Beautiful & Wide-Ranging Buttonbush

Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis) is full of fabulous white round balls of flowers in spring and summer.  The genus name, Cephalanthus, means flowering (anthus) head (cephal), and the species name, occidentalis, means of or from the West.  This beautiful plant of moist places…

Weeds of Wednesday: Lovely Lantana ??

In 2012 Don Morris (Class of 2009) took this photo of a zebra longing butterfly that had come to nectar upon the lantana (Lantana strigocamara) that I had plucked -- to talk about this Evil Invader. That butterfly reminded me…

Life in the Treetops – sort of

Though participants in the 2018 Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory (FMEL) volunteer nature stewardship class were looking for mosquito larvae in holes of the great Atlantic land crab (Cardisoma guanhumi) and in native tank bromeliads (Tillandsia  sp.), some Lepidoptera -- moths and…

Weeds of Wednesday: Tropical Milk-Weed?

Growing in the Oslo Riverfront Conservation Area (ORCA) parking lot amongst wild coffee (Psychotria nervosa) and last's week's Wednesday "weed", beggarticks (Bidens alba), is what some folks call tropical milkweed (Asclepias curassavica). Other common names include scarlet milkweed, Mexican milkweed, bloodflower,…