Focus on rebuilding landscapes with salt-tolerant native plants to mitigate future storm risks.
Checkout the replay from this live webinar with Davis from Wilcox Nursery and Mallory Foster of Wisehands LLC.
Get some great tips on home gardening with native plants and how to raise chickens, as well as a great Q & A session with students of St. Petersburg College!
Hey guys, welcome back. We’re here again at Bonner Park and we’re going to talk about one of our most iconic important but also kind of misunderstood ecosystems, the mangrove ecosystem.
So, the mangrove ecosystem actually covers about 469,000 acres, mostly in Central and South Florida. And they’re also responsible for providing nursery habitat for about 75% of game fish and also about 90% of commercial fish. So, they’re super important and today we’re going to learn how to identify three of the major ones that you’ll find in our area.
Mangroves live and thrive in a saltwater environment, which means that each of the species are adapted a unique strategy to dealing with the salt water.
Red mangrove is a salt excluder, which means it prevents a saltwater from getting into its roots in the first place through membranes.
The black mangrove and the white mangrove both excrete the saltwater through glands on their leaves. These different adapted strategies make the mangrove one of the most unique plants in the world and that it can thrive in these very salient environments.
Red mangrove or Rhizophora mangle is one of the most easy to identify of the three mangrove species that we’re going to be talking about today. The reason being is that it’s going to occur closest to the shore where it’s an very silty, mucky and low oxygen content soil. So some of the adaptions that it’s made to this type of environment is it has what are called prop roots, which also has a popular nickname of the walking mangroves because it looks like it’s actually walking out into the shore, so that helps stabilize it.
In addition to that, it has what we call aerial roots, so these are roots that hang down from the trunk and the stem and that helps to actually bring oxygen into the plant. Another way that we identify all these mangroves is by their unique leaf characteristics.
Red mangrove has a very shiny and smooth, dark green upper side with a dark yellow vein, pretty pronounced vein on the underside. It’s a very light, a light green to it, so luckily this time of the year we have developing fruits on it. I want to talk a little bit about what makes these fruits so unique on mangroves.
All mangroves are what we call viviparous and viviparous means they bear live young. When the flower gets germinated on the mangroves, the entire plant begins to develop while still attached to the parent tree. When it does reach maturity, it drops off and I’m sure everybody has seen those long water called propagules that have washed up on the beach, different tidal areas, coastal areas, those are baby seedling mangroves, the red one being the most easy to identify because it’s the largest and you’ll see them floating everywhere. So we can see here, we actually have some developing right now, so you can see what’s left of the flower. And a red mango flower is a yellowish flower blooming in spring and summer. And this is the new mangrove that’s developing from here. So, this has some time to go before it’s going to be mature enough to drop off and carry on a new generation of mangroves.
So here we’ve got black mangroves. This is avicennia germinans and you’ll typically see them growing in with the red mangroves. But they will also be more Upland. I’m one of the most identifying characteristics, if you look down in here amongst all the red mangrove prop roots are what are called pneumatophores.
Sometimes you’ll hear them called a dead man’s fingers and they are little structures that come off of the root that will help aerate the plant. So aside from that, we’ve got a fairly simple leaf elliptical in shape and underneath it’s got a little bit of pubescence on it, a little bit of grayish pubescent. The veins are a little bit more pronounced than the red mangroves and they will also kind of admit a little bit of a sheen. And that is actually the salt water being extruded from the leaves. So right now, we’re going to head a little bit back and we’re going to check out the white mangroves.
Now that we’ve worked our way up from the red mangrove being closest to the shore, to the black mangrove, this is where we’re going to find our next mangrove, which is the white mangrove laguncularia racemosa.
So, one of the easiest ways to identify this one is that it will be the furthest away from the shore. Also, the leaves here, have a very unique and obvious circular portion to them, much wider at the top and the bottom are both very similar in coloration. It also does have that yellow vein going across the center.
The thing that’s really unique about these white ones is that if you notice on each and every one of the petals, which is this portion that comes off of the stem and attaches to the leaf, there’s two nubs. These knobs are called nectarines and they actually excrete sugar. They don’t excrete the salt white mangroves like the black mangroves do excrete salt, but that’s through their roots and other portions on the leaf.
Whereas these nubs were originally thought to excrete salt, they actually excrete a sugary substance, which some scientists think is actually meant to attract a certain type of insects that help the plant. So that’s one of the most unique features and characteristics of this white mangrove. It’s also the least cold tolerant.
So, you won’t find it further North where we have a small scattering of black and red mangroves, for example, in the panhandle and small sections. So furthermore, there is a species of tree called the Buttonwood silver and green Buttonwood. We don’t have any available here at this park to show you, but that’s also considered the fourth mangrove, even though it’s not officially in this type of mangrove ecosystem inundated with saltwater, you’re going to find that furthest back and they do occur along with these other three species of mangroves. So you might be thinking of how you could potentially use some of these mangrove species and your own yard or habitat. Generally right now, red mangrove is the only one that’s commercially available.
It can actually be used and freshwater, which is the interesting thing about all of these plants is they don’t necessarily need saltwater, but they can tolerate it. But we’ve had some awesome customers come through the years who have used red mangroves in ponds different types of aquarium setups or even just planting in different areas of their yard. So red mangrove, we do have available generally with a white and black mangroves, you’re going to have to go through a more of a restoration oriented company. But red mangrove can be used in the landscape and definitely our buttonwoods, which we’ll cover in later episodes.
So, our mangroves are super important part of our coastal systems and they’re also really unique and complex plants that are really cool to learn about.
Florida privet or Forestiera segregata is a wildlife attracting superstar.
So Florida privet can grow about 10 to 15 feet tall and eight to 10 feet wide, will grow in full sun to part shade and is salt and drought tolerant. It flowers all year round with a peak in late winter or early spring and is a great attractor for pollinators. These flowers are followed by a dark blue Berry that provide for a whole bunch of different wildlife, especially birds. So if you’re out in the wild, there’s a few different ways that you can identify the Florida privet.
One of them is the leaf shape. It’s got a nice shiny green, it’s a oblong and a on the underside. It’s got this kind of paleish green color and they are arranged in an opposite pattern, meaning that a leaf will come off on the same points, the same growth node as all of the others. So you can see that they come out to here. Right now they’re actually almost through flowering and the berry production is actually starting. So you can see these little tiny clusters here are all going to turn into bigger Blackish berries. And then the other thing that Florida privet is known for is that it has a very irregular growth habit.
So you can see all of the branches kind of crisscrossing and jutting out and growing different ways. This kind of adds to that dense growth habit that so many different types of wildlife expect from the privet. So this plan is really easy to incorporate into a landscape. It responds well to hedging and pruning can be trained into a small tree and if left a growth has maintenance can lend itself to a more natural landscape. So thanks for watching another one of our videos, guys. If you enjoyed it, be sure to hit the like button. We love getting your feedback. So leave us a comment down below and we’ll see you guys next time.
The slash pine, also known as Pinus elliottii is a fast-growing evergreen tree. The splash pine generally in this area is 50 to 60 feet tall and about 30 to 35 feet wide. It likes full sun and part sun environments and can grow in soils as different as loam, sand, or even occasionally wet types of soils. But one of the most important things is that it needs an acidic pH level, which means it can’t be in a highly alkaline environment.
So it’s really cool to note that pine trees are different than our flowering species. So flowering trees, obviously having flowers, pine trees are in a family of trees called the conifers or the gymnosperms essentially meaning a naked seed.
The difference between a pine tree and a regular flowering tree is that pine trees have male and female cones. So the large cones that you see are actually the female parts of the plant and the male part is a small cone that actually releases pollen. Conifers being a little bit different is that they use the wind to actually pollinate the female cone with the male pollen.
A few really easy ways to identify a slash pine, one of them being with the needles. So these needles are arranged in what are also called fascicles. Generally you’re going to find them in groups of two needles or even sometimes three needles. They’re going to be between six and 12 inches long. This one’s about six to eight inches. This one’s about eight to 10 but 12 inches max, and the smallest they’ll get is about six inches.
Another great way to identify slash pines is the cone. Generally the cone is going to be two, three, four inches at the most about six inches. And this is the female cone. It’s important to understand that we don’t have the male cone here right now, but the male cone is a lot smaller. So this is the female cone and it’s cool because this portion actually opens up and on the inside here is a sticky resin that actually helps to capture the pollen from the male cone. But another easy way to identify it, it’s going to be about yay big four inches, six inches at the most.
Another great way to identify slash Pines in our area is the very beautiful, deeply plated reddish to Brown bark. You’ll see it in pretty large plates that have these little furrow separated and it’s cool to note that in between these furrows and underneath them are different little spots where insects can hide, which is one of the reasons why birds like it so much because there’s lots of different insects you can eat. There’s even what we call it, a little bagworm moth off hanging out right here. I’ve even found scorpion sometimes hiding underneath these, so these are really important aspects of the wildlife value of it and another great way to identify them.
Wildlife Value
Pine trees offer a host of benefits to wildlife. One of them is the cover that they provide for lots of different species, especially our native bird species. It’s also really important to note that older trees should be left alone and eventually will become what we call snags, which is a dead tree that cavity-nesting birds absolutely need to be able to survive and breed.
Some of these examples include great horned owls and different species of woodpeckers. Also, different types of animals, including turkeys and some small mammals will actually eat the cone and the fruit that’s located inside of the cone.
Landscape Uses
This is a great tree to plant in your yard if you’re looking for a naturalistic look, but the pine tree alone has a beautiful, very Regal look to it already. It can also be used in groupings and then different native plants can be used around it. Things like Saul, Paul meadow, a beauty Berry, different types of wildflowers. It’s also cool to note that the needles over time will actually increase the acidity of your soil, and it creates kind of a shifting sun type of shade, which is really great for things like azaleas, chameleons, Dogwood, a lot of those acid-loving flowering plants that like that shifting shade type of environment.
Thank you guys so much for being a part of this plant profile of Slash Pines. So leave a comment down below. Let us know what you think, or if you have any other ideas of anything else that we can cover in the future.
This plant hearkens back to prehistoric times as the only cycad native to North America. The Coontie is a nearly indestructible plant that you can put almost anywhere.
So Zamia integrifolia, also known as the Coontie is a slow-growing evergreen pom like shrub that grows about three to four feet tall and about three to five feet wide and tolerates full sun to full shade. And also a variety of different well-draining soils sometimes referred to as palms.
Coontie are actually cycads, meaning that they predate flowering plants and they’re super cool because this is a plant that was around when the dinosaurs were here. This is something a T-Rex could have stepped on. Cycads are gymnosperms and we talked a little bit about that during our slash pine video. So if you want, go ahead there to check it out. But basically, that means they reproduced by male and female cones.
So when we get a little bit closer, we have the opportunity to see the male and female cones together. So here we’ve got the male cone, so it’s a little bit taller, a little bit slimmer, and this is what houses all of the pollen. So you can see kind of the pollen sacks in there and we can come over a little bit this way and see the female cone. Now the female cone is much larger and this one’s mature and you can see that this houses the orange-reddish fruit that’s inside of it.
So because the Coontie is such an adaptable plant, you can use it for things like edging, a low growing shrub, understory plantings, ground covering, and you can even grow it in a pot every few years. I do like to cut the Coontie back and let it flush out with new growth.
However, this is not a plant that requires regular maintenance. The Coontie is one of the easiest plants to grow, and it’s a surefire way to add a little native Florida to your landscape.
