Cinnamon Fern

The cinnamon fern (Osmunda cinnamomea) is quite possibly one of the most beautiful plants in the Back Woods. This showy fern is deciduous and produces distinct fertile and non fertile fronds above a dark wiry mass of roots (ever seen osmunda fiber at your garden store) that is characteristic of all members of the Osmundaceae family. The Osmundaceae family contains some of the oldest ferns documented. The cinnamon fern and royal fern (Osmunda regalis), also found in the Back Woods, could therefore be classified as living fossils, too cool!

Cinnamon ferns are named for their distinct fertile fronds that are dark cinnamon-y in color; the reduced modified leaflets appear like crumpled curled cinnamon bark. The sterile fronds start out curled tight in a fuzzy fiddle heads. The fuzz is purported to be a desired nesting material for hummingbirds, deer are fond of the fiddle heads for browse, and steamed or boiled fiddle heads are popular with wild foods crowd.

Cinnamon ferns are a characteristic plant of wet flatwood pine forests and can even be a dominant groundcover in wet hardwood hammocks. Remarkably, these plants are tolerant of fire and regenerate readily (even increase in cover) in frequently burned habitats. You can see cinnamon ferns all along the Flatwoods Trail (new shell trail) as well as near the boardwalk.

Americorps in Action

We were very pleased to have had the opportunity to work with an absolutely wonderful team (Delta 3) of young adults in service with Americorps this past Saturday. One of the mottos for Americorps is “Service through Teamwork” and these bright and enthusiastic young men and women lived up to that motto by making quick and easy work of yards and yards of vines and cut brush in an area we have been clearing in the flatwoods.

Reminiscent of the depression era Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), AmeriCorps NCCC (National Civilian Community Corps) is a full-time, team-based residential program for men and women age 18–24. The young men and women we worked with were assigned from the Southern campus in Vicksburg, Mississippi having originally come from all parts of the U.S..

We look forward to working with AmeriCorps service members again in the future. We are working to see if we could have a team assigned to stay with us and work in the Back Woods. Think of the progress that could be made with that kind of teamwork and initiative available to us, wow.

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Flora Bunda Indeed

The Habenaria floribunda are blooming up a storm in the Back Woods. We are seeing these lovelies in more locations than in previous years possibly due to some of the mechanical thinning (more light reaching the forest floor) we have done to control native and non native vines .

Also known as the toothpetal false reinorchid or mignonette orchid (etymology: dainty and green), this Habenaria sp. is common throughout much of Florida.

Natives for Your Neighborhood has a nice description of the growing requirements of this native terrestrial orchid.

There are a few more photos from our highlight of this species last December http://florida.plantatlas.usf.edu/Plant.aspx?id=799.

http://florida.plantatlas.usf.edu/Plant.aspx?id=799

MOSI Green Day 2009

Wow, what an absolutely smashing success! First off I have to extend my thanks to the 204 VOLUNTEERS who showed up Saturday to participate in the plantings and clean up! Can you believe that number?! There are some seriously awesome folks in Tampa Bay who are all about making a difference any way they can. My most sincere thanks and kudos go out to them!

This past Saturday MOSI held it’s first ever Green Day event to celebrate the week of Earth Day and National Arbor Day. MOSI led into the event with plantings in the Richard T Bowers Historic Tree Grove starting Wednesday on Earth Day carrying through to Friday on Arbor Day. Nine thematic plantings tied in with the unique histories of the trees in the grove were funded by a grant from Fiskars and were installed by another corps of awesome volunteers led by Kristen G our curator of the BioWorks, butterfly gardens and tree grove. (Check out Kristen’s blog Lepcurious for more details and pictures)

Saturday MOSI held a Green themed exhibitor fair in the Richard T Bowers Historic Tree Grove with some wonderful folks including; Keep Hillsborough County Beautiful, South West Florida Water Management District, Natural Resource Planning Services, Morningstar Fisherman, M & B Products, HCC Institute of Florida Studies, Galaxy Eco Wash, Enviro-tech, Green Armada, FL Aquarium Green Team, Baby Girl Cleaning Products, Hillsborough County Solid Waste, Posey Power Batteries, and a few more (apologies to anyone I am missing!)

Keep Hillsborough County Beautiful was pivotal in helping us recruit and register 204 volunteers for the event. Volunteers cleaned up a mile and a half of city roadways including Fowler Avenue in front of the museum and the side streets bordering the Back Woods. More volunteers bagged trash along the nature trails and dug out long buried trash deep in the woods. Another team of volunteers filled bags and bags with seed pods of invasive trees. With shovels lent to MOSI by Hillsborough County’s Special Events Team, volunteers planted 90 longleaf pine throughout the east and west sandhills of the Back Woods. Cub Scout Pack 78, always up to any task, took on trimming trees growing into the trails. An intrepid group of Girl Scouts dove into duty late in the day cleaning and raking the trails. And with some serious gusto, teams of volunteers armed only with rakes and shovels and some serious fortitude filled in the plow line from our recent brush fire!!

Many thanks go out to all the MOSI staff and friends for help making the day possible. Thanks to Phil, Joel, Guest Services, Custodial, Parking, Cafe, Kristen, Sara, MOSI Science Store, and probably a ton more staff I am forgetting. Thanks to Mindy from NRPS for help mapping and flagging trees. Super thanks to Will and T.R.E.E. Inc. for donating nearly 100 longleaf pines for the plantings! Thanks to Steve for helping me schlep all those trees in and out of the truck! Thank you to Walter for taking photographs (and to Erin for letting me borrow him.) And, thanks to Joe and Pat for helping me heft 60 plus bags of garbage in the dumpster at the end of the day!

Our most sincere thanks go to the folks who provided extras for all of our amazing volunteers; thank you to Natural Resource Planning Services for providing over 200 bottles of water for our volunteers, thank you to M&B Products for providing water and juice in their unique bags to our volunteers, thank you to Dunkin Donuts for providing coffee and donuts for our volunteers, super thanks to MOSI for giving all volunteers a free pass to MOSI, and super super thanks to Keep Hillsborough County Beautiful for providing volunteers with t-shirts, sunscreen, bracelets, more water, tote bags, snacks, and other goodies in appreciation of their great service!

Thanks to Pat and Daisy from Keep Hillsborough County Beautiful for all of their awesome efforts with out which the day would not have been possible. KHCB does some really awesome work with almost no staff and more enthusiasm than 100 people!

Here is looking forward to MOSI’s Green Day 2010, Cheers!

Pleasant Surprise

Retrieving a trash can lid tossed in the woods during the recent blow; I came across this little guy quite comfortable underneath. A first wild find for me, this is a pine woods snake Rhadinaea flavilata. Found in moist pinelands and hardwood wetlands (this one was in the wet Flatwoods near the sinkhole), they are common in central Florida. Smaller more isolated populations of this reptile, impacted by habitat destruction, are in imperiled status in other states. Although listed as non venomous, they are actually rear fanged and have what one site termed “slightly venomous saliva”. They are egg layers and the adults reach about 10-13 inches in length like the one pictured here. One more “made my day” moment courtesy the Back Woods.

Wow, what a difference. Two new volunteer forest stewards Brian and George made a major dent in some of the demolition necessary in the Back Woods. The lush invasive filled picture shows our picnic platform in the western flatwoods. It was dilapidated, rotting out from underneath, and collapsing from soil subsidence.
Needless to say, it was in even worse shape than pictured here.

The second photo shows the fruits of some dedicated volunteer labor. New volunteer Brian (demolitionist extraordinaire) started his first day tackling the platform. On a second day he and new volunteer George (saw palmetto slasher extraordinaire) finished up the job! WooHoo! All that is left is some tidying up, repairing the waste can, and deciding on how to use the area in the future.

A comment on the brown: A fan to the MOSI Facebook page mentioned concern about the appearance of the Back Woods. Here is what I said in response; The Back Woods is undergoing an habitat restoration process which includes treating non native invasive plant species mechanically and with herbicides. Top that with a notable nippy and dry winter, and there appears to be a lot of brown in the Back Woods. Already we are seeing native shrubs and herbaceous material that was smothered by invasive competitive air potato vine making a come back even in this challenging weather. Please check out our forest blog TheLongleaf at http://thelongleaf.blogspot.com/ for more details about the restoration process. In addition to pictures on the blog, you can see more pictures of the Back Woods at our Flickr site MOSI Outside http://www.flickr.com/groups/mosioutside/ where you will definitely find plenty of beautiful things very much alive in the Back Woods.Thank you for your concern! Cheers, TheLongleaf

Native Terrestrial Orchid

The toothpetal false reinorchid (Habenaria floribunda) is making a show in the northern flatwoods.

This green/yellow flowered charmer is common throughout central and southern Florida.

Some texts describe it as having a distinctly unpleasant fragrance but, we have found it to have a pleasantly sweet smell with some musk undertones.

So, keep an eye out underfoot; this Habenaria sp. grows in colonies deep under the pine canopy treating us with a only short bloom in the late fall/early winter.

Please remember to enjoy the flowers by admiring from a distance or keep the memory through photography but, please do not pick flowers or remove plants from the preserve.