My Florida

Festival Of Flowers

By Melody Murphy

Florida was made for springtime. On April 2, 1513, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León sighted the coast of the Sunshine State and came ashore, the first known European to do so. He called this green and blossoming land La Florida because it was Easter season, which the Spaniards called Pascua Florida (Festival of Flowers). While the legend that Juan was searching for the Fountain of Youth is purely a myth, it’s certainly believable that eternal youth could be found in an ever-blooming, endlessly green land of sunshine and clear turquoise waters.

More than three centuries later, Florida became the 27th state in the Union on March 3, 1845. Both historic milestones occurred in springtime. This seems entirely correct.

Spring is the most beautiful time of year in Florida. We start it early and celebrate it as long as we can.

What looks like spring elsewhere begins here in January (if not sooner). First, the Japanese magnolias, elegant orchid-colored blossoms unfurling on small ornamental trees with slim, graceful branches. They’re also called teacup magnolias and saucer magnolias, making them a regular tea ceremony of a tree. Then come the camellias: rosy-red, white, pale-pink perfection, ruffly or candy-canestriped. Though not quite perfect to me, as they lack scent, they’re still welcome spots of color in a landscape frost-burned gray and brown by our few cold snaps.

There is something modest and morally upright about a camellia bush—or perhaps I think that because they stood like stately sentinels in my grandmother’s yard and were planted in my own by a similar lady who ruled my house before me. Camellias belong in the yards of church ladies who sing in the choir and will bring you a casserole in times of trial.

Valentine colors continue in February: delicate sprays of redbud, wild plum trees blooming like the white lace that edges a Valentine heart. An ancient wild plum tree stood, bent as a dowager, along the rutted lane that ran by my mother’s old house. It always bloomed around Valentine’s Day.

Then the stealthy creep of azaleas begins. First an early blossom or two in late January, if the weather’s warm, then a few more in February, still somehow unobtrusive.

Then it always seems like one morning we wake up and boom, all the azaleas in Florida have bloomed overnight in a riotous explosion of color, like the signal was given at 3am and every bud fired into flower as if shot out of a cannon. By the first of March there are massed banks of brilliant bloom everywhere: magenta and coral and fuchsia, white and pink and scarlet.

When I think of azaleas, I think first and almost exclusively of the formosa variety, that vibrant reddishpurple shade of fuchsia-magenta. Perhaps this is also due to what grew in both grandmothers’ yards, hedging their houses.

Insidious wisteria soon twirls its dangerous tendrils around anything that stands still, dangling its aggressively sweet lavender festoons from ferocious vines like bunches of grapes. Wisteria will crush the ruins of old houses and strangle a strong fence.

Next, roadsides and fields begin to be blanketed by phlox in a profusion of pinks and purples and rampant reds, a crazy quilt of color. Then spring’s palette shifts from scentless Valentine hues to fragrant white.

Dogwoods blossom in mid-March, their ivory petals scented like old-fashioned soap flakes, drifting to earth on chilly gusts of spring wind. My favorite scent, surely the fragrance of heaven itself—orange blossoms—hovers like a glorious chord over blooming groves. It’s warmer now, and time to drive slowly with your windows down to enjoy the golden air.

April arrives as jasmine takes over trees and fences in clouds of tiny starlike white flowers along country roads. The scent is like being slapped in the face by Scarlett O’Hara. Snow-white gardenias show off in yards as their heady perfume wafts on the breeze. Late in the month, magnolias appear high in the tall trees, their grand creamy-white blooms releasing a faint lemony fragrance into the air. They will reign into summer.

In Florida, our Festival of Flowers is an endless celebration. Juan knew what he was doing when he named us.