Native Plants
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Swooning Over Plants at Gus Engeling WMA – June 2023
I don’t know if I can express how much I love Gus Engeling WMA. I wish I lived closer to it, though perhaps it wouldn’t be as special? Nah, I think it would and I would probably know its ins and outs a little better. I’m constantly drawn back to thinking about south Florida and how “close” everything was, how driveable within a 1-3 hours a place could be, most places in the 1-2 hr range and many within the 1 hr or less range. Feel like going to the Keys for a long day? Done. More in the mood for interior slow moving creeks and rivers? Done. Dwarf cypress…
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Milkweeds at Gus Engeling WMA
I’ve written two posts about Gus Engeling WMA, Rhexia + Green Lynx Spider and Amorpha paniculata in the wild! but I’ve never finished sharing or writing up about our first trip to the WMA. And then we’ve gone two more times last summer, which means I have a lot to share. This WMA is in my top 5 natural areas in the state and is named after Gus Engeling, a game warden who was shot and killed by a poacher at the age of 41 in 1951. Prior to its name change it was called Derden WMA. The habitat at this WMA is astonishing and diverse, with deep sandhills and…
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September Wildflower Walk at Watson Rare Native Plant Preserve
In September we drove over to the Watson Rare Native Plant Preserve to help with the scheduled wildflower walk. The preserve typically holds monthly guided wildflower walks for visitors, with a break in July and sometimes August as well as some of the quieter times such as December-February at the preserve. I had primarily been volunteering on work days and wanted to come out for a bit of a lighter load than a work day—really I just wanted to take some photos and enjoy the blooms instead of doing the never ending task of trimming back ti-ti! It coincided with Chris’ birthday and I didn’t have to twist his arm…
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The Big Thicket Solo Tract | May 2023
I first heard about the Solo Tract at the Big Thicket from Linda Leinen when she started a blog series called A Year of Going Solo earlier this year. Since seeing her posts, I have dipped into this tract myself twice, the most recent time back in May. It’s very close to the Big Thicket’s Interpretive Center which makes it easy to access if you are short on time but need to get into the Thicket for a few moments. Some highlights from that trip: Wooly rosemallow, Hibiscus lasiocarpos blooming. Tall green milkweed, Asclepias hirtella—I was very excited to see this one in bloom! I love when I come across…
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Chance meeting with Lindheimer’s beebalm (Monarda lindheimeri)
In early June I drove up to Fort Parker State Park hang out with a couple of friends for the weekend. Typically we get an Airbnb or a cabin at Fort Boggy State Park, but Stephanie and her husband recently bought a travel trailer and we have upgraded our options for meetups! I’ll write more on that trip later, but before I left I scouted directions on how to get there. I chose a slightly slower route in favor of looking for wildflowers and the chance to iNat in some lesser known locations. That decision paid off really well! I wasn’t more than 30 minutes from home when I spied,…
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Mahogany Hammock Trail at Everglades National Park (2007)
Let’s travel back to Florida and less depressing things like losing a state park—because nature continues on even while we fight to save it. I actually remember very little about this trail. I can recall part of the boardwalk and that there were mosquitoes but I don’t recall seeing some of these plants! The peeling skin-like bark of a gumbo limbo tree, Bursera simaruba The fruits of a Florida strangler fig, Ficus aurea A nurse log filled with long strapferns, Campyloneurum phyllitidis…a common scene in many swampy hammocks in south Florida. An orchid that has died, probably a butterfly orchid. Hammock viper’s-tail, Pentalinon luteum. This is one of the plants…
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Christian Point Trail at Everglades National Park (2007)
Looking back through some of these photos I wondered why I didn’t bother editing some of them. I had completed a small handful but had left a decent amount untouched for over a decade it seems. And it made me wonder why we didn’t make the effort to go into Everglades NP more often, though I know the reason why—you had to pay to go in! Big Cypress and so many other areas were free, and though we did pay for a state park pass, the pass let us in to a lot of parks and the ENP pass didn’t. That said, it isn’t like I wasn’t spending 5 days…
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Amorpha paniculata in the wild!
Two weekends ago when we went to visit Gus Engeling WMA we had finished our jaunt into the bog area and had turned up the A/C and decided to just drive around the rest of the WMA and jump out if we saw something interesting. It gave me a lot of Florida vibes and driving through WMAs there and oh, how I miss how much public land Florida had (has). Chris inched by some plants and out of the corner of my eye I spotted something and I exclaimed, “Amorpha!” I stumbled over the words for a moment because I had dumbly mistaken another plant for an Amorpha back in…