Botany Class

Cheyenne likes to share the office with me when I am at the computer and some days I am of a mind to let sleeping dogs lie. But then where would she be without a daily off leash ramble? Bored is the answer to that, so off we go, on this occasion to Big Pine Key on the island's southern shore.The addition called Cactus Hammock is located between a trailer park and a collection of shore front homes and the long stretch between them is covered by a delightful shady footpath winding through the bushes. To get there we had to park the kennel and cross some flooded land:One unusual aspect of this particular trail is that much of the plant life has been labelled: Some of it has been labelled by vandals rather than botanists:I got it into my head it might be amusing to record these labels and have them to refer to when writing about other walks I might take.

The trouble is, there is no way in hell I am going to remember all these names:The walk itself is quite delightful on top of a sandy ridge next to the water.

It forms much of the hedgerow along the path:

Then there's something called a coral bean. That one's new to me:

This next one is a familiar piece of history, if not botany:

And these are everywhere and native:

These were beach combers from, I suspect, the adjacent trailer park:

Black mangroves are easy enough to identify because they have little stubby roots that grow out of the mud surrounding their trunks.

It's the white mangroves that I have trouble identifying. I think their leaves look rather similar to these black mangrove leaves:The other problem with this splendid botanical idea is that leave sin pictures tend to look pretty much the same to my eye:The tourist tree is an easy one:And as you all must know by now the gumbo limbo gets that nickname because it's bark turns red and peels, just like a tourist: I've got some gumbo limbos around my home and I am very fond of them and their bright green leaves. I also have a cactus that looks something like this:And the trash can is a sign that human interference is never too far away:And my other favorites, the date palms:This one vaguely resembles the poisonwood tree, known in the Caribbean as the manchineel:

The poisonwood tree has nasty black splotches on it's bark, the dogwood doesn't:There were more bushes and trees and labels than you could shake a stick at. Why they call this the "Spanish Stopper" I couldn't rightly say. Perhaps it was impenetrable to early explorers:The batteries in my camera went dead before I got a picture of the purple flowers produced by this bush but by then we were both a bit exhausted by this...exhaustive labelling and we called it a day.My assistant and I:I wonder if I will pluck up the courage to try to document the other labels I left behind this trip.