...

Colorful characters

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 10:49:43 GMT

With all the color, this bromeliadsupplies fragrance to boot. You'd think that the Tillandsia cyanea, now flowering in the Conservatory, would have given its all in creating the bold pink inflorescence that opens lovely purple flowers. It is, after all, relatively small as plants go and those colors are anything but dim. But no, if you happen by it on a warm morning, you will discover its most appealing quality: the fragrance of cloves. Commonly called Pink Quill, this bromeliad from...

Beetle alert!

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 17:52:40 GMT

An orchid-eating beetle. Spring, it appears, has arrived early. And with warm, dry weather come beetles and thrips. Sitting brazenly atop a light lavender cattleya hybrid today was a black beetle with some light spots on its back. Two more beetles were on the adjacent flower. They've been emerging like crazy as the soil warms up, and we're finding them by the bucket load in the pool skimmer. The larvae are grubs that have pupated in the soil, munching away on grass roots. Damaged...

Pergola's spring bouquet

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 21:01:32 GMT

Clerodendrum splendens. Eliciting ohhs at the north end of the vine pergola is the magnificent specimen of Clerodendrum splendens. This vining clerodendron (the common name ends in on') is from Africa, and for a clerodendron behaves itself rather seemly. With large leaves and clusters of small flowers reaching some five or six inches across, the vine will twine around a support and dangle branches quite beautifully. The wow-power of Seen closer, the red of this Clerodendrum is...

Moving plants

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 09:39:27 GMT

To prepare for the the new state-of-the-art Science Village, Tropical Research Labs, Cafe and Conservatory the horticulture team moved several important plants. We realized that this would be necessary to make room for the new buildings and Conservatory shade house. Among the palms to be moved were five Cryosophila williamsii, wild collected in Honduras by Dr. Scott Zona. This species of Cryosophila is restricted to steep, high-rainfall slopes of the Lago Yojoa watershed in west-central...

Skirting the issue

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 12:34:58 GMT

The palm Copernicia macroglossa bears round fronds that encircle the trunk with petioles so short they seem not to exist. There is no crown shaft, just a glorious head of leaves that gradually die and fall, but stay attached to the trunk. This skirt of old leaves is the My petticoat palm, age 11. source of its common name, petticoat palm or Cuban petticoat palm. Perhaps because it carries its fronds, both dead and alive, for such a long time, it is extraordinarily slow growing. Perhaps not....

A winter's day

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 17:49:08 GMT

After the hubbub of the Chocolate Festival, the Garden is in repose this Mottled and twisted seed pods ofLysiloma latisiliquum, wild tamarind. week, enjoying the soft light and quiet of a January afternoon. Visitors meandered in ones or twos yesterday, content with the winding down that's apparent in the brown edges on leaves, the brown coconut fronds, and the brown coconuts floating in the lakes. There are beautiful turquoise seeds of the Chinese fan palms littering the Bailey Palm Glade...

How sweet it is

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 19:52:16 GMT

It's a festival that appeals to the kid in all of us, but authentic kids really love this one. The 5th International Chocolate Festival, featuring Coffee & Tea, opened today with the delectable aroma of chocolate coming from orchids, candies, candles, even from the Garden's festival T-shirt. Ummm. Barbara Lalevee shows Ryan Johnson 9, pulpy chocolate seeds . You can see the Theobroma cacao trees in the rainforest -- and volunteer Barbara Lalevee will point out the baby pod on one of them that...

Mahogany plus cream make chocolate!

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 12:30:45 GMT

The hybrid orchid Oncidium Sharry Baby Sweet Fragrance' is blooming and Onc. Sharry Baby now has many relatives,some of them quite red in color. releasing its wonderful chocolate aroma just in time for the Chocolate Festival. An easy orchid to grow, this Oncidium has round pseudobulbs that range in size from three to four inches, and long, strap-shaped leaves that are somewhat leathery. It sends out long spikes of mahogany and cream-colored flowers. You can grow this in a mix of...

In the January garden

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 11:04:55 GMT

December's low temperatures have taken a toll on the garden's tender plants, especially the (usual suspects) aroids, gingers and heliconias. But many plants have kept right on ticking. Should we keep a basic list of what to plant in the future? Perhaps. Modest in size but outstanding incolor is this Billbergia bromeliad. A small Billbergia (confession: I've lost the species name) is sending out a flower spike. Billbergia is a genus of bromeliad from Mexico or Brazil, and...

A glow from Madagascar

Thu, 30 Dec 2010 18:15:59 GMT

Aloe dyeri has scarlet flowers. The short-day plants in the Madagascar exhibit are keeping the scenery bright. Aloes are holding up spikes of red tubular flowers, while the kalanchoes are showing off yellow flowers. Two Pachypodium rutenbergianum trees are leafless and topped with white blooms, while the Uncarina roeoesliana is sheltering yellow trumpet shaped flowers beneath its texured lobed leaves. If you stand for a while and study the bizarre shapes as well as the flowers, you may be...

A new home for Fausto

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 10:34:39 GMT

The rainforest now is home to thisbeautiful anthurium. Anthurium faustomirandae, one of my favorites, has moved from the conservatory to the rainforest as preparations are made for construction of the new science village. The conservatory plants will be moved to the nursery or, like Fausto, find a natural setting. This lovely plant that is native to Chiapas, Mexico, has huge heart-shaped leaves and a leathery texture. It feels comfortable in shade, high humidity and in soil with excellent...

Why I hate cold weather

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 19:40:37 GMT

The back porch in its cold weather disguise!...

Very cold, so button up

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 19:13:11 GMT

The orchid houses are covered and tonight I'll run an oscillating sprinkler under the benches in one house to try and keep the temperature raised somewhat. High winds make it difficult to keep sheets on plants, so tie oruse bricks to keep edges down.. Cattleyas, cymbidiums and nobile dendrobiums are not likely to be bothered by tonight's chill, but the phalaenopsis, oncidiums, bulbophyllyms and vandaceous orchids have been brought insiderammatophyllums are inside, along with prized aroids that...

Cold

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 18:39:59 GMT

A cold weather action plan has been set in motion. Because this early cold front has not been preceded by rain, I have just come in from watering beneath the canopies of large trees. As water retains warmth longer than dry soil, the warmth will radiate up into the canopies tonight, creating a nice microclimate for tender trees and plants growing in the trees. Hanging baskets are probably drying out now from the wind, so bring them inside. I have several in a lychee that I'll lower to the ground...

Pineland plants abloom and abuzz

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 12:56:21 GMT

Pollen sacks full, this bee is working varnish leaf flowers. A resin-like coating on the leaves of Dodonaea viscosa sometimes gives it the common name of varnish leaf. As a result of this coating, its leaves are less likely to lose water and therefore the plant is quite drought tolerant. Of course, the shrub also is referred to as Florida hopbush, because its fruits resemble hops for making beer. This shrub, in our pine rockland plantings, is pan-tropical, and can Seed capsules are attractive....

A bittersweet little garden story

Sat, 27 Nov 2010 21:12:10 GMT

Last week, a beautiful male monarch emerged from his chyrsalis in my butterfly garden, and so I was watching two additional chrysalises in anticipation of seeing the event occur. The jade green cases were smaller than normal, but on Thanksgiving, one chrysalis began its gradual change to transparency, a sign that a butterfly soon might hatch. There's a small slit in the chrysalis,on the right side, but the butterfly did not emerge. So at 6:30 Friday morning, I set up my camera on a tripod,...

Shifting into high season

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 17:15:20 GMT

The place is more interesting these days. As the summer residents dwindle - goodbye to a badly battered Red A juvenile red-masked parakeet. Admiral butterfly and a dragonfly in woeful shape - new ones are appearing. The juvenile Red-Masked Parakeets are getting their red markings and the Blue-Gray Gnatcatchers are making zpee sounds all around the garden. A Black and White Warbler was in an oak tree in the butterfly garden last week, as was a Ruby-Throated Hummingbird. The Zebra...

Every year it astounds

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 13:17:36 GMT

Tacca integrifolia, the white bat flower, is so amazing that I find myself photographing it annually. Its whiskers are bracts, its bracts are elegant, and its flowers are other-worldly. Come by the Conservatory and see for yourself. Tacca integrifolia, showing largeand narrow bracts around thedark purple flowers. The stigma is surrounded by six anthers, which concealthe pollen....

Peppers for pizza: just use soap

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 20:58:56 GMT

At the Edible Garden Festival, I demonstrated how to create a pizza garden with tomato, pepper, oregano, basil and parsley plants. I put 1 of each in a terra cotta bowl containing a 50-50 mix of potting soil and aged horse manure. I helped some pint-sized gardeners learn to work with transplants and carefully pat down the root balls, adding more potting mix as we needed it. Banana peppers. The little gardens were meant only as inspiration for larger versions, but just for the fun of it, I have...

Col. Montgomery's conifers

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 16:33:32 GMT

Col. Robert Montgomery, who founded Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden and named it for his friend David Fairchild, collected palms for his South Florida estate, but he also collected conifers at his home in Cos Cob, CT. He donated 200 conifers from his collection to the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, and recently I visited that garden and the Colonel's trees, including spruce, hemlock, cedar and yew. This sign identifies the sprucename for Col. Robert Montgomery. The conifer...

A croton by another name

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 19:10:59 GMT

Red undersides of the leaves of thisChinese croton are quite beautiful, once you see them. If it had not been a windy day, I wouldn't have stopped abruptly at the sight of the shrub, Excoecaria cochinchinensis, or Chinese croton. I've walked past it all the time and never noticed it. But the wind picked up some branches and revealed the beautiful red underside of the leaves. From Southeast Asia and China, this lovely plant has inconspicuous flowers in the axils of its elliptical...

Hats off to this butterfly plant

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 16:11:41 GMT

Here's a winter bloomer that should be added to your list of bird and butterfly attracting plants. Holmskioldia sanguinea's intriguingflowers provide color in winter. The round and fused calyx encircles the tubular corolla of the unusual flowers on Holmskioldia sanguinea, creating a shape that gives the plant its common name, Chinese hat plant. The calyx of a flower ordinarily is green and often leaf-like, consisting of the sepals that surround the developing bud. This calyx adds to the...

Beautiful fall fruit

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 17:56:06 GMT

Snowberry. Berries and more berries are borne on our native plants now and especially noticeable are wild coffee, snowberry and beautyberry. These shrubs are a boon for wildlife, and birds, and for a native garden they're very nearly a must. Snowberry, Chiococca alba, is a hammock native that likes some high shade. It is a sprawling shrub that bears yellow, bell-shaped flowers in the summer and white berries in the fall. The Institute for Regional Conservation cautions that it can be...

Growing a pizza in a pot?

Sat, 23 Oct 2010 18:00:11 GMT

Planting oregano Saturday to complete our pizza garden. What do you put on a pizza? How about tomatoes, peppers, basil, oregano? Come on by the Learning Center Sunday at 11:30 and I'll show you and the kids how to plant the right ingredients. Then you can make your own pizza garden at home with veggies fresh from your garden....

Is that a lilac in bloom?

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 14:09:31 GMT

Lonchocarpus violaceus var. violaceus is a flowering tree native to dry hillsides in Trinidad. Plants often begin flowering when only five or six feet tall. Homesick northerners will love the scent, which is somewhat reminiscent of lilacs. Throughout October and November, masses of purple to pinkish mauve flowers are borne on six-inch racemes, making a wonderful show above the dark green pinnate leaves. This tree in the photo is located at the tram plaza. Be sure to get a close look and smell....

My Meadow Garden - Five Months Later

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:02:57 GMT

It was early in May when I planted my meadow garden under a Guaiacum sanctum (lignum vitae) and a Veitchia. The plants have really grown into mature specimens and all the grasses are blooming. I've weeded this area only three times this summer and the grasses are now growing so densely that soon, weeding will not be necessary - my goal!! Each grass was planted about 2' apart so that their rounded form can be expressed In June I scattered seeds of Coreopsis leavenworthii, our native tickseed This...

Pretty in pink

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 18:14:59 GMT

This wonderful Ceiba speciosa is stopping traffic. It's at the corner of San Remo Avenue and Yumuri Street in Coral Gables. As I was taking this photo, another woman stopped to do the same, and a third walked by to say she took a picture Sunday and sent it to friends in Seattle "to show them why I return to Miami every year." A floss silk or Ceiba speciosa that has many admirers. The color is spectacular, but so is the shape. This year, the tree started opening blooms on the west side of its...

Oooooooo, Halloween's best decorations

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 16:41:18 GMT

Bev Murphy, left, directs Bob Brennan in the cherry picker withhelp from Josef Pommer. Bev Murphy's marvelous Halloween decorations, made of natural materials, are being installed today. Palm sheath ghosts, gourd-nosed ghouls, mangy mutts with funny socks, bats, bats and more bats, witches and spiders.... Surely these are the best decorations ever, and the most Earth friendly. They bring smiles every year, as Boo! garden-members Bill and Bev Murphy haul Bev's creations to the garden. FTBG's...

Our 5000K marathon

Sat, 16 Oct 2010 23:16:38 GMT

TRINIDAD & TOBAGO. Dr. Larry Noblick sits and carefully cleans precious palm seeds collected during the day's fieldwork. We'll continue our own version of this botanical 5000K marathon as we continue processing specimens and seeds late into the night - this is typically how we spend our evenings after each day of fieldwork. So far, we have searched for, collected, and processed over six thousand seeds!...

Exciting sightings in Fairchild!

Sat, 16 Oct 2010 18:12:20 GMT

In recent days, staff have seen the amazingly beautiful Painted Buntings in Fairchild! Over the past year, we have placed feeders in quiet locations within FTBG to encourage more birds. One of the important ingredients of the seed mix we use is white millet, a favorite food of Painted Buntings. Both male buntings and the "greenies" (immature males or females) have been seen at feeders in the Keys Coastal Habitat, the palmetum area between the cafe and the south gate, near the Victoria Pool and...

Boogaloo, where are you?

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 11:16:53 GMT

Searching for Trinidad's rarest palm TRINIDAD & TOBAGO. After bidding Juan a warm farewell this morning, as he set off to carry out a final meeting and prepare our precious plant cargo for departure back to Miami, we made our way several hours south into a forestry site. We were intent on following up on information from our colleagues at the National Herbarium of Trinidad and Tobago regarding the island's rarest palm, Astrocaryum aculeatum - also known as the "banga" or "boogaloo" palm. As a...

From mountaintops to the lowlands

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 04:56:30 GMT

TRINIDAD & TOBAGO. Greetings from Trinidad! The last few days have been completely encompassed by fieldwork and processing of our plant specimens. I hope you enjoy perusing a few images from the field... Ms. Abdo and Mr. Rivera of Fairchild take a momentary break beneath a gigantic tree found along a mountain ridge top in the northern range of the island. A stately Mauritia palm is one of only two in its genus. This ancient palm reaches its northernmost native extent in Trinidad, and extends...

Side by side we stand

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 21:27:28 GMT

Trinidad... since our arrival in Port of Spain on this neotropical island we've been fortunate to have been afforded pleasant weather, exceptional colleagues, fertile verdure, and Caribbean color at every turn. It is a grand pleasure to undertake this joint expedition between Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden and Montgomery Botanical Center (MBC) in close collaboration with our long-term collaborators and colleagues from the University of the West Indies (UWI) National Herbarium. The...

Welcome home migratory birds

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 11:13:42 GMT

Swallowtail kite visits South Florida in the summer. Caribbean Migratory Bird Day is to be celebrated Saturday on the heels of our Bird Day. This celebration is being led by the Society for the Conservation and Study of Caribbean Birds (SCSCB), the largest organization devoted to wildlife conservation in the Caribbean. Many of the island celebrations will have a "Welcome Home Migrants" theme. And here's a story about a migrant that will take your breath away. This comes from the Western...

But aren't bonsai small?

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 19:14:26 GMT

This black olive has been trained into abonsai shape, albeit on a large scale. Today at the garden, the Bonsai Society of Miami had members working to construct backdrops and pedestals for their fabulous miniature trees that will be on display Saturday and Sunday for their annual show and sale. Small and even medium sized trees were waiting to be placed, when a truck pulled up. Five people somehow managed to extract a 50-year-old black olive from the van and onto a rolling cart. But it is so...

Bird Day has fledged

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 13:18:50 GMT

A yellow warbler that might steal your heart.. Dr. John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, had more than 200 people in the Bird Day audience Sunday for a talk that was powerful and exciting. Through citizen scientists around the country reporting on birds in their backyards and the astonishing technology of the Internet, Fitzpatrick said, we can follow the lives of birds and determine the health of their ecosystems. Here are three links that will engage you in...

Field Tour 20th Hawaii International Tropical Fruit Grower

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 11:45:26 GMT

Field Tour 20th Hawaii International Tropical Fruit Grower September 26, 2010 We depared from the hotel in the early morning to the National Tropical Botanic Garden located in the Lāwa`i Valley, on the south shore of of Kaua`i. It is a garden paradise, transformed through time by the hands of a Hawaiian Queen, a sugar plantation magnate and most significantly by an artist and an architect. The endless topography display a large canopy of rainforest trees with tall curving roots growing near...

Small but beautiful

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 20:18:55 GMT

A lovely flower caught my eye today at the Garden (well, OK, more than one): Clusia lanceolata, the porcelain flower. Sometimes called porcelain flower,this is Clusia lanceolata. Clusia was actually a Fairchild plant of the year in 2007. It is from Brazil's sandy shore, and therefore is salt tolerant. The waxy flowers are small but rather elegantly turned out in six white petals that have red bases. It likes sun or partial shade, and stays in the shrub-size range or may become a small...

This is the week!

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:10:54 GMT

Hi Everyone, This week is the big week.....Members' Day is on Saturday!! We began bringing up the thousands of plants from our nursery today. The nursery is filled with plants we have grown for this special sale. Good thoughts for good weather (and NO storms!) would be appreciated! Photos attached were taken at our nursery last week. Many thanks to the nursery crew (Marlon Rumble) and his many dedicated volunteers....

Hawaii International Fruit Grower Conference

Sun, 26 Sep 2010 19:09:52 GMT

There were about 200 in attendance at this meeting and Dr. Diane Ragone, the Director of Breadfruit Institute started with an informative presentation about breadfruit. She is working with chefs to develop potential value-added products. Breadfruit has a good potential as flour for human and animal consumption and perhaps for baby food. They are working on different projects for to alleviate world hunger using breadfruit as a food crop. They started a project in Honduras using their first...

Kaua'i, “The Garden Isle”

Sat, 25 Sep 2010 19:02:42 GMT

Kaua'i is the oldest island in the Hawaiian chain and some of the areas in the Na Pali Coast remain accessible only by boat, helicopter or on foot. From the plane the scenery was magnificent, a vast sea of green. We rented a car and looked around Wailua, an old city with houses growing mango trees in their backyard. We arrived to the hotel to get ready for my presentation. Today is the Hawaiian Tropical Fruit Grower Conference and I am the keynote speaker. Farmers, horticulturists and...

The Cacao Farm and Waimea

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 18:54:25 GMT

When I travel, I use my expeditions to learn what is happening with tropical fruits all over the word. Cacao has long been an interest to me. Fairchild's International Chocolate Festival is gaining more popularity each year, and the Fruit Program is becoming more involved in this event. We visited The Hawaiian Chocolate Company in Kalilua Kona to learn more about cacao. They offer tours every day and they are part of the program for cruise ships when they make port in the island. Cacao,...

Mangos in Punaluu

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 17:39:44 GMT

Before going to Kona, we stopped by the fruit market in Hilo. Ginger flowers and all manner of greens dominated the market. They had some of the local mangos which I was happy to find, along with fresh rambutans and mangostens. It was a nice place for breads and local jellies. We purchased some breads, fruits, green papaya salad and coffee for our trip. We drove over the mountains along the south coast and up slopes of the island's volcano. This lovely formation is part of the Hawaii...

Plant it Hawaii

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 08:07:59 GMT

Our first appointment of the day was to visit Bob Hamilton the owner of Plant it Hawaii located in Kurtistown a few miles from Hilo. Bob and his wife have been farming in this area since 1979. Their main crops are rambutan, longan and lychee. At the moment, the Hamiltons are busy picking their rambutans. Rambutan is a colorful crop and delicious fruit. I have good memories of Guatemala and Thailand where I had the opportunity to take pictures of and to pick rambutans ready to eat. Bob has...

The Big Island

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 08:11:52 GMT

Today we flew to the Big Island and stayed in Hilo. Hilo gets between 130 and 300 inches of rain a year depending on your elevation, and I can already feel the humidity. This is definitely not a good place to grow mangos. This island has a different character than Oahu. The mountains in Oahu raise suddenly from the ocean; but on the Big Island the volcanoes raise smoothly and you don't even feel the change of altitude. Hilo is a historic city, with old buildings and numerous historical...

Jackfruit, in David Fairchild's words

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 19:49:24 GMT

Jackfruit Just outside the Tropical Fruit Pavilion, a jackfruit tree has a goodly number of enormous fruit still attached to its trunk. It's worth seeking out just to marvel at the size of the fruit. In his book Exploring for Plants, David Fairchild tells of finding jackfruit the "universal" fruit of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) markets in the mid-1920s. In the past, he said, he had found it rather strong. When his host in Ceylon, Andreas Nell, boasted of the superior qualities of a "honey jack,''...

Plant Countdown to Members' Day Plant Sale - Day 9

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:48:06 GMT

Chosen as one of the 2007 Fairchild Plants of the Year, Clusia lanceolata is a delightful shrub or small tree 8-10' tall from the sandy coastal regions of Brazil known as "restingas". It was introduced to South Florida by noted USDA researcher and Fairchild Research Associate Alan Meerow. The white, waxy 6-petaled flowers have a distinctive ring of wine-red markings around the center. These 2-inch wide flowers appear all year. The distinctive fruits are round and crowned with a circle of black...

Wild Mangos and Jackfruit

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 06:37:22 GMT

Today we visited Frankie Sekia's Nursery. Frankie is a long-time friend of Fairchild Garden. Frankie's nursery has developed a reputation for unusual products and exotic fruit. Frankie and his lovely wife live in Waimanalo. His place is located in a delightful location surrounded by high vertical cliffs that appear to melt into the clouds. Frankie is a third-generation Hawaiian resident of pure Japanese heritage. He attended the University of Hawaii and graduated as a Business...

Oh, those wild aroids!

Sat, 18 Sep 2010 17:56:27 GMT

This weekend the Garden House is bursting with color and weirdly shaped leaves as the show and sale of the International Aroid Society has become a treasure chest of new plants. Pride of Sumatra. Aglaonemas and caladiums are filling the house with beautiful reds, pinks, sunset oranges, and hot pinks. The colors are coming from Thailand, where plant breeders have been ramping up the visuals for some time. Aglaonema Pride of Sumatra is a beautiful example of this. Another is the long, skinny...

The Manini Mango and the Botanic Garden

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 19:19:08 GMT

Ho`omaluhia Botanical Garden the "peaceful refuge" Strolling or driving through these lush four hundred acres in windward Oahu, I see that they are very well named as the "peaceful refuge". It has been open since 1982 and has many of the old trees in the city. Ho'omaluhia is one of the five parks of the Honolulu Botanical Gardens. At Honolulu Botanical Garden I was looking for the oldest mango trees on the island. The exact date of the first introduction of mangos into...

Visiting the Urban Garden and Poamoho Mango Farm

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 19:12:10 GMT

Today I am hoping to have my first Hawaiian mango. We are driving to meet Frank Suiso who will take us to the mango growers in Oahu. The sea breezes blow across Oahu Island making our drive quite comfortable. Some of the views remind me of Tairona Island in Colombia in the Pacific Ocean. In fact, I felt particularly at home among the coconuts lining the coast. We have our first stop at the Urban Garden Center that has 30 acres in the middle of Pearl City. Jayme Grzebik speaks to us about the...

Plant Countdown to Members' Day Plant Sale - Day 8

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 09:50:51 GMT

Myrciaria vexator is one of Dr. David Fairchild's introductions. Native to the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica, this small tree is sometimes known as blue grape or false jaboticaba. This species becomes a beautiful small tree with trunks and stems having smooth, brown bark which peels off to reveal a cream-colored inner layer. The round, grape-sized fruits have a thick skin over sweet pulp similar to jaboticaba and tastes somewhat like sweet grapes. Fruits are borne in late fall or early...

Getting Started Hawaiian Style

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 18:52:22 GMT

We arrived on Oahu Island at night, rented a car and drove about 20 minutes to the east to Leila's Werner's sister's homee. Leila is a native Hawaiian and a member of the Fairchild Tropical Fruit program. I was tired from the long flight, but enjoyed what little of the Hawaiian night I saw. In the morning, Katy, Leila's sister, made a breakfast of papaya, pineapple and guava jelly - from her backyard. I also noticed she had many mango chutney jars on the counter. She said...

Plant Countdown to Members' Day Plant Sale - Day 7

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 14:36:03 GMT

Morus nigra, black mulberry, produces a delicious, sweet, black mulberry. The ones we are offering to members is an ever-bearing, many-branched shrub. Cutting back the plants will encourage flowering and fruit soon develop. The colorful fruits are first green, turn red and then ripen to shiny black. Birds will also be attracted to the fruit. The heaviest crop of fruit appears in the spring, but if you desire fruit at other times of the year, just prune it back and flowers, then fruit will be...

A Special Class for Those Wishing to Attend Members' Day Plant Sale

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 22:42:46 GMT

PRIVATE TOUR AND TALK ABOUT PLANTS FOR MEMBERS' DAYMarilyn Griffiths Be one of the 20 lucky Fairchild members on this special after-hours tour (wine and tramette shuttle service provided). Need plants for your garden? Planning to attend the Members' Day Plant Sale on October 2nd? Not really sure what plants to buy? Join Fairchild's Marilyn Griffiths on a one-of-a-kind pre-sale tour where you will learn more about the plants being offered. This tour will take you on a journey...

Plant Countdown to Members' Day Plant Sale - Day 6

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 10:40:58 GMT

Nashia inaguensis, commonly called Moujean tea, is a shrub to 8 feet tall native to the Bahamas. It is much branched, with tiny leaves that are aromatic when crushed. The young stems are red, becoming gray-brown. The tiny, fragrant white flowers are followed by small orange fruits nestled among the glossy leaves. We have found that the Atala butterflies and many others find Moujean tea hard to resist when in bloom. Grow in full sun. It is very drought tolerant once established. (May be seen in...

Fruits and Flowers of Fall

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 13:08:31 GMT

Native bitterbush. Our light is changing ever so slowly, and walking around Fairchild this morning, I noticed the abundance of fruit that also marks a seasonal change. Bitterbush female trees are loaded with beautiful red berries. Bitterbush is a lovely small tree of the Miami-Dade County hammocks that grows in the West Indies and northern South America as well. The compound leaves are pointed and pretty. Bitterbush trees are usually dioecious, with male and female flowers occurring on different...

Plant Countdown to Members' Day Plant Sale - Day 5

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 10:40:59 GMT

Senna mexicana var. chapmanii, known as Bahama senna, is native to South Florida, the Bahamas and Cuba. It is a small shrub to 6 feet tall with yellow flowers nearly all year. Bahama senna is a larval host plant for several butterflies, including the orange-barred sulphur, sleepy orange sulphur and cloudless sulphur. It grows best in full sun to light shade. Bahama senna is a wonderful choice for all butterfly gardens. We have examples of this species growing in our butterfly garden....

Plant Countdown to Members' Day Plant Sale - Day 4

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 15:37:06 GMT

Brunfelsia plicata is a small, erect eight-foot shrub endemic to Jamaica. The sturdy, dark green leaves make a good background for the showy, white flowers. Appearing in profusion several times during the year, they waft forth a spicy, clove-like fragrance at dusk. Stems tend to be upright, but the uppermost ends of the branches cascade down, giving the plant a vase-like shape. Grow it where it will receive morning sun and afternoon shade. (May be seen in Fairchild in plots 52 and 27.)...

Plant Countdown to Members' Day Plant Sale - Day 3

Sun, 12 Sep 2010 15:00:41 GMT

Jacaranda caerulea is native to the Bahamas. It is a smaller tree than the more commonly grown Jacaranda mimosaefolia and with more bold, shiny foliage. It is one of the most attractive ornamental trees native to the Bahamas with its panicles of blue-violet flowers appearing throughout late spring and summer. The crown is more narrow and upright than the more common Jacaranda, making it a great choice for small yards. This species prefers a sunny location and thrives in the soils of south...

Plant Countdown to Members' Day Plant Sale - Day 2

Sat, 11 Sep 2010 14:55:36 GMT

Guaiacum officinale, native to continental Tropical America and the West Indies, is known as lignum vitae or tree of life. This species, although not native to Florida, is similar to our native Guaiacum sanctum. It will grow faster than our native species, eventually developing into a beautiful flowering tree to 20 feet tall with gorgeous mottled green trunks. Lovely blue to pale blue flowers appear in spring to summer, followed by orange-yellow fruit. Birds love the seeds. Grow in full sun to...

For The Love Of Mangos - Hawaii

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 19:27:11 GMT

At first bite I knew it was something special, this little mango with red and yellow highlights. The flavor was off the charts, a combination of berry and spice and the deep sweetness of the tropical sun. I learned that it was from Hawaii, selected decades ago upon the lava shores of our 50th state. And now I travel to Hawaii to learn first hand about the island and its people, the agriculture and hopefully their passion for the mango. I travel with Leila Wailani Werner, our own native Hawaiian,...

Surprise!

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 15:14:26 GMT

When you root a cutting outside, you never knowwhat's going to join in the fun....

Plant Countdown to the Members' Day Plant Sale - Day 1

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 14:03:49 GMT

We will have some wonderful plants available for the 72nd Annual Members' Day Plant Sale on October 2. The entire article about the sale is here. Muhlenbergia capillaris, muhly grass, is a native clumping species 18 to 36 inches tall and wide. One of our most ornamental native grasses, it produces beautiful cloud-like pinkish-purple plumes during the fall months. When not in bloom, its airy texture fits nicely into any landscape or garden. We have found that grasses go nicely when planted among...

History of Members' Day Plant Sale

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 12:45:53 GMT

In 1939, Fairchild Tropical Garden had the first Members' Plant Distribution. To quote David Fairchild from the first list of plants: "In accordance with our policy to grow and distribute plants and palms which are more or less rare in this section, we have now on hand and ready for distribution a limited quantity of plants, a list of which is attached herewith. Small plants are ready for delivery to members only at the Garden, not more than a total of three plants are available for any one...

Late summer stories

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 20:57:37 GMT

It was not your imagination. In August, the National Weather Service recorded 21 days of light rain and 11 days of thunderstorms. We sweltered in heat that averaged 1.5 degrees above normal, but our maximum highs were 2 degrees above normal. We may be worn to a frazzle, but outside, the plants are growing like gangbusters. Even the new croton leaves are gigantic as a result. Golden mokara. Rainbows of mokaras are sparkling throughout Rosey mokara. my garden, pleased as punch with the rain and...

Nature's design

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:55:03 GMT

The lotus seed pod 34 days after the flower opened....

Snail season

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:22:57 GMT

Snail damage on a bromeliad. All the rain has been wonderful for plant growth and for providing a measure of relief from the heat, but it also brings out the snails. Take a walk through your garden early in the early morning and look for them. They will eat away the soft tissue of bromeliads, amaryllis, crinum lilies, and aroids. Snails also may infest your orchid collection, so examine your potted orchids and even those in wooden baskets. Baskets may appear to have tiny bumps on them, but look...

A "New" Plant for South Florida Bird Lovers

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 09:46:40 GMT

I am so excited that we will be offering a plant which has proven to be a wonderful source of food for migrating songbirds. Colubrina elliptica, soldierwood, is native to the Florida Keys, the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America and Venezuela. It is a shrub to small tree, from 10 feet up to 30 feet tall with an open branching habit. The trunks have flaking orange to brown bark which adds to its character. We are offering this plant because it has proven to be a bird magnet! During last fall...

In the butterfly garden

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 14:22:53 GMT

Atala butterfly. The atala butterflies are back, showing off their exquisite colors. Not only are the butterflies themselves lovely, the caterpillars also are vivid red with yellow dots. The butterfly garden is full of life now and worth a visit. Just sit on a bench for a few minutes and watch. You will feel yourself relax. Larvae munch on a cyad. Atala butterfly larvae are readily spotted on the little Florida cycad, Zamia integrifolia from which they acquire a toxin. Their brilliant coloration...

Deceit is the name of the pollination game

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 17:48:49 GMT

Tom Mirenda is the orchid collection specialist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. He was a speaker for the annual orchid symposium put on by the Coalition for Orchid Species last Sunday in the Garden House. He brought humor and fun to his talk about orchid pollination that capped a day of terrific presentations to the 70 or so people who attended. Orchids are sly creatures when it comes to attracting pollinators, and they employ all kinds of tricks, from mimicking other plants...

Lotus Land

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:50:57 GMT

Little wonder the lotus is a sacred flower in parts of the world. The Bali Red that opened at home yesterday is exquisitely proportioned and delicately colored. We acquired seeds from a gardening friend, and followed his instructions. Bali Red on its first open day. Seeds were scarified with a metal nail file and soaked in water for days in the kitchen window until the first leaf began to emerge. They were tenderly planted in aquatic soil mix but not put in the pond. Instead, we have them...

A bug's legs

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 21:30:07 GMT

Maypop, Passiflora incarnata, is passion vine with lovely purple flowers. It has been a great Fancy legs on this leaf-footed bug. draw at home for Gulf fritillaries, even though it has developed strategies that try to discourage butterflies from laying their Nectar glands on calyx ofa passion flower. eggs on the leaves. Its flower buds have nectaries on the edges of the calyces that draw ants, presumably to attack butterfly larvae. In addition to the ants, the plant tries to discourage butterfly...

My Meadow Garden - Two Months Later

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 10:26:29 GMT

It has been just over two months since I planted a small meadow garden in my front yard. The summer rains are enough that my hand watering is finished. The plants are establishing very well and I am really pleased with the results. Here are some photos I took last weekend: Click on images to enlarge In the photo above, the Croton linearis has grown so that it is almost completely hiding the limestone rock. The blue-green form of Elliott's lovegrass, Eragrostis elliottii, have also grown enough...

Topsy-turvy

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 10:41:51 GMT

Dazzling Gloriosa superba. Hanging in Suzanne Kores' workspace in the Davis House is a giant reproduction of a 1999 stamp that depicts flowers of a bird of paradise, royal poinciana, hibiscus and gloriosa lily. Kores, who is the garden's director of program development, has taken the "stamp" with her from office to office. Outside the Davis House, a gloriosa lily is climbing a palm tree and dangling upside down flowers so beautiful they stop you in your tracks. Wavy...

Mangos star in the culinary conference

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 21:13:49 GMT

When you line up to taste mangos Saturday at the International Mango Festival, see if you can determine the suite of flavors that Chef Allen Susser described finding in several mangos during Chef Allen Susser Friday's culinary conference: vanilla and honey, candied lemon; apricot, papaya and a little vanilla; lush peach and pineapple with a touch of acidity. It's this fine-tuned tasting that makes him a chef. Once he has figured out the flavors, this owner of Chef Allen's in...

Rain, and its consequences

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 11:08:27 GMT

Great southern white male butterfly. Caterpillars are feasting on the new growth that has appeared with the onset of our rainy season. Gulf fritillaries, sulfurs and great southern whites are in the neighborhood, pirouetting and flitting, gliding and darting in the sun and shadows. Chomped leaves are a part of the show and our native passion vine, Passiflora suberosa, as well as the purple-flowering Passiflora incarnata are filled with crawly life. Alas, snails, too, are numerous, so it's...

White is Cool

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 11:14:30 GMT

Butterfly ginger. Vita Sackville-West's famous white garden at Sissinghurst Castle isn't something I aspire to, but in the summer heat, white flowers are deliciously cool looking. Two of summer's tropical whites are not only lovely but each emits a perfume that makes me want to pull up a chair sit a spell. They are Hedychium coronarium and Brunfelsia nitida. The hedychium is the famous butterfly ginger, or mariposa blanca, the national flower of Cuba, though it originated a...

Summer's rewards

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 10:05:16 GMT

Yes, it is very hot, but come anyway. Heliconias are lovely now. You'll find yourself rewarded with an abundance of flowering plants. Flowering in the semi-shade of the Vine Pergola now are small heliconias, which are emblematic of summer in the tropics. The gorgeous tree bougainvillea is in flower as are many of the Madagascar plants and the big baobab. Semi-dwarf hybrid heliconias are less likely to have their banana-like leaves shredded by wind, and when they travel, do so in baby steps...

Looking at our scientific work in the Caribbean

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 17:40:07 GMT

At work in Jamaica's treacherous hills of the Cockpit Country, Melissa Abdo,front left, Fairchild's Marlon Rumble and Howard Beckford, with the ForestryDepartment of Jamaica. Melissa Abdo, the garden's international conservation projects officer, offered a wonderful overview of our scientific work being done in the Caribbean at the last members' lecture of the season Wednesday night. Historically, she said, the natural habitats and forests of the West Indies have been plundered to...

Briefs from the home front

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 14:59:06 GMT

Fronds show cold damage. Cold damage is showing up on the blue latan palms. But it looks as if Ummm, a beeautiful catch. they will be able to grow beyond it. Cold took out the back of one lychee and continued down the fence line. A Latania closest to the lychee was protected, but those farther down the line were hit. I treated with copper and a fungicide, but the scars are just now showing up. Meanwhile, on a tour of the garden this morning, I saw that a small crab spider caught a sweet...

Beauties, Oddities and Other Delights

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 18:55:26 GMT

One of the best things about the show and sale of the Tropical Fern and Exotic Plant Society is just how exotic the plants really are. This year's show includes ferns, lycopodiums, begonias, crotons, orchids and aroids. All of them are wonderfully grown - a remarkable feat after our coldest winter and then hottest May on record. The show is in the Garden House, and not only fills a display in the center of the room, but it runs across the stage as well. Here are some of the...

Dear Hillary

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 12:04:15 GMT

By Jennifer Possley We are one woman short for a few days, as Hillary takes it easy, recovering from a bout of stomach problems. This blog is for you, Hillary, to show you what you missed today! This morning, I went with Dr. Hong Liu to Huangjing Cave, to collect demographic data on orchids in more of Hong's study plots. We were accompanied by a Yachang Orchid Preserve ranger named Mr. Li, and an Institute of Botany student named Wuying Lin. This was my favorite study site, I think. They're all...

Now for something corny

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 13:05:53 GMT

By Jennifer Possley Today I am blogging about corn. Corn is a big industry around Yachang Orchid Preserve. In our hikes to and from field sites, we spend at least half the time walking through corn fields. Corn is a cash crop in Leye County, thus it is the main source of income for many families. The interface between farmland and orchid preserve is not always clear; corn fields have a tendency to creep inwards from the preserve edge. Identifying those responsible for deforestation can be...

Children's Day in Huaping

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 08:13:23 GMT

By Hillary Burgess, Fairchild Living Collection Manager It has been raining since the middle of last night (monsoon might be the right word) and our sampling sites are too slick to access, so today is a day for data entry. It also happens to be Children's Day in Huaping. Schoolchildren get the day off and there are activities and programs for them. We were startled by an elaborate mid-day display of fireworks next to the Forestry Department headquarters where we are working. This slower day is...

Cliffhanging Orchids and People

Mon, 31 May 2010 13:33:00 GMT

By Hong Liu PhD. We shifted our gear to do a population census of selected orchids in Yachang yesterday. We recorded survival status and sizes of plants that I tagged two years ago. To find the randomly established census plots are trekking up and down some steep slopes and cliffs with the target orchid species. These data will allow me to assess the initial impacts of the once-in-one-hundred-year drought the region suffered earlier this year. Jennifer and Hillary have been a great help in this...

It's Getting Hot in Here

Sat, 29 May 2010 11:17:17 GMT

This species of Eulophia is a saprophitic orchid--a plant that does not perform photosynthesis. Instead it relies completely on associated fungi for food. By Hillary Burgess and Jennifer Possley Today was our first day of field work. We worked with Dr. Hong Liu and two graduate students from Beijing Forestry University to set up a pilot climate chamber in Yachang Preserve. The day began with a trip to Leye to find PVC pipe. We wondered if it would be available in such a small and remote city,...

Miami plants in Yachang

Sat, 29 May 2010 02:14:27 GMT

By Jennifer Possley Over the past few days, Hillary and I have been enjoying our hikes through Yachang Orchid Preserve. Ecologically, the preserve has much in common with Miami's natural areas. Both are at similar latitudes, and both are considered to be subtropical. In addition, both have a karst limestone substrate-- though the substrate in Yachang is definitely more dramatic! But because of these similarities, Miami and Yachang share many of the same plant genera and species. Scroll down to...

Water lilies made easy

Fri, 28 May 2010 16:09:30 GMT

Amazon lilies are growing andhave produced the first bud. Come on in, the water's fine. It has warmed up for the tropical water lilies that are making beautiful displays in various pools around the garden. The marvelous Victoria amazonica (Victoria amazonica x cruziana Longwood hybrid') already has a flower, and many others are showing lavender, blue and white flowers. Ken Neugent, conservatory and special projects manager, says planting water lilies isn't complicated....

A natural sculpture graces the garden

Thu, 27 May 2010 21:27:56 GMT

The Marlborough Blue cycad isunfolding a new rosette of leaves. Try to dream up a way to package leaves with many leaflets so that they unfold perfectly when they expand, so that the miniature leaves uncoil from their natal position like fern fronds, each exactly in place along the main stem. Then come to the garden and Leaflets uncoil with precision. compare your design with that of Cycas ophiolitica, the Marlborough Blue cycad from Australia. Its new leaves are exquisitely presented, soft,...

First Days in Yachang

Wed, 26 May 2010 06:44:07 GMT

By Hillary Burgess, Fairchild Living Collection Manager Karst hills surround Leye. After a couple of days in transit we've arrived in Leye, just outside of Yachang Orchid Preserve. We are staying here for a few days as we accompany Richard Stone of Science Magazine on a tour through the preserve. He is interested in writing an article about Yachang and is spending a few days exploring and learning about the orchids here, as well as the people and projects in place to protect them. As tag alongs,...

Behind the Scenes at Beijing Botanical Garden

Sun, 23 May 2010 02:18:39 GMT

By Jennifer Possley, Field Biologist Today was our whirlwind tour of botanic gardens in Beijing. Dr. Yi-Bo Luo of the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences kindly dedicated his entire Saturday to showing Hong, Hillary and myself around the 400-hectare Beijing Botanical Garden. To begin our tour, we met Dr. Luo at his office at the Chinese Academy of Science. He was our free pass for the day; when we walked across the street to the botanical garden, his presence enabled us to sail past...

Arrival in Beijing

Sat, 22 May 2010 00:46:22 GMT

By Hillary Burgess, Fairchild Living Collection Manager Dr. Hong Liu, her son Eugene, Jennifer Possley, and I arrived in Beijing yesterday evening. We are staying for a couple of days near Beijing University to facilitate meeting some of Hong's research collaborators prior to our departure to Guangxi and the Yachang Orchid Preserve. Today we ate lunch with Dr. Chen Zhang-Liang, the Vice Governor of Guangxi, Richard Stone, Asia - Pacific editor for Science Magazine, Senior Vice Dean...

An Amazing Plant is Blooming on the Vine Pergola

Wed, 12 May 2010 11:37:49 GMT

Tecomanthe dendrophila, also known as New Guinea trumpet creeper, is in full bloom on Fairchild's vine pergola. To see it, walk to the southern end of the pergola and you will see this amazing plant. One of the Fairchild Plants of the year in 2006, this vigorous woody twiner (liana) could simply be grown for its deep green foliage, but it is the large pendant clusters of trumpet shaped flowers that steal the show. Rosy-pink colored at the base and fading to paler rose, the flowers open to reveal...

A week later, my meadow is blooming!

Sat, 08 May 2010 14:18:06 GMT

This morning I saw that two of my Elliott's love grass are beginning to bloom. Some of you may wonder about my interest in this new type of gardening. It actually began during the coldest weekend last January, when I was curled up under a warm blanket with my two dogs at my side. I had recently purchased a book titled: "The American Meadow Garden, Creating a Natural Alternative to the Traditional Lawn" by John Greenlee. After 37 years of working in horticulture in South Florida and gardening...

FYI: BioBlitz turned up some amazing finds

Fri, 07 May 2010 16:36:43 GMT

BioBlitz, the two-day inventory of land and water flora and fauna held last weekend in Biscayne National Park, turned up some interesting finds, including seven candidate champion trees: paradise tree, Bahama strong back, blolly, milk bark, joewood, inkwood and pigeon plum. Potentially the largest trees of their kind are growing on Totten Key. They somehow survived Hurricane Andrew in 1992 well enough to grow into (perhaps) the largest of their kind. A press release from Everglades National Park...

Handsome Haitian palms are priceless

Thu, 06 May 2010 22:12:43 GMT

One of the handsomest sights in the palmetum is the collection of Haitian palms, Attalea crassispatha. The group was planted from seeds collected on a 1991 joint expedition by Fairchild and New York Botanical Garden. Only about two dozen palms remain in the wild, making it one of the rarest palms in this hemisphere. Carl Lewis said the palms in the grove have not yet produced fruit, but there is an Attalea crassispatha in another area of the garden that has borne fruit. He reports that five...

Eagle Scout project removes unwanted invasive plants

Wed, 05 May 2010 18:42:26 GMT

By Evan Hacker (Boy Scout Troop #457) On Saturday, April 17th, 2010 my Eagle Scout project took place at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden and the University of Miami's Smathers Four Fillies Farm Preserve from 9 a.m. until about 2 p.m. Over 70 volunteers contributed 295 hours of their time to help remove non-native invasive species such as Oyster plant (Tradescantia spathacea) and Jacquinia (Bonellia macrocarpa). At one of the removal sites, "the island", we used handsaws and...

My Meadow Garden Has Been Planted

Wed, 05 May 2010 12:03:34 GMT

Well, I took last Thursday and Friday off and worked in my own yard. The day before, I had purchased some Elliott's lovegrass (Eragrostis elliottii), native plumbago (Plumbago scandens), Havana skullcap (Scuttelaria havanensis), gama grass (Tripsacum floridanum) and forked blue curls (Trichostema dichotomum). Wednesday night I weeded the planting beds and bright and early I started on the meadow garden area. First I arranged the plants still in their pots where I wanted to plant them. This was...

Summer's colors are starting to appear

Tue, 04 May 2010 17:41:14 GMT

Monarchs sipping nectar fromred pentas. As spring slides into summer, Florida is returning to "normal." Lots of flowers are returning: some briefly, such as the lovely blue-purple blossoms on the jacaranda trees and the spring-flowering amaryllis; others for the duration, such as the shrimp plants, the tropical group of acanths, including shrimp plant and cardinal's guard. The butterfly garden has been up and running for some time, full of monarchs and zebra longwings and the...

It is time to start planting my meadow garden

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 21:10:25 GMT

As some of you may remember, if you read my article that appeared in the Miami Herald, I said that my next gardening project will be a meadow garden. Well, I purchased some meadow plants at last weekend's Spring Plant Sale, the ground is nice and wet from 3 1/2 inches of rain today, and I plan to start planting soon. Here are some of the plants I will be using: Scutellaria havanensis (Havana scullcap) - 1 (may divide this) Heliotropium polyphyllum (pineland heliotrope) - 2 Croton linearis...

Chasing caterpillars

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 21:02:10 GMT

Gulf fritillary drink from a butterfly bush Butterflies are coming back and as part of my research on butterfly gardening, I've been closely watching butterfly life cycles. The phenomenon of metamorphosis still fascinates me, and I've been trying to witness the changes. Fritillary caterpillars on Maypop,Passiflora incarnata I've never seen old skin on a caterpillar split and be shed, nor have I seen a caterpillar change into a pupa. I haven't seen a butterfly emerge from...

Help catalog biodiversity in Biscayne National Park

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:19:09 GMT

Help count everything from manatees to mangroves, snappers to snails, butterflies to birds when you participate as a citizen scientist in National Geographic's BioBlitz April 30 and May 1. You can join 125 scientists and help inventory all the living organisms in Biscayne National Park, 9700 SW 328 St. in Homestead. Superstar oceanographer Sylvia Earle, National Geographic's Explorer-in-Residence, will be there, as will Kenny Broad, director of the University of Miami's Leonard and Jayne Abess...

The path to health

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 18:12:34 GMT

At the opening of the re-done medicinal healing garden last weekend at Nova Southeastern University in Broward County, people started taking off their shoes. Talk about a relaxed university event. Elizabeth Marazita demonstratedhow to use the reflexology path. The reason: the reflexology path in the heart of the garden. You walk over stones of various sizes and shapes (there's a handrail for safety) and it's best done without shoes. The path is the first one in Florida and the first on the U.S....

A glorious time of year!

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 17:24:01 GMT

I did go hiking in the Everglades last weekend and saw lots of wildflowers in bloom. I drove down to Flamingo and walked to the shoreline of Florida Bay. The soft breezes and warm sunshine was a welcome relief to the long "cold" winter we had. I then drove north and stopped at Mahogany Hammock. I parked my car along the road and enjoyed the vista of a "sea of grass" with cypress domes in the distance. My next stop was Long Pine Key, one of the largest remaining pine rocklands in South Florida. I...

Ten Days in China

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 12:56:30 GMT

Ten Days in China: The 9th International Mango Symposium, Sanya, Hainan, China. For the Love of Mangos - China Senior Curator of Tropical Fruit Richard J. Campbell travels to China for the 9thInternational Mango Symposium in the tropical paradise of Hainan Island, China. Follow his adventures as he searches for the latest information on growing mangos I find myself in China for the 9th International Mango Symposium in the tropical paradise of Hainan Island, China. I revisit China after a decade...

Spring forward!

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 11:07:04 GMT

Cardinal beneath the vines. Look no farther than the vine pergola to know that spring has arrived in South Florida. The shower-of-orchids and queen's wreath are happily announcing the season, as the cardinals are busy looking for nesting sites within them. Shower-of-orchids is Congea tomentosa and it is tumbling over the Shower-of-orchids. pergola like cotton candy. Light pink bracts surround the small white flowers of this Southeast Asian vine. If you look closely, the little flowers hold...

Spring is coming...finally!

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 13:38:00 GMT

It has been an interesting winter to say the least! In my 37 years in South Florida, I've not experienced a winter so cool for so long. Many plants lost their leaves due to the extreme cold temperatures in January and have been in "hibernation mode" ever since. In the last few days, warmer temperatures and some warm showers are helping the sleeping trees and shrubs to wake up slowly and start producing new leaves. Propagating for our plant sales has been almost totally collecting, cleaning, and...

Seeking rare butterflies in the Keys

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 20:06:59 GMT

My respect for butterfly conservationists just shot up a thousand percent -- especially those who identify and photograph these aerial jewels. Tuesday, I tagged along as Jaret Daniels led a group of butterfly conservationists to Bahia Honda State Park and the National Key Deer Refuge in the Florida Keys. They were searching for the state-listed endangered Miami Blue butterfly as well as Bartram's hairstreak and the Florida leafwing, two candidates for federal listing. Armed with his...

With orchids galore, it's a splendid festival

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:38:34 GMT

A cart of orchids about to go homewith Giovanna Abreu and EdithLaRiva. Neighbors Giovanna Abreu and Edith LaRiva drove in from Doral and were bargaining hard Friday afternoon at Fairchild's 8th International Orchid Festival. "We come every year; we wait for it,'' Giovanna said. Sissy Scott drove from Orlando and sat with a full cart of orchids in the early afternoon with her friend Lori Godinez. "I'm just starting out,'' Sissy said. "I have...

If these mountains could talk...

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:16:54 GMT

JAMAICA. An inspiring day it was - to say the least. We were really far off the beaten track, way past the "end of the road." The "road" in this case was an old bridle road that had been completely overgrown and was now dominated by full-grown trees and shrubs. Odontocline sp. was frequently encountered climbing all over the plants around us, bringing sunny bursts of its bright yellow flower clusters into view all around. Botanist and plant lover that I am, I must...

Lettuce now praise the raised bed garden

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:21:32 GMT

As I watched cold batter my landscape, the one part of the garden that seemed to thrive in January and February was the vegetable garden. Beautiful broccoli. One broccoli plant measures an astounding 44 inches tall. The large head of unopened flowers sits 32 inches above the soil in our raised bed garden. We've already harvested one large head, and use the subsequent small side shoots in salads. Weird looking, this kohlrabi is acabbage relative. A tiny cauliflower is forming on our single...

Weed removal efforts DO pay off!

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:03:11 GMT

If you have ever owned a garden, volunteered in one, or particpated in a volunteer work day, you may be an experienced weed-puller. As you yanked weed after weed, did you wonder whether the sweat, sore muscles, and dirty jeans were all for nought? Maybe you thought "This is impossible!!!" Well the Fairchild Conservation Team can attest that as long as the project area is retreated for several seasons, weed eradication IS possible, and native vegetation DOES recover. Persistence pays off. Our...

Aflame in late winter

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 11:02:54 GMT

The flame vine puts on a show. Late winter bloomers always are welcome, especially this winter when we seem to be stuck in cold. Flowering in the south parking lot is the red kapok or red silk cotton tree, Bombax ceiba, while the vine pergola is displaying a gorgeous coating of orange, thanks to the flame vine, Pyrostegia venusta. Just the sight of these brilliantly colored flowers will lift your winter spirits. The silk cotton is a large tree that needs room to grow: it can Big, waxy flowers on...

Discovering secrets in plain sight on a walking tour

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:55:15 GMT

One of the best experiences at the garden is a walking tour. I checked out two tours recently and discovered things about the garden and its plants that I never knew. Walking tours are lead by well-informed volunteers and inevitably launch friendly exchanges among participants. Tours don't cover the entire 83 acres, but are confined to two areas easily covered in 45 minutes: the palm and tropical fruit area of the garden, and the arboretum, vine pergola and spiny forest displays. This...

Fairchild Researchers Assist in the Hunt for Monsters

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:24:38 GMT

by Sam Wright On January 11th 2010, Fairchild biologists Lisa Krueger, Jennifer Possley, and myself assisted ECISMA (Everglades Cooperative Invasive Species Management Area) with surveys for the North African rock python (Python sebae). In contrast to its Burmese cousin that now number over 150,000 in the Everglades, the North African rock python is considered to be a more recent introduction, confined to a much smaller area in West Miami-Dade. Information gathered from the surveys will assist...

A more natural way to grow orchids?

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 11:00:26 GMT

Harry Phillips, who with his brother Andy operates Andy's Orchids in Encinitas, Ca., made a strong case for growing epiphytic orchids mounted on hard wood when he spoke at the Orchid Society of Coral Gables this week: it's easier to water; roots grow longer; plants grow best when in situations that imitate nature. Orchid roots exposed on mounts benefit from good air circulation. The only orchid that doesn't like good air movement around roots is the ghost orchid, he said. It...

Plants and People: An Interactive Garden

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 20:18:37 GMT

Between drizzle and downpour, a magical thing happened this week in the garden. Plants and People did indeed connect and interact during the luncheon and tram tour for Alzheimer's patients and their caregivers. The program is new to the garden this year, initiated by trustee Lin Lougheed after he witnessed a similar program at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. During a boxed lunch in the Visitors Center, everyone worried about the rain, and a slide show stood at the ready. But just at...

Taking stock of cold, awaiting spring

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:51:22 GMT

The effects of the 10-day blast of cold air are showing up throughout South Florida, including our tropical garden. Yellow and brown leaves are revealing how sensitive tropical plants can be to to four days of below 40-degree temperatures, especially after very warm days in November and December. Fairchild explorers took a closelook at cold damage in the rainforest. The rainforest understory was hard hit, with heliconias, gingers and many plants in the aroid family, such as small philodendrons,...

Spreading the Word

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 18:23:21 GMT

Six years ago I had come to St John's to give a department seminar at Memorial University about Fairchild's South Florida Conservation Program. Today, the number of graduate students doing conservation research is thriving at the university. For the second time I had a chance to teach a course to a cross-disciplinary group of students. Today I discussed three of our rare species and asked students to develop conservation recommendations under a constrained budget. They had a lively...

A croton primer

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:39:53 GMT

Scorched leaves hangingfrom twigs may meantwig or branch dieback. Jeff Searle, a nurseryman known for his exotic palms, has been growing crotons rather feverishly over the last five years, and he gave a whole course in growing them for the Tropical Fern and Exotic Plant Society this week. Cold damage was the hot topic, of course. And he said leaves falling off are a better sign than leaves dying and hanging onto their twigs. Scorched and clinging leaves are not a guarantee that plants will die,...

More on the aroid front, and a class

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:31:31 GMT

Cold damage creeps on little cat feet, it appears. More yellow-then-brown leaves seem to reveal This bird's nest Anthurium wasnot covered for the cold. themselves daily. Back in 1980, the International Aroid Society's journal, Aroideana, published a small field study by Mark Moffler of the degrees of cold damage on aroids he was growing in Tampa. "The self-heading or arborescent philodendrons (Philodendron selloum and P. x evansii) and the birds-nest anthuriums (Anthurium hookeri and...

Serving on Graduate Student Committees

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:18:36 GMT

As one of my roles as conservation ecologist at Fairchild, I serve on committees of graduate students in the Miami area and in other parts of the world. This service is really a two-way exchange, as I can learn a great deal from the students with whom I work and I hope they can learn something from my experience too. I've come to St. John's Canada, to serve on the dissertation committee of a doctoral student, who has been studying at Memorial University. (Nighttime temperatures are...

Chocolate dreams come true

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:26:38 GMT

Paris Parise holds a chocolatecupcake and nibbles on a ladybug candy. A true gift of the rainforest, chocolate has tickled taste buds for hundreds of years. In celebration of this rainforest treasure, all things chocolate were delighting youngsters and oldsters at the garden Friday at the start of the 4th International Chocolate Festival. A teacher's workday freed lots of eager young chocolate tasters, but children weren't the only ones to pursue the seductive flavors. A bus of folks...

For The Love of mangos - Africa

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:47:09 GMT

I had long dreamed of visiting southern Africa and the opportunity came to "seize the moment" and travel half-way around the world to observe another country's horticultural production. I was game to go and full of enthusiasm to learn about mango production in this part of the world. Thanks to our relationship with Westfalia and their kind invite I was now going to see their operations. My flight started from Miami to Johannesburg, stopping in Madrid for transit. In Madrid I was stuck for 2 days...

The Sea is Rising

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:35:49 GMT

One of the serious growing threats to biodiversity of coastal species is sea level rise. Fortunately, many scientists are taking proactive measures to address this serious concern. Dr. Reed Noss of University of Central Florida and the Florida Institute for Conservation Science organized a cross-disciplinary Sea Level Rise Workshop from Jan 18-20, 2010 at Archbold Biological Station. I was invited to discuss the work Fairchild has done with the Key Tree Cactus in the Florida Keys. Joining me...

And the effects of cold keep on coming

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 22:51:18 GMT

After three days of dropping leaves, the black olive looks like this. Among the damaged: Pithecellobium, Pseudobombax, Pritchardia, Podocarpus...are all the P-plants doomed? Naw. Ficus, gumbo-limbo (some), African tulip trees, some coconut palms, royal poincianas, the list goes on. The damage likely will continue to appear. I called Steve Nock, aroid hybridizer and expert who owns Borneo giant shows how itdisliked the cold. Ree Gardens with his wife Marie, to ask about my damaged and...

Reaping the windfall benefits of cold

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 18:12:36 GMT

The black olive felt outside its hardiness zone this weekand is complaining about it. Ragtag and bitter winds played hopscotch during last week's cold spell and now we can watch mulch being made right in our own backyards! Several months' supply is being dropped on the patio by the West Indian black olive tree. The bougainvillea, sacred bamboo of Bali and, alas, many of the Vanda and Bulbophyllum orchids also are donating to the cause. This is really lemonade from lemons,...

We have lots of birds in Fairchild!

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:43:48 GMT

We've had very cold temperatures from January 7 through January 12. This meant that the temperature of our lakes has also cooled. Certain exotic (bad) species of fish, such as tilapia, have been killed by the cold water. Well, wading birds such as Ibis, Egrets, and a very special visitor, a Wood Stork, are feeding on the fish! Come to our lowlands and see the birds taking advantage of a "buffet" of tilapia. Wood Stork grooming himself (or herself) in front of a bench...

The weekend that was and what lies ahead

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 17:23:40 GMT

For plants, pets and plant lovers, it was a weekend of stress. Trying to get the floodlights and heaters set up in cold drizzle was a challenge. Now comes the next event: helping the garden recover, if we're lucky. If palm fronds turn brown, remove them. However, if only part of the frond is brown, remove that part and allow the green to stay in place. All available green is needed for photosynthesis. The same is true for fronds with brown spots of cold damage. Get out the copper fungicide...

What to do with your plants in this cold weather

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:28:32 GMT

This week is bringing the coldest weather we've experienced in nine years. To help prevent cold damage to your plants, cover tender plants, either with old sheets, paper or boxes. Do not use plastic, as any plastic touching leaves will carry heat into the atmosphere away from the plants. At night, a floodlight beams heat into the covered sealing wax palms. I have covered the tender palms, such as the sealing wax and Pelagodoxa henryana, with sheets and put floodlights beneath the sheets to...

Holiday flowers are really tropical bulbs, so plant them

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 13:29:18 GMT

This year's amaryllis (Hippeastrum cultivars) have produced spectacular flowers for the holidays. What to do with them when the flowers fade? Plant them in the garden This amaryllis, a Hippeastrum cultivar, is called Papilio. I have always loved these flowers, and now have them in beds throughout my garden. They don't bloom at Christmas, but in the spring. Last year, some of mine began to open in February. Others waited for a couple of months. So the show is on-going. All you need is...

Colors of the season

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:12:05 GMT

Maybe it's just me, but I keep noticing red and white flowers this month that resonate with the holiday season. White candles. Just beyond the visitors Center in Plot 50 is a shrub that holds up charming white flowers, a Whitfieldia, or white candles. It hails from the rainforests of Africa but makes a lovely guest in South Florida. Dark green leaves set off the panicles of flowers that are held upright, resembling candles. The flowers are tubular, emerging from fuzzy white bracts....

Garden of delights

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:45:43 GMT

These flowers bloom by dayas well as night. With Nessie rising from Center Lake and Big Foot stomping out of the rainforest, with giant polka dotted flowers and pumpkins delighting the eye, the garden is brimming over with color, life and liveliness these days. Sweet almond bush is blooming at several locations around the garden, including the butterfly garden. It is Aloysia virgata, a member of the verbena family. Its aroma is rather noticeable, as if a cloud of fragrance hovers above each...

For the Love of Mangos-Ecuador

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 23:01:07 GMT

Curator Noris Ledesma travels to Ecuador to delve into the world of chocolate and mango along the North coast of South America. Follow her adventure through the country of emerald greens and ocean blue. She will immerse herself into the culture and business of cacao, learning the secrets of this ancient crop of the Maya and passing on the adventure to the Fairchild family. Few crops have such a rich cultural heritage or possess such commercial potential. Cacao farming of today is innovative,...

Thinking of Fairchild

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 17:53:58 GMT

Fairchild's South Florida Conservation team starred in today's presentation. They may not even realize it - that they are in my thoughts even when I'm not with them, but they definitely are. Their work exemplifies some great plant conservation, so I feature them frequently in my course lectures, case studies, and activities. I was able to show many of the tricks that the team uses to keep organized and to keep research relevant to our land manager partners. Jennifer...

Fairchild’s Experience with Reintroductions Helps Others

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 17:33:31 GMT

One of the things I enjoy about teaching this Applied Plant Conservation Workshop is that the participants share the wealth of their experience with rare plant species and freely discuss their questions and issues with the class. Today I discussed in situ conservation - rare plant reintroductions. Twenty years ago this was a controversial practice and many attempted reintroductions were unsuccessful. But as the science and practice of reintroduction has grown, the success rate has...

Teaching Plant Conservation Techniques

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:39:10 GMT

I write these words from Berkeley California, where I've come to teach two modules of the week-long course in Applied Plant Conservation offered by the Center for Plant Conservation. Over the past few years, I've taught parts of this course in Phoenix, Hawaii and Denver. This time our venue is the UC Berkeley Botanic Garden. Some of the folks in the class work for federal agencies, including the Dept of Defense, the National Park Service, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. There are also...

Winter white in the garden

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:36:29 GMT

A brilliant blue sky perfectly sets off the charmof Euphorbia leucocephala, the littleChristmas flower. Call it little Christmas flower, snowbush or snowflake, or flor de leche, this shrub is in full glory now in the garden. Several together are dazzling in their showiness, especially when seen against a deep blue winter sky. Euphorbia leucocephala, a poinsettia relative, is as dependable as its red cousin when it comes to telling us the season. Delicate white bracts surround tiny green flowers,...

A red-letter Friday, not a black one

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 13:11:36 GMT

Wood ibis. Calathea Burle Marx. On the gorgeous day after Thanksgiving, not everyone was contributing to the shopping frenzy of Black Friday, but many were happily exploring the garden. As the Yayoi Kusama's delightful pumpkins were being set up near the arboretum, wood ibis were playing tag in a buttonwood by a lake and a soft-shell turtle swam next to shore to ogle us tourists. We found the red cassia (Cassia roxburghii) is in flower; the Christmas bush (Euphorbia leucocephala) is so...

Rockin' lips and rollin' sepals

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:00:06 GMT

It's getting to be flowering season for an enormous group of orchids: bulbophyllums. These orchids are found throughout Southeast Asia, but turn up also in Africa, tropical America, even Australia. The number of species is something like 1,000, give or take. These Cirrohpetalum flowers look as if they're sticking out their tongues. A fascinating feature of many of the flowers is the motile or rocking lip. Cirrhopetalum is a section of the Bulbophyllum genus, but still is held by some to be...

On the cusp of a new season at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:16:39 GMT

Eulophia alta, a terrestrialorchid, still in flower. Alligators were not in sight, but orchids were plentiful last weekend in Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. The November blue sky overhead was filled with the delicate sounds of warblers, periodic announcements from red-shouldered hawks and the occasional crank of an egret. We spotted Eulophia alta next to the boardwalk as we crossed the open, sunny prairie between pineland and cypress. Full of seedpods, the Eulophia's last flowers were damaged...

Botanical art exhibition at Everglades National Park

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:52:17 GMT

Artist Kathleen Konick-Moran has spent eight winters working as a volunteer at Everglades National Park to document rare and endangered orchids, bromeliads and other Everglades plants. Her art exhibit is now open and runs through the end of November at the Park's Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center, 40001 State Rd. 9336 Homestead. Kathleen is a botanical illustrator, working in pencil, pen and ink and watercolor. A video about her work in the park and her art can be found on the Park's website under...

Plants for the birds

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:29:35 GMT

The necklace pod is attractive tohummingbirds. Insect-eating birds, such as warblers, gnatcatchers, flycatchers and vireos, love wild tamarinds. And so that tree will be among the bird-attracting plants Leslie Veber's Jungle Garden is providing for Bird Day's plant sale. These little birds also are attracted to shortleaf fig, green buttonwood, satin leaf, firebush, wild sage and Florida privet, so these are going to be on sale, too. Leslie worked with Roger Hammer's list of...

Sneak peek beneath a leaf

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:52:29 GMT

One leaf of Anthurium clavigerum. I was prowling the rainforest the other day and saw an awesome leaf on Anthurium clavigerum. An epiphyte, this aroid possesses the largest leaf of any anthurium in Central America. With lobes so fanciful they appear to be separate leaflets, this single leaf can theoretically reach about seven feet across! As a big leaf fanatic, I have just found another desirable garden specimen. The swollen areas supporting the leaf blade allow the leaf to move. . The underside...

Flame thrower

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:39:11 GMT

Coming into flower in the rainforest: Ruellia chartacea. Called a "scandent shrub," Ruellia chartacea is setting little fires on the edge of the rainforest with its scarlet bracts and orange-gold flowers. It is sometimes called the red shrimp plant, and is in the same family as Brazilian red cloak, shrimp plant and wild petunia. After the gingers and heliconias have put away their flowers and while the begonias are saving up to form theirs, this shrub is one that will put some spark...

Urban Oases bird project is proving fruitful

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:28:33 GMT

As we near the end of fall migration, birders who have been scouting Fairchild and Matheson Hammock since late August for important food plants for songbirds have come upon some surprises. Wild lime, soldierwood and the caimito, as well as its cousin satin leaf, are among the plants playing a large role in fueling birds heading south. A tropical catalpa and native and non-native figs in the Arboretum are also providing nourishment to such birds as black-throated blue warblers, parula warblers,...

Blooming right on time

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:31:17 GMT

Fall is the time of year for delicate clusters of lavender flowers to appear on Guarianthe bowringiana, an orchid in the Cattleya alliance. Because of its seasonal blooming, it once was called Cattleya autumnalis. It is festooning the Conservatory's epiphyte tree and display room. A beautiful fall-blooming orchid, Guarianthe bowringiana is aneasy orchid for beginners. Gua or guadia is from the Aztec language and it means tree. Anthe is from Greek meaning flower. So understanding that, said...

A real American beauty

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:15:25 GMT

Birds are attracted to this native, American beautyberry. American beautyberry, Callicarpa americana, is a native shrub that postions itself at the edges of hammocks and pinelands. It attracts butterflies in the spring and summer with delicate pink flowers, and then supplies grape-colored clusters of fruit for mockingbirds and catbirds in the fall and winter. Its leaves are fairly large with serrated edges, and the twigs sometimes stick straight out before elongating to droop and create a...

Seeing Anew

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:48:29 GMT

This unknown species of Acalyphais transformed by mid-morning sun. Sometimes it takes just the right bit of light to draw your eye to a plant you've walked by a hundred times without paying it much attention. That happened the other day when I was outside the Corbin Building. Sun shone on an Acalypha with crested leaves, and in that certain slant of light, they were as lovely as stained glass. Acalypha, which is in the Euphorbiaceae or spurge family, displays a remarkable variety of leaf...

A very likable bat (plant)

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:27:33 GMT

Whiskers are really modified leaves as are the "wings" ofthe bat. Here's a reason to celebrate: the bat-plant is flowering. Its upright white bracts hover like wings above a cluster of flowers draped with long whiskers (really The white bat-plant with one of its flowers open. bracteoles or little bracts that are modified leaves). The whiskers remind me of drawings of the wispy beards of Chinese elders, but for most people, they resemble cats' whiskers. The flowers' anthers and...

Love those leaves

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 17:01:36 GMT

Susan Schock with the aroids she plans to transport to her Key West home. Susan Schock drove up from Key West to buy a wagonload of her favorite plants, alocasias, at the International Aroid Society's annual show and sale that opened Saturday morning. "I came here in 1996 and saw the Fairchild Garden, and then drove to Key West and decided that's where I wanted to live,'' she said. Originally from Tucson, AZ., and then New Mexico, Susan was captivated by the tropical greenery. Today, she works...

A giant in the garden

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 10:27:27 GMT

Aroids, to my way of thinking, are an integral part of a tropical/subtropical garden. They range in size from petite to giant, and the shapes can be as slender and minimalist or as ruffled and rococo as you prefer. They climb palms and trees throughout my garden, and they hold up strikingly patterned leaves from hanging baskets, from the ground and from the pond. Among the most impressive size-wise is Alocasia macrorrhizos 'Borneo Giant' in the background; Cyrtosperma johnstonii at right, an...

Vignettes

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:15:13 GMT

Gardens are full of beautiful vignettes, surprises and delights - if you take a few moments to look for them. Strolling with my camera through Fairchild not long ago I came upon two such garden moments: a curled Cecropia leaf and lichens on a palm trunk. Lovely Cecropia leaves, even when fallen. Cecropias are pioneer trees in the rain forest. They have short-lived seeds that germinate in the full sun of a light gap and then race upwards at a dozen feet a year. There are several species of...

It was “snowing” in the lowlands this morning…..

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:09:06 GMT

Early this morning, I was collecting seeds of our pineland crotons to grow on for sales and special projects. As I was walking from our pineland back to my office, I noticed that the sign for Mark di Suvero's She' had "snow" on it. I also saw that the grass in the area had "snow" as well. I looked up, up, up, into the crown of the nearest royal palm and saw that it was flowering. The huge inflorescence of the palm was a creamy white hue, buzzing with...

Small but beautiful

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:53:06 GMT

Episcia cupreata is a Conservatory beauty.. You have to stoop down to really see them, but the flowers of Episcia cupreata are dramatic once you make the effort. Their tubular flowers have fringes on their edges and red markings in their yellow throat. In the Conservatory, the bright "flame-violet" nestles near the pineapple ginger. Episcia is a member of the gesneriad family, tropical herbs that are often found in the under story of rainforests where humidity is high and light...

Reflection and Evaluation

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:06:39 GMT

Many of the presentations asked, "How are we doing?" Several gave accounts of successes and lessons learned. Reflection and evaluation is part of what I've been doing in the past year regarding our rare plant reintroductions. It's what my presentation was about - a review of the reintroductions we have done, what factors have contributed to success, and how these relate to the possible need to move plants in the face of climate change. There is a nice synergy that...

Fairchild Gets Recognized

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 15:05:35 GMT

Now in Perth for the Society of Ecological Restoration Meetings, I'm having a chance to re-connect with old & new conservation colleagues. There was a plenary session all day, which began with a welcome to country - a review of the conservation/ restoration arena in Australia. This was followed by a presentation by David Claudie, Kaanju Traditional Owner of the Chuulangun Aboriginal Corporation. He explained the structure of indigenous governance and land management on Kuuku...

Kangaroos

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 17:23:40 GMT

Mira & I flew in late late on Friday night to Perth, then rented a car to drive south of here. Perth resembles San Diego a bit and the area south resembles the wine country - sort of - except there are huge forests of eucalyptus trees with parrots, parakeets and kangaroos. We went wandering south to see those big forests. We found ourselves outside of a town called Nannup. Since the sun would be setting soon, I decided to try to see if we could stay at some cottages near a river. The road wound...

Random and Surprising Snippets From Talks

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:12:27 GMT

I gave my oral presentation today about our introduction of crenulate leadplant to suitable habitat outside of its known historic range. The talk went well, but I was asked perhaps the most difficult question related to any plant introduction, "How will this plant affect other members of the community?" This is one of the biggest criticisms of any attempts to move plants for conservation - that we do not know how they will behave in novel habitats. The answer was that I...

Limitations and Connections

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:57:27 GMT

Today I saw a thought-provoking talk about the efficacy of restoration projects. Margaret Palmer recounted that restoration projects have increased significantly in the last 20 yrs in the U.S. In her review of published studies, she examined whether stream restoration projects were actually improving biodiversity and found that in the majority of cases they had not. Similarly, wetland restoration projects had not improved biodiversity. This led Palmer to ask what was the problem with these...

Maintaining Optimism

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:29:03 GMT

There are times when it is difficult to maintain optimism in the conservation business. Today I spent the morning hearing many accounts of how climate change will shrink endangered habitats and expand the distribution of weedy species. The researchers focused on the accuracy of their models. Truly the models are only as good or accurate as the data that feeds them. It was interesting to see how pollen and fossil records have helped build accounts of past refugia during ice ages and it was a good...

INTECOL and the Role of Ecologists

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:32:39 GMT

G'day from Brisbane! I've come here to attend and give an oral presentation at the 10th International Congress of Ecology or INTECOL. The theme of this conference is Ecology in a Changing Climate: Two hemispheres - One world. Hundreds of ecologists from 60 different countries are in attendance giving oral and poster presentations throughout the week. As the conference theme suggests, many of the presentations are about climate change, but there are also general ecology talks...

A nifty native

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:48:47 GMT

Fruit of the Simpson stopperis brightly colored and at-tractive to birds. Among the Florida native plants surrounding the Museum House are Simpson stoppers, now bearing bright red berries that are attractive to a wide variety of birds. Stoppers are under story trees of the evergreen hammocks that generally bear small leaves, white flowers in spring, followed by orange or red fruit. Simpson stopper is Myrcianthes fragrans, and it is useful in a number of ways: as a small tree; in a grouping of...

Saving our songbirds with trees

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:29:52 GMT

Can warblers find food here? Guided by the stars, the winds, and the Earth's magnetic fields, migratory songbirds - the warblers, thrushes, vireos, tanagers and buntings that spend the summer in North America and the winter in the Caribbean and South America - are beginning to pass through South Florida now. Traveling from 30 to 100 miles a day, the birds need twice the amount of food during migration as they otherwise require. But will they find enough food here to help them...

Perspectives on Endangered and Invasive Species

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 20:31:04 GMT

At the Ecological Society of America Meeting, I spoke about our research on the Key Tree Cactus in a session about Climate Change and Plants. As climate change is a rising concern, there were many studies underway to test experimentally the impact of elevated carbon dioxide on plant growth. In contrast, our work on the Key Tree Cactus documented the decline of this species in the lower Florida Keys. Increased soil salinity was associated with plants that have died and with populations that have...

Its a Friday night and I'm writing this blog - why?

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 23:45:05 GMT

I don't normally write a blog on a Friday evening, but I just can't contain myself. I feel compelled to shout from my rooftop - Everyone should have this plant in their yard!!!! What plant, you ask? I have a Lady of the Night, Brunfelsia nitida planted near the east side of my house. It has been there about five years. It is absolutely, positively one of my favorite plants! It has been blooming for the past week. The flowers are tubular, opening white and gradually turning shades of yellow....

Put what in your pipe?

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 19:04:47 GMT

Blooming on the vine pergola is Aristolochia maxima, the Florida Dutchman's pipe, which has the Aristolochia maxima showshairs that trap flies. shape of an old-fashioned meerschaum pipe. It is not native to Florida - it grows from Mexico through Central America and into Venezuela -- but has naturalized here. The clusters of flowers on this woody vine, or liana, are brownish, without the outrageous liver color and really bizarre shape of the larger flowered species, such as...

The state of orchids in the wild, brought home

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 18:42:38 GMT

The Coalition for Orchid Species' annual symposium Aug. 2 brought speakers from California, Texas, New York and Miami to the Garden House. About 80 people happily spent hours focusing on their favorite topic: orchids that occur in the wild. Because of habitat destruction, orchid species are sought by growers and collectors looking for increasingly rare plants. COS was organized in 1990 to stress conservation and educate the public about the diversity of the flowers found in nature. Lee Moore Lee...

Members' Day Plant Sale coming soon....

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:47:37 GMT

MEMBERS' DAY PLANT SALE PRIMER Distribution of rare, unusual plants to Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden members has had a long rich tradition in south Florida. In 1939, Fairchild Tropical Garden had the first Members Plant Distribution. To quote David Fairchild from the first list of plants: "In accordance with our policy to grow and distribute plants and palms which are more or less rare in this section, we have now on hand and ready for distribution a limited quantity of plants, a...

For The Love of Mangos Peru, 2009

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:30:45 GMT

The Curator Noris Ledesma once again delves into the world of mangos with an ambitious agenda of mango hunting and adventure to capture the harsh realities that the Peruvian mango is confronting. The Peruvian mango is an export fruit and Peru is the second country to bring mangos to the United States. Their mangos arrive around Thanksgiving, when other countries' mangos are not ripe. Peru produces many Florida mangos, including Edward' for the local market where the prices...

What is that purple flowering tree in our rainforest?

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:02:11 GMT

In recent days I've been asked about the tree in the rainforest which is currently flowering. Showy purple flowers appear in the canopy of the Fairchild rainforest. It is Carpodiptera ameliae, a member of the Tiliaceae family, native to Central America. Commonly called mountain pear, it is a 30-40' tall tree with large evergreen leaves. In July and August, a profusion of panicles with many small lavender-rose colored flowers are produced. If you want to see Fairchild's mountain pear, stand near...

Never Give Up

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 20:27:02 GMT

It's been good to see several friends here at the Ecological Society of America Meeting. I was particularly surprised to see Yasemin, a Turkish woman, who attended a CPC workshop in which I taught about 3 years ago. She has just finished her doctorate and is here at the meetings to look out for grant and job opportunities. When she talks about her academic life and the state of plant conservation in Turkey, it is clear that conservation science is just beginning in the country. There are...

Assisted Migration

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:46:26 GMT

Great things about attending a scientific conference are the quick condensed information exchange and the conversations that ensue with colleagues. Often I can learn things very quickly in this context, as I may attend 20-25 oral presentations each day. It's a bit of a brain fry, but well worth it. From these presentations stimulating discussions arise. At lunch, I had an inspiring conversation with colleagues Pedro Quintana-Ascencio, Gordon Fox and Jessica Gurevich - all top notch...

Me, the Ecological Society and the Holy Ghost

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 17:44:29 GMT

Albuquerque - The excitement is palpable as the Ecological Society of America meetings open. I'm looking forward to listening to stimulating talks and reconnecting with friends. While here, I took the opportunity to visit an old endangered species friend of mine, the Holy Ghost Ipomopsis. Believed to be a newly arisen species, this species is known from a single canyon in northern New Mexico. I tracked its population there for about 12 years, often with my daughter Mira in tow. I...

Saving a Cycad Isn't Easy

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 19:37:27 GMT

Microcycas calocoma is the handsome dark green cycad in the center of this photo. It is complimented with bromeliads. Surrounded by a bevy of big bromeliads, this beautiful Microcycas calocoma is just south of the Visitors Center. A native of the province Pinar del Rio in western Cuba, this genus has only one species, and is extremely limited in its natural range, according to Loran Whitelock's The Cycads. As late as 1998, there were believed to be about 1,000 left, with reproductive...

Stamp of Approval

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 19:12:50 GMT

Fort Jefferson's light will shine on your letters. Our very own Fort Jefferson Lighthouse in Dry Tortugas National Park has its very own stamp now, with the first day issue ceremony held last week at the Key West Post Office in Key West. The lighthouse also is called the Garden Key Harbor Light. The original was built in 1825. The existing light is a hexagonal wrought iron tower, although the light no longer is an active aid to navigation. The first day of issue postmark is a pen and ink drawing...

90 Miles south of Florida: Orchids of Cuba

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:13:20 GMT

Betty Eber Betty Eber, a long-time Coral Gables orchid grower and teacher of orchid culture, spoke about Cuban orchids Monday night at the Coalition for Orchid Species meeting at Fairchild. Betty's map of Cuba also featured a purple star near the town of Cienfuegos, with the notation: Betty's Birthplace. Orchids of Cuba are generally small and many tend to grow in coastal scrub. Some, however, are high mountain denizens. Some also have wonderful color, such as the intense yellow...

Happy Campers at Fairchild's Farm

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:26:13 GMT

Summer camp at the Fairchild Farm is underway, and on the day I stopped in, the kids were studying worms. Worms! Noris Ledesma had collected earthworms so that each child could have his or her own worm and learn how to tell the head from the tail. Once they got over the shivers just looking at the worms, the children found they could handle them, dangle them in the air and even use them as face decoration. Elizabeth Garcia, 7, knew why it's important to have worms in the garden: "So...

Savoring summer's best fruit

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 16:04:11 GMT

A perfect mango morning: hot and sunny with flavors ranging from spicy to sweet. At the 17th International Mango Festival, Saturday's crowds found what they've waited all year for: mangos to sample, to taste and trees to buy. Lines of taste-testers were busy sipping sugar and spice on toothpicks as they ranked their favorite mango flavors. Ann Parsons, director of The Kampong, found her favorite among the samples: Keitt. After that, she liked the Fairchild Emerald, then Osteen....

Naturally South Florida -- According to Roger Hammer

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:02:20 GMT

Distinctly Hammeresque humor peppered Roger's recent talk for the Dade Chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society as he recounted early history of South Florida to a standing-room-only crowd: The Florida Keys: "A drinking community with a fishing problem.'' The now-extinct American lion, the largest mammal predator ever, once roamed Miami-Dade County: "As a naturalist, I live for American lions to make a comeback.'' But seriously, folks. An...

Bold flowers yes, but borne gingerly

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:13:29 GMT

A baby inflorescence Pineapple or Indonesian Wax Gingers Putting on a spectacular show in the back of the Conservatory is the pineapple or Indonesian wax ginger, Tapeinochilos ananassae, a member of the costus family. Some two dozen brilliant red pinecone-like inflorescences are standing proudly in a group, having arisen on their own leafless stems or scapes. They're almost shockingly bold, composed of bracts that house golden yellow flowers. The plant's real stems, meanwhile, tower...

Back yard plants that really are medicinal

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:01:49 GMT

David McLean There's a drugstore in your back yard and Broward County nurseryman David McLean mixed humor and home remedied for the Tropical Fern and Exotic Plant Society's last meeting of the season. Plants throughout time have been the source of medicines and remedies for people everywhere. For scratches or wounds: "McLean's three mix" is a combination of aloe, avocado and tea tree oil, stirred together in equal parts with a little water. Cut a slice of the succulent leaf in...

This week in Fairchild

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:49:46 GMT

We are truly in the midst of our rainy season. So far during this month we have received 6.34 inches of rain. The total for the year is 19.11 inches, most of that occuring the last two weeks of May and this month. As many of you know, we have our own weather station. It is located on the roof of the Garden House and the data is sent to a computer station in the plant records office. Check out the current conditions online via our Web site. This week three of our horticulture staff are in St....

A Gem from Jamaica

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:00:13 GMT

Portlandia grandiflora Pure white bell-shaped flowers are gracing the shrub Portlandia grandiflora near the vine pergola. This gardenia relative is commonly called bell flower and it is from the limestone or karst hills of Jamaica. Wonderfully fragrant at night, it most likely is pollinated by night-flying moths that typically are attracted to white flowers that emit perfume after dark. The tall shrub (it grows to about six or eight feet) is initially rather spindly but fills out to become more...

The Mango High Five

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:00:40 GMT

Noris checking out Southeast Asian mangos Noris Ledesma, curator of tropical fruit at Williams Grove, has spent years tasting different kinds mangos, often 20 different fruit a day during the season, to school her taste buds in the flavors that range from sweet to tart. Here's her take (developed with senior curator Richard Campbell) on the five basic flavor types, each named for a region, a mango most representative of the flavor or the strongest tasting. Myanmar type These, such as...

We are getting ready for the Members' Day Plant Sale

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:15:56 GMT

I propagate plants for Members' Day Plant Sale, the Ramble and the Spring Plant Sale all year long. In fact, nearly every Monday and Tuesday morning my volunteers and I collect seeds and cuttings from Fairchild then clean and plant them at our nursery. This time of year, when many plants have new growth, is the best time for taking cuttings. Most plants root well from either young tip growth or semi-woody stems. We take the cuttings early in the morning, wetting them immediately to keep them...

You can almost hear the plants growing.....

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:54:03 GMT

Our summer rainy season has begun. Our winter and spring at Fairchild was sunny and dry; extremely dry. Now that we've received more than 10 inches of rain since mid-May, the plants in the garden are bursting with new growth and lots of flowers. You can almost hear the plants growing! Our lawns are carpets of green, creating enticing pathways to investigate, off-road, other inner portions of Fairchild. I believe that Fairchild is at it's absolutely most beautiful during the summer! Come visit!...

For The Love of Mangos-Philippines, Thailand and Japan, 2009

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 18:14:02 GMT

Curator Noris Ledesma delves once again into the world of the mango with an ambitious agenda of adventures to capture the true spirit of the Asian mango and her people. In the Philippines she will take in the celebration of the mango in Guimaras to capture the 'Carabao' in her full glory. It is then on to Thailand for a photographic tour of the Bangkok floating market, Talad Thai and the orchards of South Thailand - her lens recording the subtle shapes and expressions of the mango and her...

Attracting birds to your yard

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 10:21:48 GMT

A pair of painted buntings visiting my feeder which is hanging in an Alvaradoa amorphoides. I have planted many native trees, shrubs and palms to re-create natural habitats in my own yard. I created a hardwood hammock, palm and grass savannah, and a pineland area all in a less than 1/2 acre size lot. One of the main reasons I planted native species was to attract wildlife. Birds require food, shelter, and water. I am especially pleased with the many birds who visit my yard, especially painted...

Spring has arrived in Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden!

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:07:20 GMT

Brownea capitella in our rainforest Spring at Fairchild means lots of amazing flowers are here for you to enjoy. Some flowers are only fragrant at night. Tonight and every Thursday night in April, there will be special walking tours in the Arboretum to visit flowers which are fragrant during the evening hours to attract insects, mostly moths, which only fly at night. There may be fewer moths than there are of daytime insects, but there are also fewer nighttime flowers, so less competition. The...

Our Jade Vine is Blooming!

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 15:22:20 GMT

Once again, the time has come for our beautiful jade vine, Strongylodon macrobotrys, to begin flowering. This marvelous vine is native to the Philippines. The amazing jade hue, blue-green flowers are produced in pendant clusters up to 3 feet long! It is growing on Fairchild's vine pergola. The jade vine should be blooming for the next few weeks....

A little history lesson about Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden - Part 2

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:08:24 GMT

Foundations The first 15 years saw the construction of its primary buildings and landscape features, including the Montgomery Palmetum, Bailey Palm Glade, Allee and Overlook, Vine Pergola, Amphitheatre, Gate House, Montgomery Library and Museum, 11 lakes, stone terracing walls, irrigation systems, Moos Sunken Garden, and Nell Montgomery Garden House auditorium. Later buildings included the Davis House (1953), Hawkes Laboratory (1960), Robbins Plant Science Building (1967), Rare Plant House...

Come see our lowlands and enjoy the wonderful sculptures by Mark di Suvero

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 10:39:24 GMT

I have to go to the nursery in a few minutes to work with one of my volunteers. We propagate plants all year long for our three annual plant sales. Before I leave, I want to urge everyone to visit Fairchild during the next six months. This time of the year is cool, sunny and a great time to explore the habitat areas found in FTBG's lowlands. Our pine rockland area is full of plants native to this critically imperiled habitat. Our pines, palmettos, wildflowers, wild basil, American beautyberry...

A little history lesson about Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden - Part 1

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 11:37:12 GMT

David Fairchild David Fairchild (1869-1954) was one of the greatest plant explorers of all time. At the age of 22, he created the Section of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction of the United States Department of Agriculture, and for the next 37 years, he traveled the world in search of plants of potential use to the American people. His far-reaching travels brought into cultivation in the U.S. many important plants, including mangos, alfalfa, nectarines, dates, horseradish, bamboos and flowering...

We are getting ready to Ramble!

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:11:16 GMT

Tomorrow is the first day of Fairchild's very special Ramble. We are getting ready. Our plants are up from the nursery and plant societies are filling their spaces with beautiful, interesting plants that need a good home! The Ramble is full of festivities: good food, music, art, special tours, gardening furniture, fun activities for children, antiques, old books, and plants, plants, plants. Check out the photo of the bougainvillea area. If you look carefully, you can see a pirate's flag flying...

Ramble has a very special plant sale

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 10:06:46 GMT

The 2008 Ramble will be the 35th Ramble I've worked at and enjoyed since I began working at FTBG in 1973. In my first years here, when the Ramble was more of a rummage sale, with old clothes, furniture, and other "recycled" merchandise, only Fairchild-grown plants were sold. Beginning in 1980, with the new, gardening-focused Ramble, various plant societies began participating in the plant sale. Now the plant sale area in the palmetum is filled with plants grown and brought in by 14 plant...

We have a new weather station at Fairchild!

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:59:35 GMT

With thanks to the generosity of Caroline Lewis, Director of our education department, a weather station was purchased. It was installed on the roof of the Garden House in mid-September. The console with weather information obtained from the weather station is in the Hawke's Lab. The station keeps records on rainfall, temperature, wind speeds, relative humidity, barometric pressure and other weather data. In the future we will place this information on the FTBG website. You might be interested...

A Limpkin in the garden!

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:11:02 GMT

This morning while I was walking near Glade Lake, I was delighted to see a limpkin walking along the shoreline! It was hunting snails for his breakfast perhaps. Fairchild is actually a great place to see birds. A few days ago, I saw two white-crowned pigeons in the Keys Coastal Habitat. Next time you visit, remember to look at the plants....and the birds!...

My Favorite Hedge - Simpson's Stopper

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:44:59 GMT

Many people have Ficus benjamina, which can quickly become a huge tree, hedges which require regular pruning and now there is a whitefly which is killing it in south Florida. My favorite hedge is Myrcianthes fragrans, Simpson's stopper, which is a native of hammocks of south Florida and Tropical America. This shrub or small tree grows to 20 feet tall. It makes a great hedge and is a low maintenance alternative to the commonly used ficus hedge. Simpson's stopper's silvery gray to warm brown bark...

We have another cannonball tree blooming in Fairchild.

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:37:55 GMT

In May, 1992 we received seeds of Couroupita guianensis from Venezuela. The seeds were in our greenhouse when Hurricane Andrew hit just a few months later. It survived Andrew's wrath and was planted in plot 18 in June 1994. The young tree had to be moved to plot 45 due to the Visitors' Center construction in 1999. In late October, 2005, Hurricane Wilma blew it down. It was quickly propped up and voila, is now in bloom for the first time! It's first 16 years have not been easy, but now that it is...

For The Love of Mangos India, 2008

Tue, 13 May 2008 21:22:52 GMT

Fairchild Tropical Fruit Program ventures back to the ancestral home of the mango - India. Our mango team Dr. Richard J. Campbell and Noris Ledesma the Curators of Tropical Fruit went to the monsoonal plains in search of the secrets of the king of tropical fruit. For 2 weeks in May, 'Alphonso', 'Kesar', and 'Dusehri' will become daily fare, treasured for their sweet, complexity of fruitiness and Indian spice. Nowhere on earth is the mango more cherished, or more integral to the people and their...

My Gardening Joy - What is Yours?

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 14:00:40 GMT

About 15 years ago, I was fortunate to find a piece of property, just under one-half an acre with a small house and very little vegetation. I had a nearly blank slate to start my own garden on the first property I had ever owned. I took a while to consider what kind of garden I wanted. I am a nature lover; birds, butterflies, even squirrels and snakes always delight me with their presence. So I decided to create natural habitats in my yard to attract wildlife. That...

We have beautiful parrots in Fairchild!

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:56:38 GMT

During recent weeks I have seen large parrots or macaws flying over the arboretum and lowlands of Fairchild. I have seen a pair and sometimes as many as five birds flying and making their very loud squawking noises. Today while I was near the southeast edge of Royal Palm Lake, I heard the unmistakable sounds of the parrots in a royal palm in plot 87. I was fortunate to have my camera and took a few photos. One of the parrots was using its beak to tear off bits of a leaf stem in a Veitchia...

CTPC staff monitor the endangered Pseudophoenix sargentii on Elliott Key

Wed, 26 Dec 2007 15:55:59 GMT

Jennifer Possley, GIS Lab Coordinator/Field Biologist, reports that two weeks ago today, several members of Fairchild's Center for Tropical Plant Conservation (CTPC) returned from a three-day trip, monitoring the endangered palm Pseudophoenix sargentii (Sargent's cherry palm) on Elliott Key. We last conducted a thorough monitoring of this taxon on Elliott Key in 2003. This time, we collected data on: (1) approximately 115 surviving individuals that were planted by...

Don't forget to look up while walking through our rainforest.

Wed, 26 Dec 2007 14:07:35 GMT

This morning, around 8:30, as I was walking out of my office in the rainforest, I heard a very loud squawking noise. I looked up and saw a pure white large bird fly over the trees. It landed nearby and continued its raucous call. Harvey, Rod and I walked in the direction of the sound. We looked up to see a beautiful cockatoo perched upon the tip of a Veitchia spear leaf. Eventually the bird flew to the east, before I could get a good photo. We occasionally...

I discovered something neat in our rainforest

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:20:50 GMT

A couple afternoons ago I was walking through the rainforest on my way to the arboretum to check some seeds I am watching for propagation purposes. Just before I entered the rainforest plaza I looked up and saw a Schefflera seedling sprouting from the surface of a palm leaf! The palm is a very robust Livistona seedling with leaves held in a horizontal fashion. Seeds in a rainforest can fall onto leaves, in the crevices among tree branches, even onto a roof of a hut or in...

Discovering Fairchild Tropical Garden - the Rainforest

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 10:52:28 GMT

Photo by M. Collins Rainforest waterfall I often see many people walking through the rainforest on the tram road but they don't venture onto one of the paths which are lined with beautiful plants and our wonderful stream with cascades and waterfalls. Our rainforest stream uses water from Glade Lake. Water from the lake is pumped up in a pipe under the Cycad Vista. Through gravity, the water flows down the stream which begins behind the Hawke's Lab hort office building, under the tram roads and...