Gardens Blog
Marie Selby Botanical Gardens
Spring is sprung and with it, an iconic plant of the Florida landscape is bursting with flowers. Wild coffee (Psychotria nervosa) is one of the most widely cultivated of Florida’s native plants. Tolerance of both shade and our relatively poor native soil make it a...
It is a win/win situation to have our Botany Department volunteers being able to continue their valuable work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. They are helping with a multi-institutional project funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, known as...
Since Covid 19 shut down Selby gardens on March 17 you can rest assured that the Horticulture staff are still on site, hard at work caring for both our gardens and greenhouse collections. The Gardens staff have been busy with spring pruning, planting of seasonal...
May EcoQuest Challenge As part of the EcoFlora Project, we are including fun monthly "Challenges" to enlist citizens in documenting plants in our area. May’s challenge is the Tilly Tally. Tillandsias (fondly called “tillys” here or, often, “air plants”) are in...
The stunning jade vine (Strongylodon macrobotrys; family Fabaceae) in Selby Gardens’ Tropical Conservatory is developing a seed pod for the first time. The reason, greenhouse horticulturist Addie Worth provided pollination assistance! Without some help, jade vines...
Written by Selby Gardens Vice President for Botany, Bruce Holst One of Selby Gardens' strangest passion flower vines is beginning to bloom this year, and it has the oddest scientific name of all, Passiflora xiikzodz. The species name is pronounced "sheik zoats." In...
Take your quarantine outdoors for a nature exploration! The Selby Gardens education team is now offering tools and scavenger hunts to help keep your family's minds and bodies working. Start with the Selby Gardens' plant hunt in your own backyard. This is the perfect...
According to the publisher Penguin Random House, somebody somewhere around the world buys a copy of Eric Carle's children’s book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, once every 30 seconds. Last year was the book’s 50th(!) anniversary, so there’s a very good chance you, or...
Salvador Dalí was well-known for his surreal paintings. His work often featured everyday objects portrayed with atypical or amorphous forms, his melted watches being one of the most iconic . He was fascinated by irregular shapes and could envision people or animals...
Curator-at Large, Dr. Carol Ockman ROBERT STERLING CLARK PROFESSOR OF ART HISTORY EMERITA, WILLIAMS COLLEGE Behind the intriguing, and equally disturbing, soft watches, abstracted heads with noses balanced on the ground, clusters of ants, grimacing lions’ heads,...