the season's first Air Potatoes

I found the first air potato sprouts today - a couple in my compost pile and a couple near the south boundary of the meeting property. Is this a sign of summer?

It has been nice, not seeing them.

Indian Pink and Blue Flag Iris

This Indian Pink (Spigelia marilandica) was planted in our front retention pond by Karen. According to the Atlas of Florida Vascular Plants it's not been reported in Alachua County. It's been reported in a few panhandle counties, and is common fairly north, but its status as a native here may be a little shaky. However it certainly looks nice.

It's just up the bank from the Blue Flag Iris (Iris virginica). We planted the first few last year, and have put in several more this year. Last year we had one bloom; this year we're on our fourth and we have two more coming. I'm looking forward to having them grow in more densely so that we'll have multiple blooms to look all through the blooming season, rather than having them come one at time. 

Hmmm. I see that the Florida Atlas doesn't have this in Alachua county either, though it is shown along both coasts. And they don't use our common name for it either: they prefer Virginia Iris.    And they use Woodland Pink for the Spigelia marilandica.

Green Dragon Flowering

Today when I went to the meetinghouse to water the new long leaf pine I walked back to the creek and was glad to see that the Green Dragon (Arisaema dracontium) has returned everywhere that we saw it last year.    This is a relative of the Jack in the Pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) but as you can see its spadix is rather more stretched out than "Jack" is.

I had been somewhat anxious since they all disappeared last fall shortly after I sprayed herbicide on Air Potatoes. I had hoped that it coincidence, that it happened to be the time for the Green Dragon to be done for the year, and this seems to be the case. All of the plants I saw had flowers. We only discovered them last fall, so we don't know if they flowered last year, but we don't remember having seen any berries. It may be that they appreciated the wetter spring this year.