Blue Curls!

Blue Curls (Trichostema dichotomum), from my yard in Downtown Orlando (Fall 1998)

This weekend I was pleased to discover the re-seeding of Blue Curls in my Gainesville yard! It was one of my favorite wildflowers in the backyard of my first house when I lived in Orlando. At that time I bought some from a native plant nursery & it re-seeded pretty well in my yard. However, I was not having such luck in Gainesville yet.

For my Gainesville yard attempt, about 4 years ago, I collected wild Blue Curls seed from plants along the San Felasco Mountain Bike Trail. I planted them in little pots, but they never came up that year. However, the following spring they finally came up & I was able to plant 3 of them. They grew big, but only one flowered & not for that long. So I was thinking I lost them after they died last winter. I had kind of forgotten about them until yesterday I noticed about 30 seedlings growing where the one did flower! I am now quite excited to have another addition to my seed bank!

I have also had luck propagating several other wildflowers from wild seed & even got wire grass to seed. As I am trying to grow mostly pineland species, I have found starting in pots with potting soil is not the best and certainly advise against the use of mulch if you want to have any re-seeding. As Florida pinelands are characterized by low organic matter due to fire & leaching, removal of topsoil & organic matter works best for me (especially when rehabbing a formerly sodded yard).

Horsemint (Monarda punctata)

I found a pretty good trick for my house in the duck pond. First I scrape off the weeds & top couple inches of top soil. Then I dig a hole elsewhere in my yard about 2-3 feet deep until I hit the yellow sands. I dig these sands up & try to spread it an inch or 2 thick across the cleared area. Next sow in the wild seed in the spring. The only real resource other than sweat that goes into this is that watering is needed to get it going if the spring is a dry one. In Florida pinelands, there is quite a bit of natural variability in wildflowers depending on how wet the spring is (of course burning plays a huge role too). So I do water as I put a lot of work into gathering and planting wild seed. Of course being downtown & being opposed to mulch, I have many weeds trying to come in and also some of my native wildflowers (such as horsemint, (right)) can crowd new wildflowers I am trying to establish. When I do my yellow sand technique, I usually don’t have weeds the first year, so that is a big head start. However, they eventually find their way in & I have become very good at identifying seedlings when they first pop up, so I can keep overcrowding down.

Here are a couple more pictures of flowers in my Gainesville yard from past years:

Standing Cypress (Ipomopsis rubra)

Rough Skullcap (Scutellaria integrafolia)