Time with Florida’s Plants and People

In February 2023 we escaped Illinois’ winter for the warmth and beauty of Florida where the picturesque live oaks drip with Spanish moss and take me back to another time and place. The old trees stand tall as if posing for a still painting. An occasional breeze slowly sways the Spanish moss, mesmerizing me into the Southern way of life. The trees take me back to a time when women wore cotton dresses and sat under the shade of the live oak trees – maybe the same ones I see today. 

Oak in Micanope, Florida

On this trip I traveled the length of Florida, where I saw amazing plants in yards, parks, rivers, lakes, museums, and towns. Each plant is wonderful in its own way and add to my overall experiences of Florida’s various places and times.

Vizcaya Museum and Gardens in Miami
In Miami, the Southern live oaks (Quercus virginiana) in the gardens of Vizcaya stand among elegance and wealth. The museum and gardens represent a different time and economic status. It was built by James Deering, the Vice President of International Harvester (IH), in 1916 as his winter home. This museum makes me think of my dad and grandpa slaving away in the hot Canton IH factory, working the furnaces and building plows – a nut and bolt at a time. Somehow their sweat and tears paid for all that extravagance, even if it was built 50 years before their time. 

Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, Miami, Florida

I particularly like the center courtyard of the home. It is surrounded in four corners by tropical plants. Originally the courtyard was open to the open sky, but over time a glass roof was added to protect it from hurricanes. 

Vizcaya Courtyard Garden

The formal gardens have several sections, including an orchidarium. The garden’s large trees have branches covered in small ferns. Aesthetically, the big old trees match the old garden buildings and water features. At one end is a natural area with mangrove trees growing in ocean backwaters. I particularly like a small secret garden with a grotto for sitting at one end and sensitive plant (Mimosa pudica) groundcover in the middle.

Vizcaya tree with ferns

Vizcaya mangrove

Secret Grotto Garden

Orchidarium

Marjorie K. Rawlings State Park
Although I am impressed and mesmerized by the Vizcaya world, the Cross Creek world feels more like home. It is a contrast to see the two different worlds. Both locations take me to a different time, but time travel is strongest for me in Cross Creek. This community in Florida feels calmer and slower. Maybe it is its juxtaposition between two lakes, the hundred-year-old live oaks dripped in Spanish moss, or the historical places to visit. 

Chickens under an orange tree in Cross Creek, Florida

It's a place to slow down and think differently. A place to see nature at its rawest, where hardwoods and palms grow together in the adjacent hammock area (According to Wikipedia, “A Hammock is a term used in the southeastern United States for stands of trees, usually hardwood, that form an ecological island in a contrasting ecosystem.”). I picture Marjorie writing The Yearling on her front porch and can feel the cool breeze wafting gingerly through the thin screens. I can smell the coffee brewing and cake baking in her old cook stove. 

Marjorie K. Rawlings house in Cross Creek, FL

Front Porch in Cross Creek, FL

I picture myself there in a thin, cotton dress typing out a story of what I’m seeing and experiencing. Her gardens and chickens take me to my childhood. I feel the cool soil between my toes and the sharp talons of the rooster digging into my thigh. The perfume smell of orange blossoms says “dress up” and the composting oranges on the hammock trail say it’s garden chore time.

Cross Creek Garden

Hammock Trail at Cross Creek

A Place in Time – Silver Springs
Another surprise and highlight of the Ocala, Florida area was our boat ride on the silver river to see the manatees, monkeys, and alligator in the swamps of Silver Springs State Park. As we trolled into the park’s narrow waterway in Terrys’ jon boat we went back in time to when people lived on the swamp. The people here made their livelihood in the swamp among the plants and animals. Yet, where did the exotic monkeys come from? Local folklore says they escaped from past Tarzan movies, others say the escaped from a zoo, and still others say they were released by a tour guide to add whim and wonder on his river cruises. Regardless, the monkeys are here and though they thrive, they are said to be disease infested and risk extrication. 

Wild rhesus macaque monkeys at Silver Springs

Silver River in Florida

The crystal-clear blue waters of the silver river are mesmerizing. They flow in and around blooming bald cypress and newly spring-leafed water tupelo. Along the river banks grow yellow water lily (Nuphar lutea), pickerel weed (Pontederia cordata), swamp lily (Crinum Americanum), cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis), duck potato arrowhead (Sagittaria lancifolia), water lettuce (Pistia stratiotes), and more. So lush, green, and life giving to the alligators, turtles, fish, birds, and other critters that live there. The monstrous, gentle manatee feed on seagrasses and other plants growing beneath the water. Joining the exotic monkey are exotic common water hyacinth (Pontederia crassipes) and wild taro (Colocasia esculenta)

Water plants under Cypress tree

Manatee and yellow water lily

Near the spring headwaters we encounter the glass bottom boats and even more kayakers and paddle boarders. Several days later, Lynn and I walked along the water in the park with the live oak trees and blooming azalea. 

Silver Springs State Park, Florida

Miami Beach Botanical Garden
Botanical gardens are living plant museums that change constantly. We had visited the Miami Botanical Gardens in October 2019. This time we saw some old favorites and found some new ones. I am always amazed by the multicolored rainbow eucalyptus (Eucalyptus deglupta) tree’s bark that looks like it was haphazardly painted and the Ylang-Ylang (Cananga odorata) trees fragrant Chanel No. 5 smelling yellow blossoms.

Ylang-Ylang tree blossoms

Rainbow Eucalyptus Tree

This time I was blown away by the gigantic weeping fig (Ficus benjamina) tree in a far corner. I’ve grown this as a houseplant and seen it in many malls, but this naturally growing tree was bigger than any I have ever seen. 

Weeping Fig at Miami Botanical Garden

Other highlights this time include the Swiss cheese plant (Monstera deliciosa) growing up a palm tree, and orchids growing on a log across a koi pond next to a Talipot palm (Corypha umbraculifora). 

Koi Pond at Miami Botanical Garden

Swiss Cheese Plant on Palm tree

From there we walk to Miami beach to stroll the boardwalk. Along the way I am shocked to see the baobab trees (Adansonia digitata) growing in Collins Park. I’ve seen pictures of these online, but in person they are even more unusual and interesting. Looking mostly like a big, fat bottle, only a few delicate textured branches and composite leaves grow out the top of the trees’ massive trunk. 

Baobab Tree in Miami's Collins Park

In nearby Soundscape Park are large metal structures that make the bougainvillea appear like living, bright purple, tree sculptures. 

Bougainvillea "trees" in Miami

Cedar Lakes & Woods 
At the Vizcaya gift shop in Miami, I purchased The Garden Tourist’s Florida book by Jana Milbocker. It highlights many gardens in Florida that I have visited or hope to visit in the future. It’s where we got the idea to visit the Cedar Lakes Woods and Gardens near Ocala, Florida. It’s a private residence on an old gravel quarry that has been converted to elaborate gardens with water features and garden structures. We weren’t there at a peak time for the gardens or water plants, but it was still nice to visit. 

Cedar Lakes Woods and Gardens, Florida

The bridges, structures, and red colored arbors give the garden an oriental feel. It has several masses of bamboo, including a blue bamboo (Bambusa chungii) near the waterfall we walked behind. There was also a 142-year-old boxwood bonsai tree. 

Rhonda Walks Behind a Waterfall

Boxwood Bonsai

Blooming plants included pansy, golden trumpet tree (Handroanthus chrysanthus), Chinese fringe flower (Loropetalum chinense), black jewel orchid (Ludisia discolor), and many camelias.  

Golden Trumpet Tree

Chinese Fringe Flower

 

Black Jewel Orchid

Family Time 
Mostly we enjoyed time with family, which was the real reason for our visit to Florida. We reminisced and we make new memories.

At Cousin Terrys in Orange Lake, Florida, I too feel that simpler mindset. In front of me are large live oak trees – several hundred years old. They are stately and proud. Their many branches create strong structure to keep the huge tree upright through floods and hurricanes and droughts. Spanish moss drapes its branches. This tree too takes me back in time. What has this tree seen through its many years? Did Marjorie walk beneath it in 1930? How many hurricanes has it endured, and why didn’t the adjacent similar trees in Terry’s yard make it through the same winds a few years ago?

View from Terry's porch

Many plants take me back to memories of locations or people. Terry took me to a beautiful property where he picks up sticks for a begonia hobby grower. The begonias reminded me of college days working or exploring or studying in the greenhouses and gardens, of time spent planting begonias and other annuals for Brickman while running a landscape maintenance crew in Chicagoland, of writing about begonias as an Extension Horticulturist, or of planting them at my home in Havana. 

Escargo begonia

Begonia shade house

With Derek and Maria, we enjoyed time by the pool and lots of great food. We ate at PF Chang’s, the Margaritaville Resort near Hollywood beach, Sergio’s in Little Havana, the Neverland Coffee Bar near our Airbnb, pizza at home, flavored Five-guys milkshakes (they denied Maria a plain vanilla), and baked tortellini at home. 

Pool at Derek and Maria's 

Little Havana Mural

As I sit at my desk in rainy, cold Havana, Illinois, memories of the plants and people of Florida swirl in my brain. I look forward to our next trip to Florida. Next time I want to see more botanical gardens in Gainesville and Miami, hike natural areas, camp in the Ocala National Forest, take another boat ride, kayak the swamps, and ride our Tiger motorcycle on backroads. Until then, memories of family laughs and the peaceful sway of the Spanish moss in the live oak trees take me away to a peaceful, happy place.