Common Nightshade

Common Nightshade
Solanum americanuum
Family: Solanaceae (nightshade)



POISONOUS - foliage and fruit. The green berries contain solanine and can be fatal if eaten in sufficient quantities. Some sources state that the fully ripe berry which is shiny black is edible, but most sources recommend avoiding ingesting the berries at all.

Cardinal

NORTHERN CARDINAL
Cardinalis cardinalis




Male


Female

Leafless beaked orchid or Frost-flowered Neottia

LEAFLESS BEAKED ORCHID
Sacoila lanceolata
Family: Orchidaceae (orchid)



The reddish orange native (Florida) terrestrial orchid grows on leafless spikes 3 feet tall.



This orchid is an unusual find, but can be found throughout central Florida (and Pollywog Creek in SW Florida) in wet, pine flatwoods and sandhills - flowering in the spring and summer.

Day-flower

DAY-FLOWER
Commelina erecta
Family: Commelinaccae (spiderwort or day-flower)


The day-flower has 2 lateral blue petals and 1 smaller white petal, 3 greenish and equal sepals, 6 stamens (3 fertile, 3 unfertile).



The leaves are alternate, lanceolate or elliptic and succulent.



The flowers can be found through Florida in late winter, spring, summer and fall, on dry, sandy soil and cultivated sites.

Florida Wildflower Coloring Book (PDF)

Roseling or Pink Spiderwort

PINK SPIDERWORT
Cuthbertia ornata
Family: Commelinaceae (spiderwort or dayflower)

The Pink Spiderwort has 3 pink or rose petals with wavy margins. The flower has 3 sepals, 6 fertile stamens and hairy filaments.

The leaves are few, less than 3mm wide, alternate, grasslike and linear.

It can be found in south and central Florida in dry pinelands and oak woods, in late winter, spring, summer and fall.

Great Crested Flycatcher

Great Crested Flycatcher
Myiarchus crinitus

The First of May

Dragonfly

The Dragon-fly
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Today I saw the dragon-fly
Come from the wells where he did lie.
An inner impulse rent the veil
Of his old husk: from head to tail
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.
He dried his wings: like gauze they grew;
Thro' crofts and pastures wet with dew
A living flash of light he flew.

Mockingbird

I've been watching a pair of mockingbirds as they have claimed an abandoned nest in the Japanese honeysuckle vine that covers a section of fence in our backyard.



Last spring, a pair of mockingbirds also nested in the honeysuckle vine, but used a different nest that has been abandoned this year. The nest these mockingbirds have rebuilt was unused last year.

March 23 - before the rebuilding...


April 3


April 4


April 6


April 7


April 8


April 9

"I sincerely congratulate you on the arrival of the mockingbird. Learn all the children to venerate it as a superior being in the form of a bird, or as a being which will haunt them if any harm is done to itself or its eggs." Thomas Jefferson

The Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) is the state bird of Florida.

Glorious

Weeds

Weeds are flowers, too...

Pink Burst

Attraction

Pollen