Flowers

Shaving Brush Tree

Pseudobombax ellipticum

Elongated acorns occupy branches once all the leaves fall in late winter.

Pseudobombax ellipticum

Pink blows up brown every night.

Pseudobombax ellipticum

Pseudobombax ellipticum

The Pseudobombax pollinator block party swarms for weeks. Can you hear the dembow?

Nymphaea

Naples Botanical Garden Nymphaea

Naples Botanical Garden Nymphaea

Victoria amazonica

Water Garden at the Naples Botanical Garden

Water Garden at the Naples Botanical Garden

Twenty-one hybridizers from around the world submit (via post due to COVID) new varieties for the International Waterlily & Water Gardening Society’s 2020 competition. Read more and see photos of the beautiful flowers here.

Swamp Lily

Crinum americanum

Billy Creek Preserve and Filter Marsh

Blocks from strip malls on four lanes of fifty mile an hour traffic straddling a median crossed at dawn and dusk by Guatemalan day laborers rests fifty-six acres of marsh designed and engineered to clean and filter water destined for the Caloosahatchee. It’s a rad place to ride your bike.

Billy Creek Preserve and Filter Marsh

Click here for more about the preserve.

Reclamation

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Taraxacum officinale

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Kalanchoe daigremontiana

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Portulaca oleracea

 

Succulents and dandelions reclaim sandy soil from a tired, cracking tennis court. In the words of author Richard Powers, “There’s always as much belowground as above.”