This Key Deer is surrounded by Key Thatch in the Key Deer National Refuge.
Key Thatch is tolerant of salt air and some salt water flooding. Dry or moist fertile soil is best, although the plant must be fully established in order to take a long dry period. Key Thatch, also known as Brittle Thatch Palm and Silver Thatch Palm does well up to Palm Beach County. It is very slow growing and will take up to ten years to begin growing a trunk.
The leaves, which are dark green above and silvery white below, are three feet wide and six feet total length with the petiole. The total width of the palm may be six feet with drooping fronds coming off of the four inch diameter trunk. Trees in the wild may reach thirty feet, but this is rare.
The lovely palmate leaves, narrow trunk and bright white berries hanging from a long panicle make this a real texture enhancer for the landscape. Just when you tire of oval leaves, throw in a few Key Thatch and the landscape explodes. Birds and squirrels love the non poisonous fruit and bees visit the many small white flowers. The leaves are the caterpillar food for the Monk Skipper Butterfly.
Try a mixture of several Key Thatch along with Florida Thatch Palm, Silver Palm, Buccaneer Palm, Lignum Vitae, Joewood, Rhacoma, Quailberry, Lopsided Indian and Dwarf Fakahatchee Grass, Slash Pine, Locustberry, Cinnecord, Gumbo Limbo and other low wildflowers and Key plants. It can even take moderate shade along the edge of the planting.
Joewood is a very slow growing shrub or small tree of the Florida Keys. It grows from four to 10 feet tall in a round shape with interesting twisted branches, much like a bonsai, and has mottled white bark.
The flowers are very fragrant in creamy masses and occur during the summer. These are followed by pea sized yellow or orange red berries that are important wildlife food, yet may be poisonous to humans.
This hardy tree naturally occurs in the zone between the mangroves and hammock in the Florida Keys and is tolerant of salt air, short periods of salt water flooding and sandy or calcium rich soil.
Joewood grows well in Palm Beach County. Mix with any of the native Thatch Palms, Quailberry, Coontie, Lignum Vitae, Buccaneer Palm, rocks, or just gravel or mulch. It should be given good fertilizer, lots of sun and a rich organic soil to maximize its growth. This tree must be placed where it will be noticed and not hidden by other material.
When grown in the nursery, I find it difficult to produce a strong root system on this plant. Care must be taken to gently push it out of the pot and handle it carefully when placing it in the planting hole. Water and fertilize until established and it will become independent and beautiful.
Treat it well, and Joewood will become one of your most prized specimens.
Jamaica Caper is native to coastal hardwood hammocks in full sun or partial to moderate shade. Deep, dry, fertile soil without clay or too much shell rock is preferred. This plant has a taproot and will rarely wilt once established.
The three inch pink, wispy flowers are followed by eight inch long pods that look like silver string beans. These ripen in August and September and open to reveal a bright orange pulp that covers the row of BB sized seeds.
Jamaica Caper makes a great specimen tree up to 30 feet tall and half that wide or an impressive mass planting if kept at least six feet tall. Jamaica Caper looks good as a hedge if fertilized or grown in rich soil.
Great for birds yet not tasty for humans. Try mixing with Wild Coffee, Marlberry, Beautyberry, Stoppers and other coastal themed plants. Jamaica Caper’s Christmas tree like growth makes it ideal for use in narrow spaces. The Florida White Butterfly uses this as a host plant.
This is one of my favorite native shrubs due to its colorful flowers, interesting orange pulped fruit and lush shiny green growth on the leaf surface with a silvery underside.
Indigo Berry is one of the toughest native plants available. This is found from the Florida Keys to Brevard County and withstands salt air, drought, and freezing temperatures. It likes soil with some organic matter and will not do well in white, sterile sandy soil. Not many plants do.
Indigo Berry can be grown as an eight foot specimen shrub or clipped as a two foot hedge. The shiny leaves are dark green and tough. Male and female plants are separate, yet both produce fragrant, small white flowers. The female plants produce half inch oval white berries with a brittle skin that contains an inky pulp with several flat seeds. Not tasty although a few can be eaten with no harm.
Birds eat the fruit and like to nest in the thick spiny branches. It is a larval food for the tantalus sphinx moth. There seems to be a varietal difference between the taller coastal plant and the shorter, compact one found in the pine rocklands.
Randia mixes well with coastal shrubs for a mixed hedge. The short form can be used to create a Keys theme. For this, try mixing with Coontie, Thrinax Palms, Ernodea, Slash Pines, Tetrazygia, Marlberry, Quailberry and Chapman’s Cassia. The small thorns make both forms a good security hedge that is uncomfortable to walk through.
The taller coastal form from north of the pine rocklands goes well with Beach Cocoplum, Sea Lavender, Wild Coffee, Cacti, Sea Oats, Beach Elder, Marlberry, Black Bead, myrsine, Native Scaevola, Beach Sunflower, Beach Verbena, Gaillardia and most other coastal plants. A mass of several Indigo Berry is very attractive.
There are two types of cocoplum. One occurs in wet, inland forests or the edge of swamps and the other which is called Horizontal or Beach Cocoplum is found on dunes and in scrub.
The tall inland form has dark purple or white fruit with sweet pulp and an edible nut and upright branches. These will grow to over 30 feet tall; the red tipped variety is most often used for hedges.
The “Horizontal” variety branches horizontally and has 1.5 inch fruit that is white with a pink blush and sweeter pulp. The nut is larger than the inland variety and tasty.
Horizontal Cocoplum or Beach Cocoplum grows in dry soil and makes a great ground cover, although it needs yearly trimming to keep it from mounding eventually to eight feet. It needs fertilizer and some extra watering for up to two years to establish and fill in.
Horizontal Cocoplum fruit is a good food for birds and mammals and is refreshing to eat while on long walks in the dry scrub or dune environments.
A natural mix includes Saw Palmetto, Sea Lavender, Cacti, Coontie, Key Lily, Beach Elder, Native Scaevola, Indigo Berry, and Bay Cedar. Also mix with Sea Oats, Dune Sunflower, Beach Verbena, Red Salvia and Southern Beebalm.
Hercules’ Club is the best attractor of giant swallowtail butterflies. This large butterfly lays its eggs, which grow into a large caterpillar that looks like a bird dropping, on the young leaves. You will have several of these giant swallowtail butterflies in your yard if you have this wonderful 12 foot tree on the property.
You will need several trees, which are dioecious, in order to have seed form on the female plants. These are eaten by cardinals and other seed eating birds. The leaves have a tangy flavor that if chewed will numb your mouth. The other name of Toothache Bush comes from this property. It is not poisonous, but should not be eaten, just tasted.
Hercules’ Club is found along the coast and in scrub and dry pastureland throughout the Southeast. It can take freezing weather, dry soil and low amounts of salt spray. It is covered with sharp, straight spines which turn into corky looking nubs on the trunks. It will sucker a bit, but the extra plants can be removed easily.
Even though this seems like a dangerous plant to have around, its upright growth and up to 30 foot height make it easy to limb up and keep the branches away from people. The thorns can be easily clipped off too as there are not very many of them. Compared to Wild Lime, which is the other host for the Giant Swallowtail butterfly and has cat claw like thorns, this is much safer.
The compound, shiny leaves are a bit like Brazilian Pepper yet much more attractive. When designing a butterfly garden, I like to hide the Hercules Club inside a mass of other plants like Firebush, Wild Coffee, Saw Palmetto or anything that will keep people away from it. Once it is tall though, the lower branches can be trimmed and this beautiful, knobby trunked tree can be one of your most interesting specimens.
It will need full sun, so plant it with sun loving plants like Button Sage, Bloodberry, Beautyberry, Firebush, and other caterpillar hosts like Chapman’s Cassia, Red Bay, Coontie, Hackberry, Wild Lime (which needs lots of space), Native Plumbago and Short Leaf Fig. Maybe just plant wildflowers beneath it to keep people away until it can be limbed up.
Hackberry is native to the eastern and central U.S. and most of the East Coast down to Dade County Florida. Hackberry will grow in all but the most infertile soils and tolerates occasional flooding for short periods. It will not grow where it gets much salt breeze or water.
Hackberry, also known as Sugarberry or Southern Hackberry, is found inland in moist hammocks. The east side of Lake Okeechobee has 60 foot tall Hackberrys mixed with 80 foot Mastic and Bald Cypress, Red Mulberry and Live Oak. There is an understory of Wild Coffee, Marlberry, Graytwig, White Stopper, Native Boston Fern, Coastal Foxtail and Wild Plumbago. If you want to see this tree in a natural setting, just walk the Port Mayaca Trail where Route 76 ends at the lake.
If you go during the spring, keep a look out for the American snout, tawny emperor and question mark butterflies which lay their eggs on young Hackberry leaves. In the fall, migrating birds eat the sweet, edible to humans too, small berries. Local and migrating birds and other wildlife can find fruit, insects and young leaves to eat on this tree all year long.
Leaves drop in the fall making the fruit more visible to wildlife. Lobate lac scale sucks the sap from the stems and leaves and drops their waste onto the leaves below. This will cause a blackening of the foliage which is shed and replaced with clean new growth each spring. Hopefully a predator of this introduced pest that feeds on many plant species will be released soon to control it. Some suckering may occur, which is fine in an open area, yet may need control in a tight spot.
A portion of the yard with deciduous trees like Hackberry, Pond or Bald Cypress, Red Maple, Red Mulberry, Florida Elm and Winged Sumac will give fall color and vibrant spring growth. There are also interesting corky knobs on the trunk of Hackberry that make this tree easily identifiable from a distance.
Gumbo Limbo is a fast growing tree up to 60 feet tall. The red or green peeling bark is attractive and mixes well with Simpson Stopper, Pigeon Plum and Soldierwood that also have peeling bark.
Gumbo Limbo is native from the Keys, following the coastline, to Brevard Co. It likes average to dry soil and is tolerant of salt air, yet not inundation by salt water for long periods.
The red covered seeds are eaten by the great crested flycatcher in the spring and the leaves are a food source for the larva of the Dingy Purplewing butterfly which occurs in the Keys. The sticky sap was once used as “Bird Lime” or glue to catch small birds by ancient peoples. The wood was also used for the animals on merry go rounds.
For a coastal hardwood hammock theme, this is one of the best trees to start with. Buy plants grown from seedlings, which have better growth structure than rooted branches and survive hurricanes better.
This is because seedlings naturally grow upward and bend over in an arc. Branches then form on the opposite side of the arc to fill out the tree. During a hurricane, the top branches are sheared leaving little for the wind to catch and saving the tree trunk which soon grows new branches.
Mix with an understory of Wild Coffee, Firebush, Coontie, Wild Plumbago, Jamaica Caper and Marlberry. Build the canopy with other hammock trees including Pigeon Plum, Mastic, Paradise Tree, Wild Tamarind, Jamaica Dogwood, Red Bay, Live Oak, Soldierwood, Bahama Strongbark and Blolly.
The Spiraling Whitefly was a new problem on this and other plants recently. It did not kill these trees and it even provided food for migrating warblers. An insect that preys on this pest has been introduced and has killed most of these insects leaving the trees clean and green again.
The Florida Thatch Palm is also known as Green Thatch Palm and is primarily native to the Monroe County Keys. It is the fastest growing of the three native thrinax palms and will develop a six foot or more trunk in just twenty years. The Key Thatch and Silver Palms will barely have two foot trunks in this amount of time.
The leaf blades are three feet across and have no silver or white on the underside. The leaf petiole is three feet long which means the tip of the leaflets extend four to six feet out from the trunk. When it has developed enough clear trunk, in about five years, other low plants like Coontie, Quailberry, Snowberry and low wildflowers can be planted underneath. Otherwise, just keep the area under the plant mulched.
Florida Thatch Palm will tolerate some salt air but not much salt water flooding. The stalks of white flowers attract butterflies and honey bees. These are followed by many quarter inch round white berries that squirrels won’t leave alone until gone. It is not hard to find twenty foot tall specimens growing in landscapes and natural areas of the Keys. Many are grown in Palm Beach County and beyond.
Do to its tolerance of some shade, this palm can be mixed into the interior of a hammock planting. Try one to several as an understory to Gumbo Limbo, Mastic, Paradise Tree, Pigeon Plum and other tall trees. Make sure it has room to grow upward without hitting a branch and plant low hammock shrubs ten feet away. This will allow the other plants to fill out and not crowd the palms.
In areas of full sun to partial shade, the Florida Thatch Palm can be mixed with the other native Thrinax Palms, Buccaneer palms, Sabal Palms and a backdrop of Blue Saw Palmetto. This gives a real Florida Keys or Bahamas look to the yard. It is also the larval food of the Monk Skipper butterfly.
This vine is known as Chiggery Grapes, but I refuse to use this horrifying name and have renamed it Florida Gooseberry. This is a long lived vine found primarily in Dade, Monroe, Collier and Hendry Counties. I have personally found it within the Fakahatchee Strand in Collier County. It will grow at least 30 feet up into a supporting tree and then cascade down.
In the spring, clusters of white flowers hang from the branch tips. These attract many butterflies and other insects. Clusters of clear white quarter inch berries follow which bring in many birds and squirrels. The plant is in the borage family which often contains alkaloids that male Queen and Soldier butterflies lap up from the flowers and rotting fruit and leaves to be converted into scents that attract their mates. These berries are not poisonous or tasty.
The leaves of Florida Gooseberry are oval with a blunt tip, about six inches long and hairy. The main stem may become three inches in diameter over time and can easily survive for many years. We have several on our property that are over 20 years old. Few seedlings come up on there own and the plant does not sucker. It is not salt tolerant, but very drought tolerant and generally takes care of itself after just a few initial waterings when first planted.
On our property, it is planted next to a Live Oak along with a Multiflora Passionvine. Both have grown 30 feet up the tree and cascade down to form a carpet of larval food and nectar for Zebra Longwings and Julia butterflies. This mass has persisted for twenty years so far. It is “Alive” with insects, birds and squirrels most of the year but especially in the spring.
If you decide to plant this on a fence, you will need to cut it back every few months to keep it in bounds. It mixes well with Multiflora Passionvine, Corky Passionvine, Jacquemontia, Native Allamanda and Coral Honeysuckle.
Years from now, I want to be remembered as the person who changed the name of this wonderful plant.
