Cabbage Palms
Guilt & the Cabbage Palm
Article by F.E. “Jack” Putz
To shade a window through which streams far too much summer sunshine, we might plant a large cabbage palm (Sabal palmetto). For $200 or so, we can have a tall palm dropped off next to a pre-dug planting hole. If we can get our neighbors to share a truckload, the price per palm will drop. And if my neighbor Richard gets involved and his tractor’s hydraulics cooperate, manipulating a two-ton palm into a planting hole and holding it upright while strapping on braces will be greatly facilitated.
While I’d like to look out the window at a large palm and would love to hear the fronds susurrating in the breeze, the idea of buying a tree that was yanked out of the ground for our horticultural benefit gives me pause. For one thing, research on cabbage palm growth rates reveals that while they can grow quickly under ideal conditions, a forest-grown palm with a twenty-foot trunk may be more than 200 years old. That extraordinary figure is derived from the number of leaves a cabbage palm in the wild produces annually–let’s say three on average–with a per-leaf height increment of less than an inch. To this, you must add the length of time an average cabbage palm spends building a big stem belowground in the wild, which is about thirty-five years. This peculiar establishment-growth phase is necessary for palms because, once they commence aboveground growth, their stems can no longer grow in diameter. Using these estimates, it’s easy to see why I expect that the palm we’re contemplating buying started to show an aboveground stem around the time Andrew “Sharp Knife” Jackson was slave-raiding Seminole villages in the new state of
Florida. I’m not worried about our proposed transplant surviving, but, somehow, I feel some chagrin about messing with an organism of such an exalted age.
We could go for a smaller palm that is younger by perhaps a century, but transplantation success increases with size. This phenomenon, which is perhaps peculiar to palms, is related to their capacity for stem water storage, as discovered by N.M. Holbrook. She measured water flux into and out of stem storage with time-domain reflectometry probes inserted into the stem of potted palms placed on very sensitive balances constructed from steel I-beams. The pots were covered to keep rainwater from reaching the roots. I now suspect that her water balance calculations were off a bit due to rainwater absorption up in the corona, but that hypothesis remains to be tested.
My initial concerns about the effects of our proposed palm purchase on wild populations of our majestic state tree are somewhat mollified by its abundance. In fact, researchers and park managers are trying to figure out why cabbage palm populations seem to be expanding at the expense of both pines and hardwoods.
Ecologists in these parts are prone to invoke fire suppression whenever some population goes haywire, but this explanation doesn’t work in the case of cabbage palms. When Kelly McPherson was studying the palm population explosion issue, she subjected large and small cabbage palms to both high and low intensities of controlled burns in summer and winter for two years. Even her most exaggerated incendiary efforts caused little permanent damage. Lacking bark and the sensitive cambial tissues it protects, palm stems are unharmed by even the hottest fires. The terminal bud is buried deeply down among the leaf bases, where it, too, is well protected from fires.
Lacking bark and the sensitive cambial tissues it protects, cabbage palm stems are unharmed by the hottest fires. Cabbage palm coronas burn spectacularly, scorching back branches of other trees that would otherwise encroach. Photos by David Fox.
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Palmetto
Editor: Marjorie Shropshire ● Visual Key Creative, Inc. ● palmetto@fnps.org ● (772) 285-4286
(ISSN 0276-4164) Copyright 2021, Florida Native Plant Society, all rights reserved. No part of the contents of this magazine may be reproduced by any means without written consent of the editor. Palmetto is published four times a year by the Florida Native Plant Society (FNPS) as a benefit to members. The observations and opinions expressed in attributed columns and articles are those of the respective authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official views of the Florida Native Plant Society or the editor, except where otherwise stated.
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Features
2 Guilt & the Cabbage Palm
A full grown cabbage palm can be delivered to the home landscape, but these forest-grown palms with twenty-foot trunks may be more than 200 years old.
Article by F.E. “Jack” Putz
4 Cabbage Palms and Lethal Bronzing
Cabbage palms have earned a reputation for being survivors, but the specter of Lethal Bronzing Disease threatens Floridaʼs state tree.
Article by Jono Miller
8 Coastal Scenes Through the Eyes
of an Artist and a Scientist
Landscape painter Eleanor Blair and ecologist Jack Putz collaborate to interpret what they observed at Withlacoochee Gulf Preserve.
Article by Eleanor Blair and F. E. “Jack” Putz
13 The Palm Family (Arecaceae)
An overview of the palm family worldwide, including Floridaʼs 12 native palm species.
Article by Ginny Stibolt
ON THE COVER:
Artist Eleanor Blair's oil painting of the view from the observation tower at Withlacoochee Gulf Preserve. Photo by Myda Iamiceli.
Article by Jono Miller
Cabbage Palms and Lethal Bronzing
Over the centuries, cabbage palms earned a reputation for being survivors. Sure, there was lightning, some fungi, a big weevil, and the leaf skeletonizers, but overall they were known as one of the toughest trees in Florida. That bulletproof status has been shaken somewhat in the last quarter century.
Bruce Holst, the Director of Botany at the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, was deep in a cabbage palm hammock on a botanical reconnaissance in Sarasota County, when his crew came upon a clearing in the making—a sunny patch in an otherwise apparently healthy oak/palm hammock with many dying palms. Several had already fallen, some were standing dead, and others were clearly in decline. And while several of the trunks sported conks (suggesting Ganoderma fungus), Bruce wanted to rule out a poorly understood disease that can kill cabbage palms. He took a trunk sample from a stricken palm. Several weeks later the results came back negative for a puzzling new disease caused by a phytoplasma.
Phytoplasmas are a type of bacteria (mollicutes) that lack a cell wall. They’re devilishly simple—comparable in ways to viruses. They can’t survive independent of a host, either a host plant or an insect vector, so they can’t be cultured in a lab.1 While the symptoms of the dying palms are dramatic, a positive ID can only be obtained by sophisticated molecular analyses that have only recently become automated and affordable.
The most famous palm-killing phytoplasma is Lethal Yellowing, which is best known for decimating coconut palms. First detected in Jamaica in the 1800s, it got to Key West in the 1950s and became common in South Florida by 1975.2 Plant breeders have been trying to breed a coconut resistant to Lethal Yellowing for more than a half century, and, despite apparent success, a truly resistant variety has yet to be identified.3
In 1980 another palm-killing phytoplasma was identified in Texas. It had been observed and identified in a declining Phoenix palm, so it was given the descriptive, but clunky, name Texas Phoenix Palm Decline or TPPD. In 2006, TPPD was identified in Florida. It was genetically
Figure 1: Cabbage palms in various stages of decline at the Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center in Davie, Florida. Photo by Jono Miller.
identical to the phytoplasma found in Texas that had been affecting Phoenix palms, so the Texas name stuck. A major outbreak in cabbage palms in Simmons Park on the shores of Tampa Bay alarmed palm lovers, researchers, and growers. Environmentalists were sobered by the specter of TPPD invading native habitats and preserves, where it could completely change the structure of several native plant communities.
This was the disease Bruce Holst feared he had spotted in Sarasota County. Nursery growers became alarmed when they learned that TPPD affected not only cabbage and queen palms, but also several species of high-end ornamental Phoenix palms. 4 This was big news, because while cabbage palms are relatively cheap and not grown from seed in nurseries, Canary Island date palms and sylvester palms are slow-growing, specimen palms and any nursery growing them was now in danger of losing impressive trees worth thousands.
I wanted to learn more about this disease that could, theoretically at least, devastate both the state’s natural areas and tree nursery businesses, so in 2017 I signed up for a day-long summit hosted by Dr. Brian Bahder in Davie, Florida.
It turns out TPPD is a strange affliction. It does not spread like a deadly wave through a population of palms. The palms that succumb seem scattered through both space and time. [Fig.1] While many die, others are spared, only to contract the disease later. Or not. One of the next places the disease was diagnosed in Florida was, ironically, the town of Palmetto on the north side of the Manatee River, south of Tampa. A former citrus grove north of town is bisected by Highway 41 and it’s now a cow pasture with both mature and young cabbage palms. The windshield view is always the same: some dying palms that were previously green, others with collapsed dead canopies, some just standing trunks, and others nearby, still green and seemingly unaffected. The owner or manager has pushed a number of dead palms into a pile. Will the remaining palms eventually falter and die, or does the genetic diversity of the remaining palms confer some advantage to certain individuals? Or maybe the disease simply hasn’t reached the remaining palms. No one seems to know.
If TPPD was more virulent and killed every palm in a concentric outward-propagating wave, it might be relatively easy to secure funds to study the disease. But legislators who control the state’s budget are unlikely to be moved if a few palms die in a cow pasture, even if it is the state tree. That’s where the clout of nursery growers might kick in. As of 2018, afflicted palms had been documented in 28 of Florida’s 67 counties and were probably present in others. Dr. Bahder assumes it is now in Georgia. Ominously, he found a TPPD infected palm in the Everglades at a rest stop along Alligator Alley. That sort of news motivated leaders of the Florida Native Plant Society to get involved in learning more about TPPD.
In trying to build awareness of the threat posed by a disease, it helps if the name is something people can relate to and remember. And for a threat facing Florida, burdening the disease with the appellations Texas and Phoenix doesn’t suggest any urgent geographic relevancy. I even heard a rumor that Texas legislators were disinclined to fund research on any malady that included both Texas and Decline in the same name. Finally, referring to an inevitably fatal malady with the euphemism ‘decline’, fails to convey the appropriately serious implications of contracting the disease.
So palm researchers concerned about the threat posed by Texas Phoenix Palm Decline sought a makeover for the challenging name. Florida palm biologist Ericka Helmick suggested Lethal Bronzing, which sounds like it might be the result of sunscreen failure, but is playing off the somewhat familiar Lethal Yellowing phytoplasma and the fact that the afflicted cabbage palm fronds typically adopt a strange reddish-brown color not normally seen on healthy cabbage palm leaves.
Lethal Bronzing proceeds through several stages as the dying palm shuts down. On mature trees with fruit, the first symptom is sudden and premature fruit drop, followed by the death of any flowers. Of course, these symptoms are only evident on unpruned mature plants that have either flowers or fruit. The next symptom is discoloration of the living leaves, starting at the leaf tips of the older leaves. This is where the bronzing phenomenon comes in, although the colors can range from reddish-brown to dark brown or gray.5 Leaf death proceeds upward moving from the older to younger leaves. Eventually the spear leaf, the newest upright leaf, fails. Palm pathologists Nigel Harrison and Monica Elliot were quite clear about the implications: “Death of the spear leaf indicates the apical meristem (bud) has died.” 6 With only one bud, the palm is doomed.
Of course, there are several ways a palm can die, so a definitive diagnosis of Lethal Bronzing depends on taking a sample from the afflicted tree. Getting the sample involves flame-sterilizing a drill bit, and extracting some of the central cylinder trunk tissue without contaminating it. It has to be kept cool and sent by overnight courier to one of two Florida facilities equipped for testing. In 2020 the cost to test one sample was $75. The elaborate procedure and cost reduce the likelihood that suspected palms will be diagnosed and getting a negative result does not mean the palm is free from Lethal Bronzing— maybe it is at the earliest stages. Yet testing the palms for Lethal Bronzing is straightforward when compared to looking for it in insect vectors—that involves cutting out the salivary glands of insects smaller than Tic-Tacs™.
In order to manage or control a plant disease, one has to learn how it is spread and how it enters the plant. I went back in 2018 to see what Dr. Bahder had learned. In 2017 he wasn’t sure what the insect vector was, although he was confident the disease
is spread by an insect that bites into the living palm tissues, which narrowed it down to one of the 80,000 or so true bugs (Hemiptera). The true bugs include suborders of cicadas, aphids, shield bugs, leafhoppers, and planthoppers. Attack through the leaves appeared to be the point of entry. By 2018 he was quite certain the insect vector was Haplaxius crudus, although he had not yet conducted the definitive research. The common name is American palm cixiid, a planthopper no more than a fifth of an inch long. [Fig. 2]
Unfortunately, there seem to be three separate ways the disease could move to new locations. Most likely: infected larval or adult insects are blown by wind, hitchhike on vehicles, or travel with landscape plants such as sod. Conversely, infected, but non-symptomatic palms, may be moved to new locations where uninfected insect vectors pick up the disease and spread it to other trees. Finally, plants that are not palms may act as incognito reservoirs for the disease and they may be relocated and become accessible to insects that then move the phytoplasma to palms. That last scenario may seem remote, but the closely related Lethal Yellowing phytoplasma has been found in weeds in Jamaica, suggesting Lethal Bronzing may be lurking in plants no one suspects.7
there was an unsolved puzzle that threatened both Florida’s native and exotic palms. The question of how Haplaxius got there was especially vexing. Most likely it arrived on plants, but no new palms had been brought in recently. Dr. Bahder suspects sod. The fate of the remaining palms is unknown. Are they infected but not yet symptomatic? Have they been exposed to the phytoplasma and are resistant as a consequence of good genes or general vigor? Or has the vector insect simply not made contact with the living tissues of the remnant palms? The palms are dying to help Dr. Bahder find out.
In order to discern how the disease is transmitted by what vector, Dr. Brian Bahder had been hired to replace retiring expert Nigel Harrison. Brian is an Assistant Professor of Insect Vector Ecology who proved he could identify a plant disease vector by working in California on a disease plaguing wine and juice grapes. He notes that it was a lot easier working with grapes in greenhouses than palms in the field.
Nigel had been a Florida plant pathologist for three decades and when TPPD showed up, he was on it. Many years before, probably in the Sixties, thirty cabbage palms had been planted at the entrance to the Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center in Davie. Then, in December of 2014, after decades of stalwart service as examples of Florida natives that need little care, five started declining. It was TPPD. These were the first cases anywhere near the Center. This was the plant pathology equivalent of having the first Ebola case turn up unexpectedly in your hospital. A fantastic opportunity, but also no doubt a little embarrassing. Plant pathologists had to watch and document the collapse of their research center’s entry landscaping. Dr. Harrison and Ericka Helmick started testing the palms—painstakingly recording their demise month by month. Numbers jumped from five to seven, to nine, to ten, to fourteen, then sixteen. In June 2020, the number was twenty-one. The study site could not have been more convenient, but it was a daily thumb in the eye—an inescapable reminder that
Lethal Bronzing had been in Florida for fifteen years, primarily as a concern for nursery growers, ecologists, preserve managers and plant pathologists. The media found the disease newsworthy and as early as 2006 an Associated Press/NBC story cited “a microscopic killer that has scientists stumped.” It implied that budget constraints were likely to hamper looking for a solution.8 Then in the summer of 2017, the Tampa Bay Action News “I Team” broke a dying palms story with an added government scandal twist. The investigation revealed that Governor Rick Scott had promoted “A Bold New Vision” for improved tropical (palm) landscaping along “gateway” highways. That led to planting expensive Phoenix palms that started dying from Lethal Bronzing. Cue ominous TV news anchor: “You paid for them...pricey palm trees that line miles of Florida’s interstates and highways as part of a Florida Department of Transportation landscaping program called “A Bold New Vision”. But as the I-Team uncovered, many of the trees are now dead.” The draw-your-own-conclusions implication was that the Governor had promoted an ill-fated palm landscaping plan that benefited a nursery that then coincidently poured $50,000 into the Governor’s reelection campaign.9
No one knows how problematic Lethal Bronzing may become. The insect vectors may be limited to grassy areas where the larvae feed—lawns and pastures, so palms in wild
Figure 2: Haplaxius crudus (American palm cixiid). Photo by Brian W. Bahder.
Guilt & the Cabbage Palm
Continued from page 2
Cabbage palm coronas do burn spectacularly, almost explosively. In doing so, they scorch back branches of other trees that would otherwise encroach, thereby securing a place for themselves in the sun. Whether this “kill thy neighbors” phenomenon is an evolutionarily evolved strategy is worth consideration.
The terminal bud of a cabbage palm, logically called a palm cabbage, is well protected but also quite tasty. The edible portion is about the size of a parsnip, but, even with a sharp machete and a functioning chainsaw, I’ve never found palm cabbage harvesting to be calorically worth the effort. Furthermore, cabbage extraction kills the palm, which, in light of their often-advanced ages, seems wasteful. Nevertheless, I’ve seen palm cabbage on menus a time or two, and ordered the dish once out of curiosity–it came with mayonnaise and mini-marshmallows, which just added insult to injury. Bears eat palm cabbages plain, but I can’t believe that bear scarcity explains palm population explosions. Within fifty miles of Cedar Key, I suspect that palm populations are still recovering from the hammering they suffered while the Standard Manufacturing Company of Cedar Key was making Donax brushes using cabbage palm trunk fibers. During that period (1910-1952), many thousands of palms were chopped down and ferried out to the factory where seventy-five workers fashioned the fibers into clothes brushes and dust brooms.
Although there weren’t any cabbage palms on our land near Gainesville when we bought the property in the early 1980s, the
few we planted thrived and reproduced like gangbusters. The transplants came rootless and with most of their fronds hacked off; it took a year or two for their coronas to recover fully. Recently, I’ve seen a lot of young cabbage palms coming up, which I can now differentiate from bluestem palms (Sabal minor), the always “stemless” and otherwise diminutive relative.
One explanation for palm proliferation on our land is the local and probably temporary scarcity of palm seed weevils (Caryobruchus gleditsiae). In natural cabbage palm stands, the larvae of this beetle devour most of the palm seeds the mice miss, especially those that fall abundantly near fruiting trees or that are concentrated in bear and raccoon scat. A gravid female beetle glues a little white egg on the outside of a seed or fruit. The larva soon hatches, burrows inside, and consumes the embryo and its food stores. About thirty days later, an adult beetle emerges and the cycle begins again—it was a special moment for me when a beetle emerged from a seed in the palm of my hand. Only seeds dispersed away from mother trees and deposited singly are likely to escape these little predators. Given the gastrointestinal effects of eating too many palm fruits coupled with the natural gluttony of bears, raccoons, and their kin, many cabbage palm seeds are indeed well dispersed and not concentrated in discrete piles. I’m convinced that the capacity to cause diarrhea resulted from natural selection on fruit chemistry.
An even more dire concern about planting a cabbage palm is the advent of a palm-killing disease now referred to
Continued on page 15
flood plain hammocks may be spared. Some palms may be immune and confer resistance to their offspring. Or the phytoplasma may mutate and become more virulent. As the magnitude of the threat becomes clearer, expect to hear more from Dr. Bahder and his team.
References and Further Reading
1. Broschat, Timothy K., Alan W. Meerow, and Monica L Elliott. Ornamental Palm Horticulture. Second. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2017. 144.
2. Gwin, George H. “Environmental Impact of Lethal Yellowing of Palms in Florida.” Proc. Florida State Horticultural. Soc. 88, 1975. 380-382.
3. Bahder, Brian W., and Ericka E. Helmick. “Lethal Yellowing (LY) of Palm.” University of Florida IFAS Extension, December 17, 2018. https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pp146.
4. Harrison, Nigel A, and Monica L Elliott. “Texas Phoenix Palm Decline.” PP243, 2017, 6.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Brown, S.E., B.O. Been, and W.A. McLaughlin. “First Report of the Presence of the Lethal Yellowing Group (16Sr IV) of Phytoplasmas in the Weeds Emilia fosbergii and Synedrella nodiflora in Jamaica.” Plant Pathology 57, no. 4 (2008): 770–770. https://doi.org/10.1111/j. 1365-3059.2007.01792.x.
8. Associated Press. “Unknown Disease Killing off Florida’s State Tree.” Environment on NBC NEWS, July 23, 2008. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/25818182/ns/us_news-environment/t/unknown-disease-killing-floridas-state-tree/.
9. Walser, Adam. “Palms Planted under FDOT’s Multi-Million Dollar Landscaping Plan Dying from Disease.” ABC Action News WFTS Tampa Bay, July 10, 2017. https://www.abcactionnews.com/ news/local-news/i-team-investigates/palms-planted-under-florida-dots-multi-million-dollar-landscaping-plan-dying-from-disease.
About the Author
An attendee at the first FNPS annual meeting, Jono Miller is a former Director of the Environmental Studies Program at New College of Florida and has just written The Palmetto Book: Histories and Mysteries of the Cabbage Palm, which is available from the University Press of Florida. It contains two dozen essays dealing with both the natural and cultural history of our state tree. If you have interesting examples of, or stories about, cabbage palms, he’d love to hear about them by email at cabbagepalm@ gmail.com. Or post your observations and view more photos at https://palmettobook.blog
Coastal Scenes Through the Eyes of an Artist and a Scientist
This article is a collaboration between Eleanor (a landscape painter) and Jack (an ecologist). It is inspired by their shared fondness for Floridian nature and curiosity about their very different interpretations of the same scenes.
Eleanor takes every opportunity to spend time in wild places while Jack enjoys exploring the art-science interface. She paints indoors and out, in front of orchestras and alone, and with oils and watercolors. Jack’s tropical work (and the need for an excuse for having read all 24 Tarzan books), long ago resulted in his writing about how tropical rainforests are portrayed in art, literature, and film (Putz and Holbrook 1988). Our collective thoughts about the connections between science and art were enhanced when Eleanor and curators from the Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida, helped Jack teach an undergraduate honors course entitled “Nature and Culture in Florida.”
Article by Eleanor Blair and F. E. “Jack” Putz
Paintings by
Eleanor Blair
Video and on-site photographs by
Valerie Anderson
When Eleanor and Jack set out on this journey, one model they had in mind was A Companion to the Heart of the Andes (1859), Theodore Winthrop’s book-length viewer’s guide that accompanied the unveiling of Frederic E. Church’s masterful South American painting. Another more recent inspiration was Reading the Forested Landscape: A Natural History of New England (1997) in which forensic ecologist Tom Wessels interprets the etchings of industrial artist Brian D. Cohen. Starting with Eleanor’s painting reproduced on the cover, we follow in these art-science traditions by considering different scenes from our very different perspectives.
Jack: From atop Withlacoochee Gulf Preserve’s 30-foot tower in Yankeetown, the view Eleanor captured in her cover painting stretches a bit more than a mile to the Gulf of Mexico. The
Eleanor Blair's plein-air painting in progress at the Withlacoochee Gulf Preserve. Photo by Valerie Anderson
elevation drops only three feet over that mile, but varies from slightly elevated areas that still support patches of cabbage palm and cedar dominated forest to the mucky bottoms of tidal creeks. The scene is of a sea of saltmarsh with islands of forest. A few hundred yards to the south of this image, State Road 40, known locally as the “Follow That Dream” Parkway after the 1962 Elvis Presley movie by that name, runs out to the coast. That unseen sign of civilization notwithstanding, this scene inspires me with a justified sense of untrammeled nature. Scarcity of development along the Gulf from north of Tampa up and around to east of Panama City make this the least developed stretch of coastline in the lower 48 states. I imagine bears peeking out from forest edges, redfish finning in the shallows, and oysters siphoning plankton from the tidal creek water.
This beholder’s eyes are much influenced by my training in ecology. Such images of landscapes naturally cause me to consider changes over space, but also changes over time. If we had climbed this tower 12,000 years ago with the first Floridians, we would not be high enough to see over the contiguous canopy of the surrounding forest (but might get a birds-eye view of a mastodon or giant ground sloth). Even if we somehow rose above the forest, there would be little chance of seeing the Gulf, which at that time was another 50 miles to the west. A lot changed between then and 1944, when air photo crews captured scenes of large patches of forest separated by saltmarsh (Williams et al. 1999). Even just 30 years ago, when we started monitoring vegetation changes along this stretch of coast, there was more forest than today (Langston et al. 2017b). If sea levels continue to rise at the current rate of 1/8 inch per year and we return to the tower in 60 years, Gulf water will lap the stairs and the forest will be long gone. Given
how low-lying the lands are around here, the rate of Gulf encroachment will only slow when the waters reach across State Road 19 to the foot of the Williston sand hill in Goethe State Forest. While concerned that we humans are accelerating this process, I need to remember that over the past 2 million years, these lands flooded and emerged no less than five times (Chassignet et al. 2017).
The long-term changes evoked in my mind by Eleanor’s paintings also occur over time periods of less than decades and centuries. A few hours after this high tide scene, for example, the tidal stream’s mudbanks will host the antics of scurrying fiddler crabs. After a few years, the tidal stream will have meandered its way into the sward of black needle rush (Juncus roemerianus), and left behind fresh substrate for colonization by saltmarsh cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora). Change
is natural, but there are good reasons to be alarmed about the accelerated rates of change during this the Anthropocene, the glacial epoch of our making.
Eleanor: After painting landscapes in Florida for over fifty years, I have simplified what I pack for a day of pleinair painting. My kit is light weight, but has everything I need; brushes, medium, paint, paper towels, trash bag, sunscreen, bug repellent, easel, drinking water, vinyl gloves, canvas, wet painting carriers, and a hat. I prefer oil paints because they stay ‘wet’ for many hours, and because they allow me to combine various transparent and opaque pigments. Although when working in my studio I may use ten or twenty different pigments on one painting, when painting outdoors I rely on a handful of basic paints that I can combine for a full range of color.
Withlacoochee Gulf Preserve. Painting by Eleanor Blair.
The painting on the cover was done in my studio using photographs for reference and the one reproduced above was done from the tower at Withlacoochee Gulf Preserve on a lovely afternoon in March 2021.
Jack: Constructors of the causeway on which State Road 40 runs from Yankeetown out to the Gulf probably did not realize that they had established a long-term un-replicated experiment on the effects of salt on coastal vegetation. South of their linear dam (right, above), salt flushing by Withlacoochee River floodwaters allow persistence of this diverse and healthy forest. Cabbage palms are evident and some cedars are mixed in as well, but also represented are 20 other tree species including pines, oaks, maples, elms, and ashes. A fringe of bald cypress is another sign that the waters are fresh, but the clearest indicator is the foregrounded sward of saw grass (Cladium jamaicense) with some cattails (Typha latifolia) and other sweet water species.
At the same elevation north of the road dam (right, below), the richness of the forest is gone, with only evidence
of the two most salt tolerant upland tree species, cabbage palm and cedar. Many of the dead-standing trees succumbed dramatically during the March 1993 “Storm of the Century” and some died gradually during the 1998-2002 mega-drought, but others died more recently after salt delivered by storm surges and spring tides was not washed away (Williams et al. 1999). Although nearshore Gulf water is only half as salty as out in the open sea, as water evaporates, soil salinities increase beyond tree tolerances. Due presumably to their more substantial internal stores of water, large trees and palms survive salt longer than small ones. For a few decades before dying, cabbage palms with shrunken coronas and chlorotic leaves continue to fruit, but both the fruits and seeds are
This plein-air painting by Eleanor Blair was done atop the observation tower.
The upper panel portrays the diverse and healthy forest south of the causeway, while the lower panel shows the view to the north, with many dead trees. Paintings by Eleanor Blair.
diminished in size, and the few seedlings that emerge are unlikely to survive the salt. In this image, instead of palm and tree seedlings, the understory is dominated by marsh elder (Iva frutescens), wolfberry (Lycium carolinianum), and other salt marsh shrubs.
Eleanor: I rarely paint dead trees. Occasionally I will invent the crown of a dead palm, hoping to improve my painting. Participating in this collaborative project with Jack opened my eyes to elements of the landscape I would normally disregard. On our first trip out to the Gulf, we took a short hike into the marsh. I was fascinated by Jack’s explanation of how the Withlacoochee River to the south of us washed away accumulated salt, so the cedars, oaks and palms were flourishing. But the road, acting as a dam, blocks the flow of fresh water to the north side, and salt builds up. Cedars, oaks and palms slowly die, poisoned by the salt.
Jack: Off the edge of the cover painting but otherwise much in evidence is the onslaught of mangroves. Since the last killing freeze in the 1980s, mostly black mangroves (Avicennia germinans), with some reds (Rhizophora mangle) and whites (Laguncularia racemosa), commenced colonizing the salt marsh. Seedlings that escape being eaten by sesarmid crabs grow quickly and start to reproduce when only 2-3 years old; a 5-year old tree might be more than 10 feet tall and produce hundreds of propagules in a single year (Langston et al. 2017a). Saltmarsh does not survive long in mangrove shade and so, unless there is a super cold snap, which becomes increasingly unlikely with climate change, the future is mangrove forest.
Eleanor: Although I grieve at the sight of dying palms, not everything is dying. Some species flourish while the palms succumb to salt. To see some of the results of climate change, we waded along the shoreline, where three species of
mangrove have now taken up residence. I haven’t had the opportunity to paint mangroves before, so I wanted to take a closer look. The painting above shows a young but already reproductive red mangrove growing where there were no mangroves as recently as twenty years ago. I wonder what this place will look like twenty years in the future.
Jack: The painting below is my favorite, despite featuring cabbage palms in the throes of death-by-salt. For several years after dying, the palm trunks that ring this transitioning island of forest will host hole-nesting species, including a remarkable number of screech owls. Scenes like this, but not so artistically rendered, recur all along our coasts where so-called “ghost forests” are becoming increasingly common (Kirwan and Gedan 2019).
The black needle rush dominating the saltmarsh around this and other forested islands often hides tree stumps of cedar, pine, and live oak, some of which show signs of axe work. I often wonder whether any of the cedars from this ghost forest ended in the pencil slat factory on Atsena Otie Key, but that seems unlikely given that it closed down after a massive hurricane in 1896. More likely some of the palms were cut and used to make Donax Brushes in Cedar Key, since the brush factory closed in 1952.
I happily do not see in this painting or the others any evidence of the exotic
Young red mangrove. Painting by Eleanor Blair.
This study shows dying cabbage palms ringing a transitioning island of forest. Painting by Eleanor Blair.
invasive Brazilian pepper, but I know it is around. Although not as salt tolerant as the mangroves, it takes more salinity than our native upland trees. That it tolerates shade and grows as a tree, shrub, or woody vine allows Brazilian pepper to grow up through, overtop, and kill live oaks, cedars, and even palms (Spector and Putz 2006).
Eleanor: This is the essence of pleinair painting; a specific place, a moment in time, captured quickly. The sun was low in the sky, the landscape softened, the patches of reflected blue winding away through winter grasses, clumps of trees, alive and dying, reduced to a range of neutral values. Gestural, spontaneous, and honestly observed. Sometimes these random studies, dashed off at the end of a long day painting, end up being my favorite paintings.
To begin, I mix a dark transparent neutral color, and use that to establish the basic composition and a range of values. Then, very quickly, I try to duplicate what I see, working opaque pigments in my transparent foundation. I pay attention to the relative lights and darks, and to the relative warms and cools. I hope to capture how it feels to be in a specific place. I almost always have a sense, painting outdoors, that my best efforts fail miserably. My dabs of paint never come close to capturing what I see, and everything I do seems to be a dismal cartoonish failure. But I’ve learned it’s unwise for me to judge my work in the heat of the moment, because once I’ve got the painting home, I always like it a lot more. The painting becomes a souvenir of the experience.
Plein-air work is difficult; the light and the shadows change, the bugs bite, the wind blows. Although it’s impossible to capture all the detail, I want the experience of working outdoors, the sensory awareness of the place itself, to inform my painting. Can I paint wind, changing light, the sounds and the smells? No, but it’s fun to try.
Watch the video
Sea Level Rise Art and Science with Jack Putz & Eleanor Blair
Scan here, or visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2SZiw2K-G
Conclusion
Nature conservation results from the actions of motivated people, some driven by data, others inspired by art. Given the state of the environment, we need to enhance the synergies between art and science that serve to foster compassion for nature and increase understanding of its plights. For example, the scenes painted by Eleanor, as interpreted by Jack, might serve to enhance concerns about sea level rise more than the nightly newsreels of blue sky flooding of city streets. Climate change is complicated, but artists tell such stories in ways that can be appreciated by large and diverse audiences. The emotional ties to nature that artists engender can bind with the information provided by scientists to motivate guided action. It would be wonderful if more people personally experienced the scenes interpreted by Jack, but many more might be informed and inspired by Eleanor’s art. We encourage visits to the area we described, which is among the best places in the world to witness the effects of global change on natural ecosystems.
References and Further Reading
Chassignet, E.P., J.W. Jones, V. Misra, and J. Obeysekera, Editors. 2017. Florida’s Climate: Changes, Variations, and Impacts. Florida Climate Institute, Gainesville, Florida: https://doi.org/10.17125/fci2017.
Kirwan, M.L. and K.B Gedan. 2019. Sea-level driven land conversion and the formation of ghost forests. Nature Climate Change 9: 450-457.
Langston, A.K., D.A. Kaplan, D.A., and C. Angelini. 2017a. Predation restricts black mangrove (Avicennia germinans) colonization at its northern range limit along Florida's Gulf Coast. Hydrobiologia 803: 317–331
Langston, A.K., D.A. Kaplan, and F.E. Putz. 2017b. A casualty of climate change? Loss of freshwater forest islands on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Global Change Biology 23: 5383-5397.
Putz, F.E. and N.M. Holbrook. 1988. Tropical rain-forest images. Pages 37-52 in, Denslow, J.S. and C. Padoch (editors) People of the Tropical Rain Forest. University of California Press, Berkeley, and Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Spector, T. and F.E. Putz. 2006. Biomechanical plasticity facilitates invasion by Brazilian pepper Schinus terebinthifolius. Biological Invasions 8: 255-260.
Wessels, T. 1997. Reading the Forested Landscape: A Natural History of New England. The Countryman Press, Woodstock, Vermont.
Williams, K., K.C. Ewel, R.P. Stumpf, F.E. Putz, and T.W. Workman. 1999. Sea-level rise and coastal forest retreat on the west coast of Florida, USA. Ecology 80:2045-2063. Winthrop, T. 1859. A Companion to ‘The Heart of the Andes.’ D. Appleton and Company, New York.
About the Authors
Eleanor Blair received a BFA from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 1969. In the 1960s, most classes focused on minimalism and abstraction. However, art school basics (drawing, art history, color theory and design) served her well, when, shortly after moving to Gainesville in 1971, she was offered a job teaching landscape painting. The outdoor painting demonstrations she did for those early classes became the foundation for her life’s work.
F. E. “Jack” Putz teaches botany and ecology at the University of Florida and conducts research on nature conservation through active management. He is the author of Finding Home in the Sandy Lands of the South (a volume of Florida-based natural history essays), Yaupon Wins: An Ethnobotanical Novella, and, under the nom de plume of Juan Camilo Moro, the steamy jungle novel Borneo Dammed: A Very Family Affair, all available from Amazon and Kindle.
Special thanks to Myda Iamiceli for photographing Eleanor Blair's paintings for this article.
Eleanor Blair and Jack Putz. Photo by Valerie Anderson.
Species in the palm family include a variety of statures, but they all have one growing point on each stem that produces the fronds and inflorescences. Photo source: Alamy.
The Palm Family (Arecaceae)
Article by Ginny Stibolt
The plants in the palm family vary widely, but most are native to the tropics and subtropics. There are single and multiple-stemmed trees, vines (more than 600 species), and shrubs or recumbent palms—usually called palmettos, at least in Florida.
Plants are classified according to flower and fruit structure. Members of the palm family have fruit that are drupes, with a single pit like a peach. Some of the fruits are tiny, while others are huge, such as the double coconut, native to the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean. Itʼs aptly named because its massive fruits may weigh more than fifty pounds. Most palms have edible fruit, but the fruits of some palms are toxic.
According the Atlas of Florida Plants, 28 species of palms occur in Florida, but only 12 are native. Of the Florida native species, Everglades palm (Acoelorraphe wrightii); Florida silver palm (Coccothrinax argentata); and Key thatch palm (Leucothrinax morrisii) are state listed as threatened in Florida, while Sargentʼs cherry palm (Pseudophoenix sargentii) and
Florida royal palm (Roystonea regia) are state listed as endangered. Rounding out the list are scrub palmetto (Sabal etonia); needle palm (Rhapidophyllum hystrix); bluestem palmetto (Sabal minor); Floridaʼs state tree, the cabbage palm (Sabal palmetto); Miami palm (Sabal x miamiensis) endemic to Florida and probably extinct in the wild; saw palmetto (Serenoa repens); and Florida thatch palm (Thrinax radiata).
Seven non-native palms are listed by the Florida Exotic Pest Plant Council as Category II invasives in South Florida: bamboo palm (Chamaedorea seifrizii); coconut palm (Cocos nucifera); Chinese fan palm (Livistona chinensis); Senegal date palm (Phoenix reclinata); solitaire palm (Ptychosperma elegans); queen palm (Syagrus romanzoffiana); and Washington fan palm (Washingtonia robusta)–the last two are also listed as invasive in Central Florida. We should be planting more native palms in Florida, especially those that are endangered or threatened, and spreading the word about the use of invasive palms.
Palms are monocots, which means they don’t produce real wood with annual rings. The vascular tissue (the phloem and xylem) in monocots is arranged in bundles throughout the stem, as opposed to dicots and conifers where the vascular tissue occurs in the cambium layer just under the bark around the plant stem. It is the new set of xylem and phloem cells that are produced each year which forms annual rings and the woody tissue in trees and shrubs. So while some palms serve as trees in the landscape, they donʼt produce wood like other trees. We can estimate the age of a woody tree by counting its annual rings, but you cannot tell how old a palm is because the trunk is fibrous.
The fact that palms don’t produce wood like dicot and gymnosperm trees has advantages and disadvantages in the landscape. Because there is no wood, palm roots do not expand and will not damage foundations, roads, sidewalks and other infrastructure such as pools. There are many roots and they emanate from the root initiation zone and regularly create new roots, but they only grow longer—never thicker. There is no cambium layer, so palm trunks can’t heal wounds from mowers and/or string trimmers. While these injuries are not fatal like girdling a woody tree, extensive injuries will weaken the trunk. In addition, palms are usually more flexible than true trees, which comes in handy during tropical storms.
Most palm trees spend the first years of their lives as a shrub and put out frond after frond. Only when enough girth has been developed will they finally begin to grow vertically. This can take as little as 1 or 2 years for some species and up to a decade or more for other species such as the cabbage palm (Sabal palmetto). Local conditions such as fires may also affect the time spent in the palmetto stage. During this initial stage of growth, the palm tree is developing its apical meristem.
Palms grow fronds and inflorescences or flower heads only from their apical meristems, which move vertically upward as the palm produces new growth. The apical meristem is also known as the heart of palm and depending upon the species, it can be three or four feet long and up to a foot or more in diameter. Because of this growth pattern, palm trunks will not increase significantly in girth, and which is why some palms look so skinny.
When you harvest the heart of a palm, you’ve removed its only growing point. This is fatal for single trunked palm trees such as the cabbage palm. Cabbage palm trees that are harvested for their hearts will be at least 40 years old, but likely theyʼre much older. The cabbage palm’s common name is derived from the use of its heart as a cabbage in stews and such. Hearts of palm from the cabbage palm (and most other palms) turn brown rapidly after harvest, so they are either used right away or processed by freezing or canning. Peach palm (Bactris gasipaes), is a more sustainable hearts of palm crop. This is a multiple trunked palm, so cutting down one trunk does not kill the plant. Also, the trunks grow quickly, so the heart can be harvested after only
two or three years. Peach palms are native to Central and South America, but are mostly grown in plantations in tropical regions, especially in Pacific Islands. Their hearts of palm do not turn brown, so most of the commercially available hearts of palm are from this species. The fruits, which look like little peaches, and the oil from its seed are also useful products.
Indigenous peoples in tropical and subtropical regions have used palms for construction, roofing, baskets, fiber for rope and more. These traditions carried forward–palm thatching is used today and you can see palm trunks used as columns in historic buildings such as Flagler College in St. Augustine.
Many palms are grown for their fruit such as the familiar coconuts and dates, but more recently, the açaí berry (drupe) has become popular. Açaí (Euterpe oleracea) is a multi-stemmed palm native to the Amazon region with fruit that is high in fats, protein, and antioxidants. Hearts of palm are also harvested from these multi-stemmed trees, and their leftover seeds are usually used for feeding livestock. These were important for the ancient Amazonian peoples because the palm grows next to the waters and in frequently flooded areas, so canoes were used to travel up and down the rivers to collect the fruit. Today, this palm’s harvests have become more profitable than harvesting Amazonian lumber, so people are reserving and restoring the riverside Amazon jungle to grow this palm. There are about two and a half million acres of certified-organic, açaí-growing regions along the shores of the Amazon and its tributaries.
Most people are surprised to learn that there are about 600 species of palm vines. They belong to the subfamily Calamoideae. Palm vines are used as rattan to build furniture. 70% of the world’s rattan population is native to and is grown in Indonesia. The diameter of the stems varies between one to three inches. Rattan vines can grow up high or as long as a hundred feet or more. Many have formidable thorns. Unlike the bamboos, rattan has a strong core because of the vascular bundles located throughout the centers of the stems like any palm. Rattan is durable and hard to break, and it is generally steamed to mold it into various shapes. The outside skin of the rattan stem is peeled off and is often used to bind the furniture joints together.
Another important palm crop is one we rarely consume on its own, but as an ingredient. Palm oil has become ubiquitous in processed foods. The oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) is native to Africa, but it’s been introduced to other locations–Indonesia and Malaysia account for 87% of the worldʼs supply of the oil. A reddish-colored oil is made by pressing the fruit, while kernel palm oil, made from the seed, is clear. This crop is controversial because palm oil monoculture plantations have replaced vast areas of rainforest. Growers like this crop because it yields 400% per acre of the next most productive oil crop (rapeseed or mustard, which must be planted every year) while oil palms yield oil for more than thirty years. There is a movement to eliminate
palm oils from our foods, but this would be hard to do, because this oil can be described in more than thirty ways on an ingredients list. We can reduce the demand for palm oil by consuming less processed food. We can also support organizations that are promoting more sustainable oil palm plantation management.
Palm wines, vinegars, and sugars are made by tapping sap from palms. This seems impossible because there is no cambium layer and palms cannot be tapped like maple trees, but people have devised two major methods for harvesting palm sap. Many different palm species can be used in this way including coconut, date palms, and more. The first method involves tapping into the palm’s heart by removing the fronds on one side of the tree and slicing into the heart—the next growing season this is repeated on the other side of the tree. The second tapping method is less harmful to the palm. Instead of tapping the heart, the stem of the flower head is cut and sap is collected from the stem. This method sacrifices the fruit and/or pollen. Palm sap begins to ferment almost immediately and the result is a palm wine with about 4% alcohol. If it continues to ferment, it turns to vinegar, so it needs to be bottled right away–or it can be further distilled to become a liquor which has been compared to tequila. Palm syrup or sugar is produced by boiling collected sap until it thickens or solidifies. The resulting products differ with different types of palms, and the traditions in various regions.
The palm family is filled with an interesting collection of plants across the globe’s tropical and subtropical regions. Palms have played an important role for peoples–both ancient and modern. Palms play a significant role for wildlife from pollinators to primates with their large inflorescences and bountiful fruit. Palms also serve as habitat and shelter. Here in Florida, we have some wonderful native palms that should be even more widely planted.
References and Further Reading
The Florida Plant Atlas. https://florida.plantatlas.usf.edu/ The Florida Exotic Pest Plant Council. www.FLEPPC.org Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. www.fao.org/ Plants of the World Online by Kew Gardens. http://powo.science.kew.org/ Reasons why palm oil is so controversial. www.independent.co.uk/life-style/palm-oil-healthimpact-environment-animals-deforestation-heart-a8505521.html Palm family (Arecaceae). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecaceae
About the Author
Ginny Stibolt is a botanist, native plant enthusiast, and an award-winning garden writer. She’s coauthor of Climate-Wise Landscaping: Practical Actions for a Sustainable Future (www.climatewiselandscaping.com) and author or coauthor of four Florida gardening books published by the University Press of Florida. Ginny’s blog is www.greengardeningmatters.com.
Guilt & the Cabbage Palm
Continued from page 7
as Lethal Bronzing Disease (LBD). Anyone who recalls what Lethal Yellowing did to coconuts and other ornamental palms in South Florida back in the 1970s will share my alarm about this cabbage palm killer, which is also a phytoplasma transmitted by a leaf-sucking bug. Much remains to be learned about this disease and its vector, but since the outbreak was first noticed in 2006 in Manatee County, the disease has gone state-wide. In addition to our native cabbage palms, date palms and a dozen other introduced palm species also suffer from LBD. Despite ardent pleas from me and others, state and federal departments of agriculture are doing virtually nothing to stop its spread. What will it take to cause the responsible state, federal, and industry authorities to intervene on behalf of our beloved cabbage palms now threatened by LBD? I suspect that those authorities are most responsive to economic arguments; cabbage palms may lack the lobbying power of turfgrass or citrus industries, but we could enlist the aid of the tourism folks. Dead palms lining our highways is not good advertising of Florida as a tourist destination. Homeowners might vociferously object to the substantial costs of taking down and disposing of dead palms or the even more extravagant costs of quarterly injections with antibiotics. Bulk buyers of palms, including municipalities and suburban developers, might join in efforts to enlist nursery industries in a system of disease testing and phytosanitary certification. Given enough pressure, at least LBD would be prevented from spreading long distances at 55 miles per hour down our highways. Interestingly, at least from the perspective of this chemlawn hater, nymphs of the insect vector of this disease feed on grass roots and are transplanted with sod, which is another reason to fight against turfgrass. Overall, it’s simply too upsetting to contemplate the loss of the cabbage palm, but given what we just allowed to happen to bay trees and other members of the laurel family, this eventuality is quite within the realm of the possible.
References
Bahder, B.W. and E. E. Helmick. 2019. Lethal bronzing disease (LBD). https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/. pp163 Holbrook, N.M. and T.R. Sinclair. 1992. Water balance in the arborescent palm, Sabal palmetto. II. Transpiration and stem water storage. Plant, Cell and Environment 15, 401-409.
McPherson, K., Williams, K., 1998. Fire resistance of cabbage palms (Sabal palmetto) in the southeastern USA. Forest Ecology and Management 109, 197-207.
About the Author
Jack Putz is a Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of Florida and author of Finding Home in the Sandy Lands of the South: A Naturalist’s Journey in Florida, from which this article was derived. In addition to teaching and preaching about conservation, he conducts research on pine savanna ecosystem management and restoration, experiments with reportedly edible wild plants, and perhaps too much enjoys conducting controlled burns. Together with remarkable undergraduate students he is currently studying the pushing power of the leaves of rosette plants and root farming by pocket gophers.
The Florida Native Plant Society
PO Box 278
Melbourne FL 32902-0278
1.. Broward ............................................ Richard Brownscombe ................. richard@brownscombe.net
2. Citrus ................................................ Gail Taylor ............................................... gfgtaylor55@gmail.com
3. Coccoloba ...................................... Lucy Breitung....................................... lfbreitung@gmail.com
4. Conradina ...................................... Martha Steuart .................................... mwsteuart@bellsouth.net
5. Cuplet Fern Mark Kateli cupletfern@gmail.com
6. Dade Kurt Birchenough kbirc001@fiu.edu
7. Eugenia David L. Martin cymopterus@icloud.com
8. Heartland Gregory L. Thomas enviroscidad@yahoo.com
9. Hernando Heather Sharkey chbrady@tampabay.rr.com
10. Ixia Nicholas Freeman keepingfloridawild@gmail.com
11. Lake Beautyberry Patricia Burgos patriciab1724@gmail.com
12. Longleaf Pine Gabriel Campbell camp5595@ufl.edu
13 Magnolia Ethan Voegel voegelethan@yahoo.com
14. Mangrove ....................................... Steve Gustafson ................................. gorightgus1@icloud.com
15. Marion Big Scrub ....................... Deborah Lynn Curry ......................... marionbigscrub@fnps.org
16. Martin County ............................. Dianna Wentink .................................. dw18hpc@gmail.com
17. Naples .............................................. Kara Driscoll ......................................... k.dreamflow@gmail.com
18. Nature Coast ................................ Diane Hayes Caruso......................... dhayescaruso@hotmail.com
19. Palm Beach County ................. Helen Laurence ................................. helen.laurence@gmail.com
20. Passionflower ............................... Melanie Simon..................................... melanievsimon2@gmail.com
21. Pawpaw .......................................... Karen Walter ......................................... karenlw72@gmail.com
22 Paynes Prairie ............................. Sandi Saurers ...................................... sandisaurers@yahoo.com
23. Pine Lily .......................................... Tayler Figueroa.................................... harper.tkf@gmail.com
24. Pinellas ............................................ David Perkey......................................... dperkey@hotmail.com
25. Sarracenia ..................................... Jeannie Brodhead ............................. jeannieb9345@gmail.com
26. Sea Oats Judith D. Zinn jeryjudy@valinet.com
27. Sea Rocket Elizabeth Bishop izbet@aol.com
28. Serenoa Erica Timmerman timmerme3@gmail.com
29. Sparkleberry Carol Sullivan csullivan12@windstream.net
30. Suncoast Virginia Overstreet vaoverstreet@gmail.com
31. Sweetbay Jonnie Smallman jsmallman2@gmail.com
32. Tarflower Mandy Morgan tarflower.programs@gmail.com
33. The Villages Gary Babic gtbabic@hotmail.com
Contact the Florida Native Plant Society PO Box 278, Melbourne, FL 32902-0278. Phone: (321) 271-6702. Email: info@fnps.org Online: www.fnps.org
To join FNPS: Contact your local Chapter Representative, call, write, or e-mail FNPS, or join online at www.fnps.org
Contact the PALMETTO Editor: Marjorie Shropshire, Visual Key Creative, Inc.
Email: palmetto@fnps.org Phone: (7 72) 285-4286 CHAPTER REPRESENTATIVE E-MAIL