Gardens Blog
Marie Selby Botanical Gardens
Bougainvillea are familiar to us as common thorny shrubs, vines, or trees bearing colorful papery “flowers” which are in fact modified leaves or bracts enclosing three simple waxy true flowers that are normally white or off-white in color. They are members of the...
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...
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...
The Botany team at Selby Gardens collaborates with our neighboring counties to study rare Florida plants in efforts to conserve them in the wild. They gather ecological and lifecycle data, as well as DNA samples of plants to name just a few of the activities they...
New College of Florida and Marie Selby Botanical Gardens began a formal collaboration with a focus on plant science, conservation, and public outreach in 2016. New College Botany class visits the greenhouses at Selby Gardens. “There have been some amazing outcomes for...
Marie Selby Botanical Gardens was recently awarded a CSSA (Cactus & Succulent Society of America) conservation grant to safeguard a federally endangered cactus species, Harrisia aboriginum, within four counties of Southwest Florida. The species, colloquially known...
Dr. Carlyle A. Luer is considered one of the most prolific botanists of both this and the previous centuries. A key founder of Selby Gardens, Luer, 95, has described and illustrated more than 3,000 new orchid species. This feat is just an estimate as the exact number...
Seymour, one of our two mature Amorphophallus titanum ("Corpse flower") plants fooled us in thinking he was going to create an inflorescence (flower) rather than create a leaf as its partner, Audrey, has done. Alas, Seymour won't be treating us to his odorous blossom...
Selby Gardens welcomes our new Brazilian Intern, Carla Royer, who arrived last week and will be here until October 2 . Carla is one of Selby Garden's Curator of the Orchid Research Center, Antonio Toscano de Brito, Ph.D.'s former MSc students and is now a PhD...