A Plant Geek in South Florida - Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden Part II, Fruit, Flowers and Freaks

Although I was totally amazed by the trees at Fairchild, there were many other items fighting for my attention.

I am not sure which banana this was, but I loved its flower.

As you might expect there were also many bromeliads.

The plant combo above was part of a much larger landscape, looked over by tall Bismarkii nobilis.

Flame Violet (Episcia cupreata)

Japanese Lantern (Hibiscus schizopetalus)

Plumeria

Gold Finger Plant (Juanulloa aurantica)

Cannonball Tree (Couroupita guianensis)

This waterlily had good company in the form of some Chihuly sculpture.

One of my favorite parts of Fairchild was the Madagascar garden. The thorny trunks on the left belong to Pachypodium lamerei.

I am not sure what this was lying on the floor of the rainforest garden.

Wax Jambu (Syzygium samarangense)

The size of jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus) would make any man tree feel proud.

African rainbow lizards were all over the garden, and they are also starting to show up on Florida's ever-increasing invasive species list.

This will end our visit to Fairchild Gardens, but if you would like to see more photos click here for my complete set. 

Up next from Florida, I enter a world far more foreign and exotic to me than any tropical garden - I go to a shopping mall.

A Plant Geek in South Florida - Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden Pt. I, Trees

When planning our trip to Florida the one place I wanted to see more than any other was Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden.  While visiting their website to get particulars, I noticed they were offering free admission on the first Wednesday of each month this summer, including July 4th, so there was no doubt as to where I would spend my Independence Day.  If you want to know more about Fairchild, I suggest you visit their website where their story is certainly told better.  However, I would just like to say that if you ever find yourself in the vicinity of Miami, you must go, this is more than a pretty garden, it is a world class facility.

Let's descend the steps at the visitor's center and enter the garden.

Being a tree person, I was immediately impressed with rainbow eucalyptus (Eucalyptus deglupta). It has bark that can make men weep.

There were many Ficus in the garden. This Ficus racemosa was part of an art installation from Yoko Ono, one of her Wish Trees. We also saw one a couple of years ago at MOMA in New York. It is hard to tell from the photo, but the diameter of this trunk was easily 10'.

Ficus subcordata

This ponytail palm (Beaucarnea recurvata) is not technically a palm, and may not even be a tree, but it was spectacular.

I could not find out what tree this was, but I love the womanly trunk flare.
* (Thanks to Barry for the subsequent ID of Pachira aquatica.)

Care to climb the silk floss tree (Ceiba speciosa)?

As one would expect, Fairchild has a fantastic palm collection, and if I was British I'd say it left me gobsmacked. Since I am not a Brit, and it was July 4th, here is a photo appropriate for the day.

Copernicia macroglossa, pettycoat palm

These are Bailey palms from Cuba (Copernica baileyana). They looked to be made of concrete, and I could imagine planting of line of them to resemble a colonnade.

I didn't get the name of these palms, but liked how they were underplanted with Philodendron.

The trees pictured below are Haitian oil palms (Attalea crassispatha). In the ecological nightmare that is Haiti they are extinct, and these 15 are the last ones left in the world.

We will end with yet another shot of the plant geek and his Bismarckii nobilis.

We will continue our Fairchild tour in the next post with a bit more color.

A Plant Geek in South Florida - Victoria Park

While I was on vacation, one of my morning walks took me into a part of old Fort Laurderdale, Victoria Park.  This neighborhood was built on what was originally a live oak (Quercus virginiana) hammock, and this tree is still dominant in the city's canopy.  Hammocks are higher areas where a different set of species grow than in the vast surrounding wetlands.  These were choice areas for settlement in early south Florida before so many of the wetlands were drained and filled, now very little of either eco-systems is evident in the city.  When Henry Flagler was building his railroad down the coast of Florida, he wanted to route the Lauderdale portion through this hammock, but "the mother of Miami", Julia Tuttle, convinced him to take it further westward.

It appears that most of the houses in Victoria Park were built in the early decades of the 20th century.  Many of the homes are attractive, stuccoed, one-story bungalows that have been added to and renovated over the years.  As nice as the homes were, it was the landscaping that impressed this plant geek, and it was not just the species used, but how they were used.  I like lush full gardens, even when they border on being over-planted, and this neighborhood had lush full gardens in spades.

There were several Plumeria around the neighborhood that assumed small tree proportions.

... as do other houseplants.

Schefflera actinophylla

One house had pink pineapples planted near the driveway.

An apartment buildings on the edge of the neighborhood had a Norfolk Island pine (Araucaria heterophylla) growing behind it that easily cleared the four story roof line.

As I mentioned in a previous Florida post, my favorite palm, (one that gives me serious zone envy), is the Bismarck palm (Bismarckia nobilis), and I saw many fine examples on my walk.

There were also many fine examples of my new infatuation, the royal poinciana tree or flamboyant tree (Delonix regia).

Mangoes anyone?

Not all the landscaping was good. The picture below was taken at a another apartment or condo building, so I feel comfortable saying this was likely a professional installation. Which makes me wonder why they would have left those two small strips of turf. This corner also makes me remember that rock necklaces look better on Wilma Flinestone.

On my next Florida post we will head south of Miami to a botanical wonder, Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden.