We share some beautiful plants with the Bahamas, West Indies and other Caribbean islands. They include the gumbo limbo, wild coffee, paradise tree and other plants that arrived here thousands of years ago as seeds in bird droppings, being blown in by hurricanes and by floating across the ocean.
Natural coastal areas from the Florida Keys to Merritt Island are covered with these tropical looking plants. Actually, they are subtropical and can withstand temperatures of 36 degrees F or below.
It is hard to find plants that are better adapted to salt air, some saltwater flooding, long periods of drought and hurricanes.
Many of these plants have beautiful clusters of small, fragrant flowers that are followed by fruit in progression throughout the season. During bird migration, storms may cause a fallout of robins and cedar waxwings.
These birds will be grateful for the food that your trees and bushes provide. This is a good time to have marlberry, mastic, pineland and Florida privet, redberry stopper, pigeon plum, wild coffee and beautyberry in your yard offering their fruit.
None of these are poisonous to pets or kids; yet don’t make a meal of them as they may cause a belly ache.
My wife and I recently visited Key West for the first time in six years and were delighted to see native trees, shrubs and ground covers used in many of the landscapes.
They have a 70 percent native plant landscape requirement in new construction compared to Palm Beach County’s 60 percent. In the near future Key West will raise this to 90 percent.
The result is that hotels, parks, homes and businesses are more beautifully landscaped than anywhere else I have seen in South Florida since moving here in 1982.
There are columns of Jamaica caper, large groups of key thatch, beautiful wild cinnamon trees full of red berries, and masses of golden creeper, coontie, key lily, and silvery sea oxeye daisies used as ground covers.
Water use is minimal to none on these sites and there are plenty of berries for the birds. I even got buzzed by a hummingbird in town.
We can thank Cynthia Domenech-Coogle, the Urban Forestry Program Manager in Key West for her great efforts in introducing native plants to the public. It is amazing what one person can do to beautify a city and start a wonderful trend.
A good reference book for native plants is “Florida’s Best Native Landscape Plants” by Gil Nelson. Many of the plants that he mentions are found in our local native plant nurseries.
Check out the AFNN.org site to locate nurseries near you. Call them for what you want as the plants listed on the site are only a small picture of what they have.
Planting in the spring will give your plants the whole growing season to become established and you should start seeing berries by next year. Hand watering will use very little water to establish the plants.
There are a wealth of local native plants found along our coast that will give your yard a tropical look and provide local wildlife with food and nest sites.
Why settle for the tired look of impatiens and invasive clusia, podocarpus, Green Island Ficus, areca palms and Trinette that provide little wildlife value when you can have a yard full of birds and butterflies and other interesting insects like ladybugs.
Chimney Swifts
Chimney swifts spend most of their lives in the air catching mosquitoes, swarming termites, biting flies and other insect pests.
They arrive in late March and nest from May to August, returning to Peru in early November. Our only local swift increased in numbers and range as humans built houses with chimneys.
These chimneys replaced the holes in large dead trees that were the traditional nesting sites. Now chimney swifts are in decline because people screen them out of the chimney top because the sound of the chicks chirping can be loud for ten days.
Only one nest is built in each chimney and one clutch of three to five eggs is laid. This makes nesting sites very important because the swifts simply won’t double up somewhere else.
The half saucer shaped nest is made of small twigs glued together with saliva to the side of the chimney. A species in Asia makes its nest entirely of saliva which hardens and is collected by local people to export for birds nest soup. Ok, don’t think about it.
Just before migration, chimney swifts congregate in often large groups and may use your chimney to roost in at night. It is a beautiful sight to see hundreds of these birds returning at dusk as they twitter and dive-bomb insects near the entrance before settling in.
You can help swifts by removing barriers to your brick chimney entrance. Metal chimneys aren’t used, yet the best thing that you can do for almost immediate results is to build a nest box.
This is not easy and having a twelve foot tall wooden tower in your back yard may not be for everyone. Maybe they can be added to our local parks and common areas. Go to www.chimneyswifts.org for design ideas.
My neighbor has a brick chimney and we all get to enjoy seeing dozens of swifts hover around it each summer evening. It seems as if the mosquitoes are less of a problem too.
In European towns and cities, common swifts return by the hundreds at dusk to their chimney roosts. Few mosquitoes survive this attack and the sight of these speedsters is uplifting.
We can duplicate this in our area with nest boxes and hopefully reduce the need for aerial spraying for mosquitoes which of course also kills butterflies, and other beneficial insects.
Feral and Outdoor Cats
During our balmy Florida winters we have many avian residents that brighten our days. The chatter of wrens, the flash of hummingbirds and the beauty of painted buntings are some examples.
We try to welcome our guests with food, water and protection from harm. However, our neighborhood has attracted a problem that threatens our birds. This problem is feral cats.
There is some vacant land nearby that is slated for development, yet was put on hold due to the bad economy. This land has become an attractive spot for people to drop off their unwanted cats.
Someone has also started to feed these cats, making matters worse as the cats linger and multiply. I realize that this is a controversial subject, but this problem needs to be addressed by more people.
Feral cats live an average of three years and are killed by dogs, other cats, disease, cars and people. They spread rabies, feline leukemia and other diseases.
Over four billion song birds a year are killed by these cats. Indoor cats, by contrast, live an average of 14 years and lead safer, healthier and happier lives.
73 million cats have owners and 100 million or more are feral in the US. Cats eat small rodents, birds, and other beneficial wildlife, but they can’t kill large city rats, so there is no benefit to having them outdoors.
Following habitat destruction, cats are the greatest cause of bird extinctions worldwide. Even putting a bell on a cat won’t help because birds don’t associate a bell’s tinkle with danger.
Young fledgling birds fly slowly and spend much of their time hiding on the ground waiting for their parents to bring them food. During this vulnerable period 90 percent of these baby birds are killed within cat infested areas.
Feeding or neutering cats doesn’t stop their urge to kill. Feeding simply subsidizes an over abundance of these predators.
They can also cause great harm to quail and other ground nesting birds including shore birds which sleep on the ground and are easy to catch.
I recently noticed a feral cat stalking the painted buntings around our feeder. This cat comes from the local colony.
One of these cats was killed by a neighbor’s dog and others will be hit by cars or suffer other demises along with malnutrition and disease.
Keep your cat indoors. Provide it with toys and access to a screened patio. Your cat will be happy, live long and so will your local birds
Basic Butterfly Caterpillar Food Plants
Butterfly:
Trees and Shrubs:
Palamedes swallowtail
redbay
Tiger Swallowtail
sweetbay magnolia
Hackberry Emperor
hackberry and elm
Question Mark
hackberry and elm
Tawny Emperor
hackberry and elm
Viceroy
Carolina willow
Giant Swallowtail
wild lime and Hercules club
Ruddy Daggerwing
strangler and shortleaf fig
Large Orange Sulfur
wild tamarind, catclaw and blackbead
Florida White
Jamaica and limber caper
Cloudless Sulphur, Sleepy Orange Sulphur, Little Yellow, and Orange Barred Sulphur.
Chapman’s cassia
Atala Hairstreak
coontie
Butterflies:
Herbaceous Plants:
Cloudless Sulphur, Sleepy Orange, Little Yellow, Orange Sulphur, , Gray Hairstreak and Ceraunus Blue
partridge pea
Zebra Longwing Gulf Fritillary Variegated Fritillary Julia
passionvine
Goldrim and PipevineSwallowtail
pipevine
Black Swallowtail
fennel, dill, water dropwort, parsley and other carrot relatives.
Pearl Crescent
asters
Phaon Crescent
fogfruit
White Peacock
waterhyssop, lemon bacopa and fogfruit
Cassius Blue
leadwort/wild plumbago
Care of Your Plants
Wildflowers: Require a week of daily watering and some slow release fertilizer to become established. They may need watering two to three times a week until the end of the month if showing signs of stress.
Water wildflowers once a week, if needed, during long dry periods after the initial establishment period.
Shrubs and Trees: Require two weeks of daily watering and every three days for an additional month. There is a period from March to July that may be especially dry; this ends with the summer rains.
During this time your plants may require watering every two to three days depending on the moisture holding capacity of the soil.
Within three to six months, most trees and shrubs should be on their own unless there is no rain for more than two weeks.
Always keep an eye on your plants and water them if necessary as it may take one full year before some trees and shrubs are fully established and can make it through our long dry spells.
When planting, pull apart the roots from opposite or three sides of the root ball to break up any roots that have completely circled the inside of the pot.
These will otherwise continue to get thicker in diameter until they strangle the trunk years later.
To do this run your thumb from top to bottom and about two inches into the ball or cut with a shovel. Make sure you don’t cut the root where it begins at the trunk.
The plant should be installed so that the top of the root ball is level with the ground and the soil is firm beneath the root ball. Never put organic matter below the root ball as it will oxidize causing the plant to sink.
If the soil is too loose beneath the plant, it may settle and you will find the root ball several inches below the surface in a few months. Replant if this happens.
Build a ring of soil around the outside of the root ball with the extra soil to hold the water in place when you water.
Use a forceful stream from the hose to soak the soil; a sprinkle will do little to wet the ground. Make sure you water a few inches outside the ring to encourage the roots to move out.
Florida has a variety of soils to deal with. Coastal and scrub soils, which are just west of and east of I95 to the ocean, are very dry. Plants in these soils require more weeks of watering as well as frequency.
Traveling west of this zone the soil becomes moister, yet may have pockets of scrub, until wetlands are encountered near the turnpike and beyond. If your soil is always moist, your plants will only need the first week of watering and as needed thereafter.
Use a slow release fertilizer to help your plants send down their roots. The three to 12 month fertilizers work well. Flowers will need one treatment and trees and shrubs may need three.
Keep weedeaters away from your plants, they will girdle the lower trunk and kill the plant. Stake the tree loosely, if at all, so that it can move and strengthen.
Cut your shrubs back several inches to a foot or two by hand only if needed. Don’t sheer them or the growth will be on the outer tips and none in the center.
In fact, cut the shrub to the ground to rejuvenate. Not all plants can take this but firebush, beauty berry, wild coffee, locust berry, necklace pod and a few others will come back fine. Try this on one plant first.
If you notice insects causing a lot of damage, especially newly introduced ones, try the organic oils or other sprays to control them. Since these introduced insects have no enemies, they can multiply unchecked and kill your plants.
When I plant for you I often need to cut some or your plant’s roots to fit them around a pipe or tree root. This results in wilting and the need for you to water these plants more frequently and longer. The wilting may last a month, so please be patient.
Call me if you have any further questions
Carl Terwilliger
561-601-9673
Butterfly Garden Design
In South Florida we are truly lucky because we can butterfly garden all year long.
Try the following design and refer to the table to match butterflies with their larval food plants. A variety of larval food plants is the key to culturing large numbers of butterflies. Insecticides should not be used in or near these gardens.
Scatter tall trees around the yard but leave open sunny areas. Redbay, hackberry, Florida elm, shortleaf and strangler fig, wild tamarind, and sweetbay are tall enough to allow medium size trees and shrubs to be planted close by without crowding.
Shrubs that are great nectar sources include: Native firebush, (not the compact exotic found in most stores), bloodberry, Florida key’s thoroughwort, pineland privet, native plumbago or leadwort, and smooth strongbark.
Also, try planting a few corky passionvine near these shrubs and allow them to grow as they please.
Wild lime and blackbead are larval hosts with thorns and should be limbed up as they grow so that people can walk underneath them or kept short with regular pruning.
Group the shrubs in ways that create open areas so that sunlight can reach the wildflowers planted near them. Make sure that sunlight can reach these wildflowers for at least four hours a day, especially around noon.
Other larval foods which include the three foot tall Chapman’s cassia, false nettle, Mexican milkweed which is not native, yet supports monarchs, bushy aster, dwarf fakahatchee grass, and salt marsh mallow can be planted next to the taller shrubs.
Low wildflowers can be used to create abundant color and nectar. My favorites include: red salvia, seaside goldenrod, pineland petunia, twinflower, beach verbena, and sunshine mimosa.
Larval food plants like cudweed, peppergrass and fogfruit may come up on their own. You can also plant non native fennel, parsley and arugula to share with eastern swallowtails and great southern whites.
Arrange your garden in sections that allow you to move about easily and create quiet sitting areas to observe wildlife.
Don’t forget a bird bath near the protection of large shrubs. The Florida edition of “Butterflies through binoculars,” Oxford university press, is a great book to learn more about butterflies in Florida.
Larva will only eat their host plant, not your prized rose bush. The small to medium amount of damage to host plants is worth the variety and numbers of butterflies that you will soon have living and breeding in your yard.
The exception to this is corky passionvine and coontie which can be killed by over feeding. Just move the extra caterpillars to other plants. Keep a potted, fast growing exotic passionvine around for this.
You will no longer have to wait for a butterfly to pass by and briefly visit. It will stay and make your yard its permanent home while breeding and increasing its population.
Please see “Butterfly Larval Foods” for a list of other larval food plants.
Birds Bathe to Stay Warm
Feeders are what most people think of when trying to attract birds, yet water is often needed the most. A cool drink and a bath will keep your birds in top condition.
Feathers are cleaned and softened while bathing, then straightened and realigned during preening. Your birds will fly faster from predators and stay warmer during cool evenings with clean feathers.
My hummingbirds fly through mist and other birds including 12 painted buntings use a shallow water dish to bathe. This has a drip-tube and mister attached and is timed for one hour each day.
Shrubs planted around the bathing area provide an escape route from hawks and raising the dish 3 feet off of the ground will keep it out of the reach of cats.
Make your own birdbath from a trashcan lid, a flowerpot saucer, or mold one out of mortar. Depth should vary from one inch along the edge to three inches in the center.
For a water source, I attach a timer to the outside faucet and screw a barbed nipple onto the timer. A one quarter inch diameter tube is pushed onto the nipple and extended to your bird bath.
You can attach a mister to this or just let it drip. The rate can be adjusted with a valve back at the faucet. I use the V shaped ones so that I can adjust the bath water rate, yet leave the main spigot open with a hose attached to the other.
Just push the valve open for the hose to work and leave the other side set for the bath.
A small pond will bring in flocks of migrating birds and an occasional heron. It only took an hour to dig a 12-foot by 10-foot pond 12 inches deep.
I used a thick rubber liner purchased on-line and lay logs and rocks to hide the edge. Leave some areas along the edge 2 inches deep for small birds to bathe in.
In the fall, 30 migrating robins and cedar waxwings often come at a time for a drink. This is a death trap for mosquitoes if you add mosquito fish and aquatic plants for them to hide in. No need for chemicals, just rake out the algae if it gets too thick.
There are many ways to provide shallow water for birds to drink and bathe in. Look around and you probably have something lying around that will work.
Place your birdbath where it can be seen while you eat breakfast or lunch and enjoy the fun.
Viewing Birds
One April morning, while I was running around the house preparing for work, my wife alerted me that there were painted buntings feeding on the seeds of our melochia bush just outside of one of our windows.
The melochia has been extirpated from Florida but can still be obtained at some nurseries growing seedlings of plants originating in Puerto Rico.
I sat down by the window and for ten minutes was treated to a parade of birds on melochia and other shrubs that made the nature shows on TV seem dull.
A thirty foot deep area of native shrubs, trees and wildflowers, a bird bath and a small feeder filled with millet created a paradise for our local and migratory birds just outside the window.
Our property is bordered with a dense mix of native shrubs and trees while the center has islands of plants.
I sat for only a few seconds before the first group of five, green, female painted buntings arrived. One bird hopped onto the red salvia to feed on its seeds as the plant swayed back and forth.
Two catbirds appeared along with two young male cardinals. One of the cardinals took a bath and sprayed water everywhere. The catbirds fed on the firebush berries.
Tzip, tzip announces the arrival of a red, purple, yellow and green, male painted bunting. He came out into the open just as the ruby-throated hummingbird made his tack, tack… tack, tack, tack computer-like sound while feeding from the firebush flowers.
I find myself feeling dazzled. It tickles my senses and makes me laugh at the silliness of the situation. All of this occurred within ten minutes and really made my day special.
As it warmed up, dozens of butterflies came out of hiding and visited flowers or laid eggs on the passion vine and other larval food plants.
In the last six weeks we were visited by one young bald eagle, two great horned owls, several black and white, fork- tailed, swallowtail kites which are almost seagull sized, and many coopers, and red tailed hawks.
I observed two, crow sized pileated woodpeckers mating and am proud to have them create a large nesting hole in one of our dead pine trees. These large woodpeckers are black and white with a spike of red feathers on the top of their head.
If you can, please leave your dead trees so that our local woodpeckers will have a place to find insects and nest in.
Soon, our warblers, buntings and other winter residents will fly north to breed. My hope is that each fall, when they return, there will be more native trees and shrubs for them to find food on and thus, more of them that survive.
Bats
Say “bats,” and most people will think of rabies, flying mice, being attacked and having the bat tangled in their hair.
This is nonsense and has lead to the decline of many bat species and serious trouble for us if the population of these beneficial mammals doesn’t recover soon. Bats share a shrew-like ancestor with primates and have been around for 50 million years.
They have only one to two offspring per year, which makes them vulnerable to long term population declines.
100 million Mexican Free-tail bats migrate north into Texas each year and consume 1000 tons of insects each evening. They fly to an elevation of 10,000 feet in order to eat the corn ear-worm moth as this pest migrates north to our farmlands.
Even the sound of a bat’s echolocation will drive many insect pests out of the area. Having bats around will reduce much of the mosquito, moth, and beetle population and is much better than those noisy bug lamps that also kill predatory insects like ladybugs and lacewings.
There are only two common bats in our area: the Mexican free-tail and the Evening bat. These small bats eat insects and roost in trees and man made structures like bridges and attics.
Use a bat excluding device and never poisons to remove bats from your home. Make sure that the young have left before putting this up.
A bat house is easy to make and can be mounted on a 10 to 20 foot pole or under the eave of your house. The color should be brown and placed where it will receive sun most of the day.
Lighten the color if the temperature gets too hot inside, but keep in mind that bats like a temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit. This is why they roost in attics.
Tree limbs should be 20 feet away to keep bat predators at a distance. Turn off nearby bright lights. Bats catch insects near water so try to locate the bat house near a pond.
As with any wild animal that lets you get near it, don’t touch it and you won’t get bitten. About one in a thousand bats has rabies yet the strain is rarely transmitted to humans even if you are bitten.
Bats die quickly from rabies and do not become aggressive. I would worry about feral cats more than bats if you are concerned about rabies.
Europeans have encouraged bats to their yards for over 80 years. Interest in the U.S. started in the 1980’s and is growing each year as people learn more about these beneficial mammals.
With a bit of experimentation, and time, you can discover the proper location for a bat house and enjoy watching bats dive after insects in the light of the setting sun.
Try batcon.org for more information and great designs for bat houses.
Planting For Butterflies In The Spring
This is the time of year to plant nectar and caterpillar food plants for butterflies. Sitting on a lounge chair watching butterflies is relaxing and fun.
You will laugh at the sight of several males chasing a female in frantic circles and dives. Kids love to watch the caterpillars form a chrysalis and later emerge into a beautiful butterfly.
Even in a yard with no butterflies, you can gradually build up a nice population of several species in one to two years. The trick is to plant the caterpillar food plants so that butterflies will multiply once they find you.
The most common butterflies in our area include the Zebra Longwing, Gulf Fritillary, Monarch, Queen, Giant Swallowtail and several Sulfurs.
There are many other species that are less common yet are worth the extra effort to attract.
These include the Eastern Swallowtail, Ruddy Daggerwing, Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, Atala Hairstreak, Julia, Malachite, White Peacock, Florida Viceroy, Red Admiral, and many kinds of Hairstreaks, and Skippers.
I can count at least thirty to fifty individual butterflies of several species in my half acre front yard during the summer months. Do not ever purchase butterflies; you will be introducing diseases to your local population.
A planting containing the orange exotic milkweed will soon have Monarchs laying their eggs on it. Most of the Cassias attract various Sulfurs and a wild lime tree will take the place of your citrus tree as a food for the Giant Swallowtail.
This plant is native to Florida and has nasty thorns, so be careful where you plant it.
The book that I always bring on walks with my wife, Donna, is Butterflies through Binoculars. This has great pictures, lists the caterpillar food sources and shows which parts of Florida each butterfly occurs in.
And it’s only eight by five inches so you can carry it easily. The North American Butterfly Association (NABA) has a local chapter with monthly meetings and field trips.
There are also conferences in Florida and other states that are a great way to meet interesting people.
Food for the adult butterfly can be almost any native wildflower and some exotics. The problem with many cultivated flowers is that they have been bred to have more petals at the expense of the nectar producing glands, pistil and pollen producing anthers.
Native wildflowers include: Beach Verbena, Red Salvia, Goldenrod, Bloodberry, Silphium, Wild Sage, Firebush, Indian Blanket, Sunshine Mimosa, Ironweed, Dune Sunflower, Chapman’s Cassia, Pineland Petunia (not Mexican Petunia or Purple Shower which is invasive), Climbing Aster and many more.
Don’t be afraid to kill some grass and make a butterfly garden. You will use less water than grass and will be surprised by the numbers of butterflies and birds, too, that are attracted to your yard.
Check out the list below for a match between butterfly and caterpillar food plant. Also remember that butterfly caterpillars eat only certain plants and won’t eat your other garden plants unless these plants are in the same family that the caterpillar prefers. Parsley and cabbages are food plants.
The following is a list of butterflies and their caterpillar food plants. Try mixing these plants with the tallest ones in back and the small in front. Monarch, Queen and Soldier-Milkweed; Eastern Black Swallowtail-Parsley; Sulfurs-Cassias; Giant Swallowtail-Citrus; Ruddy Daggerwing-Strangler Fig; White Peacock-Water Hyssop; Palamedes Swallowtail-Redbay; American Lady-Cudweed; Eastern Tiger Swallowtail-Sweetbay Magnolia; Red Admiral-False Nettle; Malachite-Shrimp Plant; Atala Hairstreak-Coontie; Florida Whites-Cabbage family; Buckeye-Snapdragon; Goldrim Swallowtail-Pipevine; Zebra Longwing, Gulf Fritillary, Julia-Passionvine; Tropical Checkered Skipper-Marsh Mallow; Many Skipper species-grasses.