Gardens Blog
Marie Selby Botanical Gardens
Written by Shawn McCourt, Ph.D. Plant Records Keeper On the west side of the Great Lawn that stretches southwards from the historic Selby House at MSBG’s downtown campus is a beautiful, golden-flowered small tree that is often overlooked by visitors until the winter...
Written by Shawn McCourt, Ph.D.Plant Records Keeper Just a stone’s throw from some of the most popular beach destinations in the country, and mostly overlooked by the more than 2.5 million tourists who visit southwest Florida each year, a tall, slender, succulent...
By Elizabeth Gandy, Curatorial Assistant Celtis laevigata, commonly known as hackberry or sugarberry, is an easily overlooked small to large tree found in wet to mesic hammocks throughout Florida and much of the United States (Image 1). With an affinity for calcareous...
Cattleya percivaliana blooming in Wedding Oak at downtown campus (Photo by Aaron Fink) Blooming now in the “Wedding Oak” just west of the Payne Mansion at Selby’s downtown campus is a beautiful lavender-colored orchid with large flowers that is often underlooked by...
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...