Nature’s salad bar: Deer have a taste for wildflowers

By Dr. Jeff Norcini

Have you ever had a deer wander into your yard to dine on your landscape plants? Well, that’s what happened several years ago at a wildflower demonstration garden established as part of my extension program at the University of Florida/IFAS research center in Quincy.

This nighttime shot caught one of the culprits in the act.
Photo:UF/IFAS, NFREC

We observed that deer, which can be quite abundant in northern Gadsden County  (Quality Deer Management Association), found Florida Tickseed (Coreopsis floridana) and Swamp Tickseed (Coreopsis nudata) quite to their liking amongst 14 native wildflowers and one native grass. They liked Stokes Aster (Stokesia laevis), too. How did we know it was deer and not rabbits eating the plants?  To prevent browsing, we had to  surround  each plant  with chicken wire. Deer tracks helped identify the culprits, too!

These observations led to a full-blown scientific study in 2008 and 2009 about deer wildflower-browsing preferences. The study, which was recently published, was a team effort at the Quincy research center involving the departments of Wildlife Ecology (Holly Ober, Luke DeGroote) and Environmental Horticulture (Jim Aldrich, Gary Knox, and myself).  Deer browsing plots were established each year using containerized plants of 11 wildflower species, all Asteraceae: Goldenmane Tickseed (Coreopsis basalis), Florida Tickseed (Coreopsis floridana), Coastalplain Tickseed (Coreopsis gladiata), Fringeleaf or Chipola Tickseed (Coreopsis integrifolia), Lanceleaf Tickseed (Coreopsis lanceolata), Leavenworth’s Tickseed (Coreopsis leavenworthii), Blanketflower (Gaillardia pulchella), Pinnate Prairie Coneflower (Ratibida pinnata), Orange Coneflower (Rudbeckia fulgida), Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), and Softhair Coneflower (Rudbeckia mollis).  (Swamp Tickseed was not included in the study because no seed or plants were available.) A tall fence around each plot protected 38 percent of the plants from deer.  Deer damage was assessed every two weeks both years from April to November.

A portion of the site was fenced to keep deer at bay.
Photo: UF/IFAS, NFREC

The heaviest deer-browsing occurred from mid-summer to fall, although the intensity of browsing over time varied between years and amongst wildflower species. Deer clearly preferred Florida Tickseed, Coastalplain Tickseed, Fringeleaf Tickseed and Orange Coneflower (the percentage of plants browsed was 67, 60, 48, and 42 percent, respectively). Browsing reduced flowering of Florida and Fringeleaf Tickseed by at least 50 percent, and eventually killed a significant number of these plants. Interestingly, deer-browsing did not affect flowering of Coastalplain Tickseed, which flowers at the same time as Florida Tickseed, strongly resembles Florida Tickseed, and is much more common than Florida Tickseed in the Panhandle. Orange Coneflower, despite heavy browsing by deer, showed no ill effects in terms of growth or flowering.

The other seven species were browsed to some degree, with the percentage of browsed plants ranging from 27 percent (Leavenworth’s Tickseed) to 5 percent or less (Blanketflower, Pinnate Prairie Coneflower, Lanceleaf Tickseed, Goldenmane Tickseed).  Lack of preference for Goldenmane Tickseed was a bit surprising as cattle like to graze on it (Terry Zinn, personal communication).

It was evident some plants were preferred by deer visiting the plot.
Photo: UF/IFAS, NFREC

So, what’s this mean to you? First, because none of the wildflowers was immune to browsing, if you live in an area with a lot of deer, don’t be surprised if any of these wildflowers are nibbled. Second, if you have one of the heavily browsed species in your landscape and deer find it, expect repeat visits, because deer have good memories about food sources. Moreover, you'll need to protect those plants in some manner, except for Orange Coneflower. If you are a hunter and want to include wildflowers to attract deer to a food plot, use Orange Coneflower.  Of the four most heavily browsed wildflowers, it’s the only one that’s clearly sustainable.

Details of this study are published in the Volume 4, 2011 issue of the journal Southeastern Naturalist: DeGroote, L.W., H.K. Ober, J.H. Aldrich, J.G. Norcini, and G.W. Knox. 2011. Susceptibility of cultivated native wildflowers to deer damage. Southeastern Naturalist 10(4):761-771.  The senior author, Luke DeGroote, can be contacted at degroote.1@gmail.com.

Are non-native milkweeds killing monarch butterflies?

A monarch nectars on native milkweed. Photo/Jaret Daniels

The monarch butterfly is arguably the most well-known and beloved insect in North America. Besides its almost commonplace presence in gardens, it’s the star of one of the world’s greatest migratory events. Each fall, hundreds of millions of monarch butterflies make their long-distance journey south from the United States and Canada to overwintering sites in Mexico and California.

Sadly, these overwintering populations have experienced a steady decline in numbers during the past three decades. Monarchs are threatened by the loss and degradation of habitat, natural disease and predation, adverse weather, and the ongoing decline of both nectar and larval host plants.

Florida’s native milkweeds play a particularly critical role in the migratory lifecycle by providing essential early-spring host resources for returning butterflies. The showy flowers of milkweeds also offer abundant, high-quality nectar to a wide range of other pollinators including hummingbirds and bees.

Despite their attractiveness and wildlife value, only a very small number of the 21 milkweeds native to Florida are available in nurseries or sold from seed. 

Butterflyweed (Asclepias tuberosa) is by far the most commonly obtainable. Although serving as a fantastic nectar source, it is a suboptimal host and only infrequently used by monarch larvae. As a result, most gardeners purchase the non-native Tropical Milkweed (Asclepias currasavica) – a seemingly ubiquitous plant in the marketplace that is sometimes misidentified or misinterpreted as a native.

Because Tropical Milkweed remains green until frost throughout the Deep South, it can enable monarchs to continue breeding well into fall and winter, causing populations to persist longer in certain areas than they naturally would.

Unfortunately, prolonged breeding can foster higher than normal infection rates by a lethal protozoan parasite, Ophryocystis elektroscirrha (OE). It can also increase the risk of organism exposure to freezing temperatures, resulting in the potential death of adult butterflies or immature stage.

An added danger is that some commercially grown plants may have been treated with systemic pesticides during cultivation. The application of such pesticides will make the plants toxic to monarch larvae – exasperating most butterfly gardeners.

The simple answer to this potential problem is to ask for native milkweeds at your garden center - be sure to ask for native ecotypes by their scientific names.

Together we can help provide critical host resources for monarch butterflies and increase the market for native plants at the same time.  

Dr. Daniels recommends the following milkweeds for monarchs:

• Aquatic Milkweed (Asclepias perennis)
• Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata)
• Pinewoods Milkweed (Asclepias humistrata)
• Redring Milkweed (Asclepias variegata)

For plant availability at a native nursery near you, visit PlantRealFlorida.org and click on Retail Nurseries/Garden Centers. Select your county, then check each nursery's plant list. 

Dr. Jaret Daniels is Assistant Director of Exhibits and Public Programs and Assistant Curator of Lepidoptera at the Florida Museum of Natural History. He is also a University of Florida-IFAS entomology professor.

Drawn to nature: Botanical art treasures stand test of time

By Claudia Larsen

When it’s time to identify a wildflower, most of us head for our favorite field guide and look through beautiful close-up photographs until we find our subject. Some versions are even color-coded to aid the process. I must own all the popular Florida books by now, but alongside those on my bookshelf are also several special volumes I have collected just for their beautiful hand-drawn reproductions of wildflowers.

My favorite is Caroline Dorman’s Flowers Native to the Deep South (Claitor’s Bookstore, Baton Rouge, La.; 1958). In the forward, the author writes, “It is hoped that this book will help arouse renewed interest in the preservation of our rapidly vanishing wild flowers [sic]. From too frequent picking, misdirected efforts to move them to gardens, forest fires and onslaughts of rabbits and insects, some species are becoming very rare.”  Doesn’t her message sound familiar even after all these years? She states that all but two illustrations were drawn from a living flower (some provided by renowned botanist Dr. J.K. Small). These include 33 color plates and 102 black and white drawings. The most stunning flowers, including the white Swamp Lily (Crinum americanum) and the Fringed Orchid (Habenariaciliaris), are set against black backgrounds that contrast beautifully and create a dramatic effect.

Flowers have been the inspiration for many artists throughout history. Early books of botanical illustrations were popularized by the infatuation with the language of flowers in which certain flowers symbolized sentiments of hope, friendship, love and, of course, secret love. In the 17^th and 18^th centuries “florilegiums,” or flower books, became popular. They held accurate drawings of flower parts, stems and roots. Early printing processes included original illustrations transferred to stone or copper for printing. After the design was transferred to paper, it was hand-colored by artists.

As gardening and plant-collecting increased in popularity, so did the ownership of herbarium albums, botanical magazines and books. Privileged women hired art teachers and used instructional drawing books to aid their favorite pastime of drawing and painting with watercolors.  Examples of these include “Easy Introduction to Drawing Flowers According to Nature” (James Sowerby; 1788) and “Sketches of Flowers from Nature” (Mary Lawrence; 1801). Many of these albums, which included poetry and gardening advice, were never published. Today they are anonymous works of art stored in various libraries and private collections.

Interest in nature continued to flourish in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, and illustrations depicted collections of regional plants, birds and animals.  In 1850, Susan Fenimore Cooper’s artwork in her Rural Hours by a Lady reflected the natural world in upstate New York. Her contemporary, Mrs. Clarissa W. Munger Badger, published Wildflowers of America in 1859.

I can only imagine the beautiful landscapes experienced by Emma Homan Thayer when she created Wildflowers of Colorado in 1885, followed by Wildflowers of the Pacific Coast in 1887. She states in her book, “In the places most difficult to access, I found the most beautiful flowers. It would seem as if they wished to hide the delicate members of their family from the rude gaze of the world, sheltered in some nook of the rocks, like a miniature conservatory tenderly cared for by the fairies of the mountains.”

Women who were paid for their illustrations were often criticized and generally unrecognized for their contributions to important botanical manuscripts, but botanical illustration encouraged personal observation and self-education in the new science of botany, as well as other sciences. 

Today, illustrators are prominent in many fields of science and engineering. Government publications also fortified illustrated collections of wildflowers and native plants in manuals such as the annual Yearbook for the US Department of Agriculture.

More recent illustrated manuals on wildflowers are both artistic and instructional. The Illustrated Plants of Florida and the Coastal Plain, (Dr. David Hall; 1993) boasts 1,200 illustrations by Edward H. Stehman from specimens that were collected between 1966 through 1989.  Black and white drawings were chosen to represent the plants “since photographs frequently do not show accurate details.” 

For exquisitely detailed and accurate botanical line drawings, there are few better than Wendy B. Zomlefer’s collection in Flowering Plants of Florida – A Guide to Common Families (1989). Wendy’s taxonomic renditions include amazing cross-sections of flower heads and seed structures that can be used to distinguish plant species. She makes great use of the stippling technique to create a three-dimensional affect.

Another regional favorite that includes wildflowers is Gil Nelson’s Florida’s Best Native Landscape Plants (2003). Each species represented has color photos, and many also include meticulously beautiful  watercolor portraits by  illustrators Jean Hancock and Susan Trammell, which gives this book a unique artistic touch.

If you’re looking for inspiration for your own drawings, check out Southern Wildflowers by Georgia magazine garden editor Laura Martin (1989). She describes 70 common wildflowers and gives cultivation advice and historical backgrounds. Full-color illustrations by Mauro Magellan accompany the text. The drawings are quite ethereal (I was startled to read the artist is also the drummer for the rock group Georgia Satellites.) 

Claudia Larsen owns and operates Micanopy Wildflowers, a native-plant nursery in Micanopy, Fla.

Bibliography

Women of Flowers – A Tribute to Victorian Women Illustrators by Jack Kramer

Don't be bugged by the good guys - insects can be beneficial

By Lisa Roberts

I live in a typical Central Florida neighborhood, where St. Augustine lawns and alien plants are the norm. I'm happy to say that one of the exceptions to that rule is my landscape, which is increasingly segueing to native drought-tolerate groundcover. Sadly, I can't get rid of all my sod - my homeowner-association dictates each front yard must have 20 percent.

Big-eyed bug. Photo: Lyle J. Buss-UF-IFAS

One recent day, I rolled up to find two phone-company workers digging in the St. Augustine grass between the curb and sidewalk - my 20 percent. Curious, I walked out and asked them what they were doing. They explained they were trying to find a buried phone box. They had been poking around with a shovel for about 15 minutes.

After chatting a minute, one of them turned to me and said, "Lady, you have a lot of bugs in your yard. You need to spray it!" He picked off a big-eyed bug that had crawled up his shirt and started to pinch it between his fingers. "I've killed four of these already."

My yelp of protest stopped him. "Don't kill my bugs! Haven't you ever heard of beneficial insects?" He stared at me like I was nuts. Clearly, he'd never heard of the concept.

"Beneficial insects like this one prey on other bugs - like chinch bugs that damage St. Augustine lawns. Spraying isn't discriminatory - it kills pretty much everything, beneficial and not. By using sustainable gardening and lawn-care methods, I don't have to use pesticides. Instead, I'm supporting a nice little food web that takes care of things."

I doubt he was going to go home to cancel his lawn-spraying service, but maybe he'll think about what I said and want to learn more.

The Sarasota County extension office offers a good primer on Florida's beneficial insects. Here's to hoping you'll treat your bugs better, starting today. 

Lisa Roberts is the Florida Wildflower Foundation's executive director.
 

Persistence is everything in this wildflower project

The following is excerpted from a story about a Florida Wildflower Foundation grant project in Jacksonville that originally appeared on the Florida Native Plant Society's blog. The project was one of 15 La Florida, "Land of Flowers," Community Grants given throughout the state in 2011.  Read the full story.

By Barbara Jackson, President, FNPS, Ixia Chapter

“Nothing is ever easy at the shipyards”

The site before planting.

This statement, from an environmental consultant in Jacksonville, has proven to be completely true. He should know. He has been involved in the Shipyards for over 15 years, advising the City of Jacksonville and others about this almost 40-acre site.

The Shipyards is in downtown Jacksonville on the St. Johns River. It was a working shipyard from the 1850’s until 1992. After it closed, the land sat idle for years, surrounded by a chain link fence and full of weeds and debris. Last year, I saw an article in the local newspaper quoting the mayor, who wanted to spread grass seed in the area. “Oh no, I thought, not grass seed!” I immediately pictured a 40-acre site full of native plants, butterflies, bees, birds, paths, benches and smiling people. I contacted the mayor’s office and explained my idea. I also said our FNPS chapter would find funding, Months went by before we were granted two acres for planting.

Ixia chapter volunteers spread pine straw after sowing seeds.

At the same time, the Florida Wildflower Foundation announced the availability of $500 grants for wildflower seed purchase to county governments that had a wildflower resolution. It certainly appeared planting two acres of wildflowers would be the easiest, least expensive, and best way to go for the Shipyards site. The City of Jacksonville Economic Development Commission (JEDC) would write the grant. The Ixia Chapter would handle the planting and any other costs, which appeared minimal.

Right away, we had a soil pH test done. The results were very high, well over 8.0. This immediately limited us to only wildflowers that could handle high pH, such as Dune Sunflower (Helianthus debilis). Additionally, we discovered the soil was highly compacted. We decided to explore the purchase of good topsoil, and I found a private donor of all the soil. The pH of this soil tested perfectly!

Meanwhile, the City of Jacksonville City Council adopted the resolution required by the Florida Wildflower Foundation to apply for the grant. Unfortunately, the resolution was worded incorrectly and was not acceptable to the foundation. Back to the City Council. The resolution was re-worded  and passed again. Now, on to the grant writing with a staff member from the JEDC. Everything was done just in time for the proposal submission deadline. The City was awarded the grant! Great news, except we were required to purchase actual wildflower plants with the funding, not seeds, because of the current soil problems, which did not take into account the soil that would be donated.

I thought I could now concentrate on finding someone to donate moving all the topsoil to the Shipyards site, another small detail. Also, I was informed by the City staff that we had to provide our own irrigation lines and pay for the water. It was also clear that $500 worth of wildflower plants would not cover two acres, so we had to purchase additional plants or seeds. “No problem,” I thought, always the optimist, “I can get donations for all of this.”

Just when I thought the path was clear, I was informed the Shipyards site was heavily contaminated and that the site should not be disturbed. I was also informed the donated topsoil had to be tested for contaminates before being moved to the site. It took several months to get the $1,000 test donated.


Unbelievably, the results indicated two prohibited contaminates, meaning we could not use the soil. We were also staring at a rapidly closing deadline to use the $500 grant. We put our heads together with our staff contact at the JEDC and contacted the Florida Wildflower Foundation, which approved another site and a switch from plants to seeds. A wonderful site at the intersection of Riverside Avenue and Forest was selected. It is a main through fare from that area to downtown Jacksonville, with more than 10,000 cars passing daily.

In addition to the $500 of seeds purchased by the grant, our chapter spent $291 on more seeds. The planting was accomplished by chapter members in 3 1/2 hours on Nov. 13, 2011. 

Postscript: Seedlings began to pop up in December. Read details of site preparation and planting on the FNPS blog. Look for photos of the project in bloom in May.