Ah, spring. Now is good time to see a riot.
Florida’s wildflowers are in a full color, rioting all along roadsides. Masses of flowers crowd the right of ways. Hold the mower. We want to see this beauty.
Quilts of magenta and pink Drummond Phlox, sprinklings of Black-eyed Susan daisies with their black centers and bright yellow petals like rays of sunshine, clusters of Indian Blanket – they look like tied-died shirts form the 1960s with red-orange centers and yellow tips.
All this native color is no accident. The Florida Department of Transportation and the Florida Federation of Garden Clubs, Inc, partner to purchase and plant 20,000 pounds of native and naturalized stands of wi
ldflowers each year. Wow! Thank you. Thank you. To know more about wildflowers check out the Florida Wildflower Foundation.
Yesterday we stopped the car on Interstate 75 and pulled well over on the right of way so as not to be hit by oncoming traffic.
While traffic zoomed by at 70 mph and better, we got out of the car and bent to the task of photographing wildflowers. Motorists must have muttered “What are those two crazy women doing shooting wildflowers?”
Ah, the answer: you enjoy beauty where you find it.
History is on our side. Here is what W.B. Skinner said in his book Adventures in Florida History:
“By Easter Sunday, March 27, 1513, Ponce de Leon was sailing north westwardly from the Bahamas for Cautio. On Saturday, April 2, he sighted land near present-day St. Augustine. The land he viewed that day was covered with many beautiful wildflowers. At this time of year back in Spain, he remembered, the festival of flowers was being held. He called the land ‘La Florida” for the festival of flowers.”
And there you have it. What’s growing on your roadside?
Lucy Beebe Tobias is an author, freelance writer, photographer and artist. Visit her Web site: www.Lucyworks.com