Year in Nature Photography – Day 143

Lantana (Lantana camara ‘Miss Huff’) buds

China rose hibiscus (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis) bloom

Cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) close up

Likely a spicebush swallowtail (Papilio troilus)

Unfortunately this spicebush swallowtail butterfly decided to fly away as soon as I opened the door so this was the only shot I was able to get. The caterpillar has quite large eyespots and diverse coloring as you can see if you check out the link, hopefully I’ll be able to find one sometime. Also the host for the caterpillar is, as the name suggests, spicebush. Our hibiscus plant continues to put out large beautiful blossoms that seem to last a day or two before curling back up and falling off. Our lantana is getting ready to bloom again and while native to the American tropics it has become naturalized in parts of the US and is highly invasive in places such as Australia and parts of Africa, which just goes to show that even the new world brings invasive species to the old world . I also got another close up of the native cardinal flower blossoms.

Year in Nature Photography – Day 136

Most likely umbrella flat sedge (Cyperus involucratus)

Swamp lily (Crinum americanum)

Swamp lily (Crinum americanum)

Jelly burn plant (Bulbine frutescens ‘Hallmark’)

Oleander (Nerium oleander) and most likely China rose hibiscus (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis) hedge

Bird of paradise flower (Strelitzia reginae) full plant

Golden trumpet (Allamanda cathartica)

Bee (Apis sp?) collecting from what appears to be peregrina (Jatropha integerrima)

Bird of paradise flower (Strelitzia reginae)

Day 4 of Florida Trip (pictures are in random order)

A lot of fruitful searching of Google images has enabled me to pretty confidently identify the plants in today’s posts. To recap a previous post, I often use words like ‘might’ or ‘could’ because in science we never say we are 100% (99% possibly) certain about results, we have to leave room for errors and other explanations, it is part of the scientific method. This is why it is very important that experiments are repeatable and well documented. In identification, things are changing constantly due to genetic analysis and different theories of species definition. As I’ve posted before, some things require microscopic observation to differentiate between species. All that aside a lot can be said for typing in ‘orange flower 5 petals Florida’ and then looking at the pictures for something that looks close. You have to be aware of the whole plant however, some flowers look similar but the rest of the plant is different.

All that being said, today I have identified some more non-natives that are used as landscape plants particularly in Florida. Before I get to the new non-natives I have another picture of a swamp lily (native) and there was a sort of hedge with oleander and hibiscus (2 additional non-natives), most likely the same variety of hibiscus that we have on our porch.

Umbrella flat sedge comes from Africa and has escaped and become established in disturbed wet habitats. Also from Africa, specifically the southern part, we have the burn jelly plant which at first I took for an orchid. Almost all orchids exhibit bilateral symmetry of their petals which means that if you cut down a single plane (the center/middle) you have two identical halves. However upon closer inspection of my picture it looked like the petals were actually evenly distributed around the center (radial symmetry) which eventually led me to find the burn jelly plant. Additionally from South Africa and also bright orange, we have the bird of paradise flower. Not to be confused with the bird of paradise bush I saw in Arizona.

For our next non-native we go to Brazil with the golden trumpet flower. Apparently the sap is highly toxic and all parts of the plant are cathartic (indicated in the scientific name) which means they act as a laxative highly increasing bowel movements (polite and scientific way of saying it all), so one shouldn’t ingest any part of the plant. As a general rule of survival I would not ingest any plant parts unless you have been well educated by a reliable teacher in the identification and preparation of edible plants.

The last flower I identified comes from the Caribbean and I caught a bee visiting this peregrina flower cluster. Apparently the leaves of this flower are highly variable which makes identification tricky if no flowers are present.