April 24, 2011
We returned to Sleeping Turtles Preserve North this morning. The river was higher than it was when Janet and I were there in February, so we couldn’t get as close to the water. But because of rains the bog area was huge and gave us extra opportunities to photograph diverse foliage. Still, the first and second photos show the leaves of the familiar saw palmetto in the bog. The leaf in the first one is under water, and the leaf in the second one clearly has been. . . . Spring—or maybe it’s even summer—is well under way here, and I found plants that I didn’t know grow in Florida: Queen Anne’s Lace, Pickerel Weed, and Cattails. The bog is so green! As in Ohio, the shades of the spring greens here vary widely. . . . I wasn’t at all familiar with the plant in the fourth photo. Its flowers are about an inch and a half in diameter. Looking it up on the web, I see that this plant goes by the names Rosepink, Rose Pink, American Centaury, Bitterbloom, Bitter Floom, and Square-Stemmed Sabbatia. My friend Jean says she grew up (near Sarasota) calling them Marsh Pinks. No wonder botanists like my husband prefer calling plants by their Latin names. This one is Sabatia angularis, and it grows in all these US states: AL, AR, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, MI, MO, MS, NC, NJ, NM, NY, OH, OK, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA, WI, and WV as well as the Canadian province of Ontario. . . . Even spending half my life in Florida for the past six or seven years, I can’t get over the way plants grow all over other plants down here, maybe especially near water. This oak tree and its decorations are hanging over the Myakka River. . . . The palm tree reflected in the river makes me think of a flower head.
Romancing Reality 