All posts by jane

Fieldtrip: Florida Botanical Gardens

education, fieldtrip

As a part of our mid-winter getaway, the Other Half and I flew south for a long weekend. After arriving and grabbing some lunch, we made our way to the Florida Botanical Gardens. Yes, we went from the airport to the garden before checking into our lodging.

I like plants.

The weather was beautiful for this Zone 6a gardener. I have a low tolerance for a lot of heat and humidity, so this was a great time of year for me to be in Zone 10a.

Florida Herb Garden

There was plenty in bloom as we strolled through the herb garden. The garden’s website describes this are as “Culinary, medicinal, aromatic and economic herbs of Central Florida.” I think a more accurate description would be “Culinary, medicinal, aromatic and economic herbs that can be grown in Central Florida.

Here’s a pretty Mexican Marigold (Tagetes lucida), tagged as a culinary herb.

And here we have Leonotis leonurus, commonly referred to as lion’s ear. It was labeled as a medicinal herb that also attracts butterflies. This broadleaf evergreen (winter hardy in USDA zones 8-11) is native to Southern Africa.

I was really delighted with this discolor sage (Salvia discolor), also known as Peruvian Black Sage or Andean Silver Leaf Sage. The foliage is green with a dusting of silver fuzz beneath. And look at those purple/black blooms. Oh my.

Florida Native Plants Garden

This section of the botanical garden featured “A collection of Florida natives, demonstrating the broad palette of plants suitable for the home landscape.”

One plant we noticed showing up again and again is the coontie. Not only fun to say, this Florida native looked almost prehistoric to me. Its fern-like leaves form a fine texture but are leathery. Fun Fact: The coontie is a food source for the caterpillars of the atala butterfly.

Upon further reading I discovered these plants are “cycads,” a group of plants abundant around the world during the Jurassic Period.  This drought tolerant plant’s stem is underground. It sends up both male and female cones through the soil. The University of Florida Extension site states “Like all cycads, it is a gymnosperm and doesn’t produce any flowers or fruits. Instead, it reproduces by producing seeds in seed cones and pollen in pollen cones.”

While the coontie above was labeled as (Zamia floridana) at the garden, this next one was labeled as (Zamia pumila). Love this specimen and the arches the leaves form. Still learning about the plant, I did some research and found there is a disagreement as to what the plant is actually called. C’mon Florida, get your sh*t together. From what I can tell from reviewing several university websites, the general agreement is Zamia pumila is the way to go.

Entryway Plantings

There was a really pretty bed at the entrance of the main building. Plants included this wonderful Indian Holly Fern (Arachniodes simplicior).

And then there were also these Aechmea, a genus of the Bromeliads (Bromeliaceae family). Fun Fact: That’s the pineapple family. The over 200 species of Aechmea have toothed, strap-like leaves. Also, the flowers are held on just as colorful branches.

Tropical Walk

Along the tropical walk area, we ran into a whole collection of Crotons like this Gold Dust Croton (Codiaeum variegatum ‘Gold Dust’). Crotons have colorful foliage and are related to the spurge family (Euphorbiaceae).

This was a pretty cool cultivar called ‘Ram’s Horn’.

This cultivar of croton was ‘Mother and Daughter’.

Across from the huge croton display was a tropical, vining type shrub called a Light Bulb Clerodendrum (Clerodendrum smithianum). What attracted me to the plant was the delicate, long strands of fading flowers. It was as if the plant was adorned with some type of flowering tinsel or light strings.

Resources
Florida Wildflower Foundation
University of Wisconsin Extension

Visit from the Tree Fairy(ies)

autumn, the Lot, Urban gardening

The Lot is located under 2 miles from the center of our little city. Our neighborhood is older than the Burbs, with our home being built in 1923. At some point the entire street was planted with norway and silver maples, all of which are at their mature height now.

Since we’ve lived on the Lot, we have had a norway maple in the easement at the South side of the house. The tree helped to shade the porch and home during the hot summer months. In the winter, its absence of leaves allowed the sunlight to help warm the south side. The maple would also keep a gardener cool when she wanted to work in the south bed midday. It was a pretty sweet deal.

However, also during the time we have lived here, a wound in the trunk of the tree has grown progressively worse. The best guess we can make is it was backed into by some past neighbor. We really, REALLY didn’t want to send in a request for its removal until it had to go. This spring was the season.

As all other trees on the street were leafing out this past spring, the norway maple on the front of the Lot was not. Also, the wound on the tree had be weakening the middle of the trunk and the tree was beginning to lean toward the house. All signs pointed to a phone call to the city and a request for the maple’s removal.

Monocultures in Urban Neighborhoods

During our time with the Urban Forest Project, the Other Half and I learned this approach of planting a street as a monoculture (a single type or family) is not the best idea. This became evident to city planners when Dutch Elm Disease in the 1950s and then Emerald Ash Borer in the early 2000s caused entire streets of those trees to be removed at a time.

The city now selects trees that can withstand the harsh urban conditions, chooses trees with the correct height as to not grow into power lines, and aims for a variety of species for the neighborhood. With a diverse population lining a street, the chances of a future tree disease or pest causing the removal of all the trees at once is slim.

A Gift of Gingko

The Other Half and I had been exchanging ideas for a replacement tree for the majority of the season. After removal, it would be another 18 months before the city would plant a new tree (with no charge to us) to replace the norway maple. However, I’m impatient, so we were going to offer to purchase and plant a replacement. We’d simply select a tree from the city’s list of approved trees.

But this morning the universe had a different plan as a Citizen Forester volunteer knocked on our door. A neighbor a block or two down had applied to and received a mini-grant to have trees planted in our neighborhood. There was a lone ginkgo which had been passed over by a neighbor who did not want trees in his/her property’s easement. The Citizen Forester had noticed the white mark on the dying maple (city code for “remove this tree”), and wondered if we wanted the ginkgo. Um, yes please!!

The Maidenhair Tree

Ginkgo biloba, or the Ginkgo, is the sole surviving genus of the order Ginkgoales and is considered a living fossil. This ancient order of plants, believed to have been present 150 million years ago, have characteristics of both ferns and conifers. The fan-shaped leaves of the Ginkgo resemble fronds of the plant genus Adiantum, or the maidenhair ferns. The leaves are also often in two lobes, which is how it picks up the “biloba” or “two-lobed” in its name. The tree was cultivated in China and Japan because of its religious significance, but no natural stands of Ginkgo are thought to exist.

The cultivar ‘Autumn Gold’ is the one now situated in the easement on the Lot. According to the Missouri Botanical Garden website, this ginkgo grows up to 40 or 50′ and makes a great shade tree. It will have green flowers (all current ginkgo cultivars are male) in the spring and gold leaves in the autumn. It requires full sun so the south side of the Lot is an excellent location for it. Due to the low maintenance required and the tree’s ability to tolerate air pollution, the Ginkgo makes a great tree for an urban environment.

Ginkgo Guardians

So now it is up to the Other Half and I to care for our new sapling. It was delivered as a ball and burlap tree, so I’ve already been out there a few times to fuss over untangling its branches. Those are often squished a bit from being bound against the leader with twine before being stacked on delivery trucks. This whole weekend we are supposed to finally get some seasonal rainfall, so the tree should get a good drink. The leader, or vertical stem on top of the trunk of the tree, is a bit crooked. However, the trunk is straight, and I’ve seen leaders straighten out over a few years once the tree is growing in its new location. Next year we’ll make sure it gets watered well throughout its first summer. I’m looking forward to helping it get settled and integrating it into the crazy garden that is the Lot.

WTF – Black Bindweed

education, plant ID, the Horror!

I feel this garden season has been packed with plant identification. In no way am I complaining about this. Plant identification is a pretty enjoyable game to me. When a fellow gardener was telling me about a swift-growing vine with heart-shaped leaves in her home garden, I fought the urge to immediately hiss “bindweed” (Convolvulus arvensis). The weed is from the Morning Glory (Convolvulaceae) family and is a complete terror on the Lot. I agreed to make a visit to help with some pruning, so I pretty much had to find out if I was right or not.

Analyzing the Offender

When I arrived and was able to meet the vine in person, I realized it wasn’t bindweed. I would recognize my Nemesis anywhere, in any growing zone, and this wasn’t it. Yes, the vine was eating the porch alive and the leaves were heart-shaped. However, I immediately noticed what looked like white seed heads in large clusters all along the vine… not a trait of the bindweed we deal with on the Lot.

Black Bindweed covering Lantern

There aren’t many weedy vines in our state, so I started going through some weed ID sites looking for the vine that would be going to seed at this time of the season. Eventually I found a site for a project at the University of Michigan: Burnham, R.J. (2008-2014). “CLIMBERS: Censusing Lianas in Mesic Biomes of Eastern RegionS.” (September 6, 2017).  And that is where I found the name of the plant I was looking for: Black Bindweed (Fallopia convolvulus) of the Buckwheat (Polygonaceae) family.

Up Close and Personal

When ID’ing a plant, there are a lot of clues one can pick up by taking a thorough look at the specimen. Parts of the black bindweed helping me to ID it were:

  • alternate, simple, heart shaped leaves
  • vine, twining from right to left
  • glabrous (free from hair) ocrea (sheath around the stem)
  • roots are non-rhizomatous
  • branching of vine located more near base of plant
  • papery calyx (sepals of the flower)
  • flower understated with no petals

Black Bindweed on Railing

Evicting the Weed

I struggled to find a control method for black bindweed. It’s an  aggressive, annual weed introduced from Eurasia. The plant spreads by prolific reseeding. The seeds themselves are enclosed by a hard shell and can be viable for more than a single season in the soil. In fact, this was the reason my gardener friend inquired about the plant. She said though a crazy climber, the plant was kind of pretty (which it was). But then she saw all the flowers (future seeds) and thought “Oh sh*t.” Yeah, we’ve all done that before.

What we do have on our side when removing this vine is the fibrous root system and the small area of a home garden. Though fairly deep, the roots aren’t a rubbery, rhizomatous system that takes off underground like a berserker gopher. The plant was removed and burned. Next season, the gardener has to keep an eye open in the spring for any new seedlings and pull as needed.