Selby Gardens is featured weekly on ABC7 News at Noon. Tune in Thursdays to see more informative segments like this one.
Florida’s typically dry winter usually triggers tree blooming in early spring, but last year’s wetter-than-normal winter has delayed that, causing many native trees to just now start flowering. Selby Gardens’ botanist David Troxell explains it all and tells you what to look for.
Usually, by the end of February, all of the trumpet trees around town have dropped their leaves completely, and many are shoing off their colorful flowers. The combination of Florida’s dry winter season and winds in early spring cause many of our native plants like oaks and sea grapes to lose last year’s leaves and push new growth in a season we have termed, “Fall in Florida.” Most years, the trumpet trees bloom in February, but this year was different.
Temperate zones have four seasons based on sunlight exposure: winter, spring, summer and fall. The tropics, close to the equator, have near-consistent sun, but two seasons: rainy and dry. Sarasota is semi-tropical, and while our days are shorter in winter and hotter in summer, the most noticeable season here is what we call “hurricane season,” which is another way of saying rainy season.
Most plants have a “bloom trigger,” some condietion that changes and cues the plants to flower – think of wildflowers blooming after a forest fire. Many of the tropical blooming trees we grow around town are triggered to bloom by dry conditions.
This past winter the country experienced unseasonably wet weather as an extended El Nino system passed. Blooming trees like tabebuias and Jacarandas, which depend on a dry season to trigger their flowering cycles, either didn’t bloom very well this year, or are blooming later than usual. Many of these trees are blooming now or just coming into bud. Keep your eyes peeled around town; they are planted in neighborhoods and parking lots alike.
To learn more about seasonlly dry, flowering trees, come visit us in the Gardens.