Month: January 2016

Rare & Unusual Tropical Trees & Plants, Flowering, Fruit, Native, Palm, Bamboo, Heliconia, Hummingbird, Butterfly

Oriental Fruit Fly Quarantine May Soon End

Growers in Miami-Dade County are beginning to show some optimism concerning the outbreak of Oriental fruit fly. That’s because the quarantine is within weeks of being lifted. The Oriental fruit fly is one of the most aggressive fruit flies known worldwide. It has been responsible for considerable damage to citrus in Japan and to mangos…
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January 29, 2016 0

Tips from Brooks Tropicals for Healthy Breakfast Treats

From time to time, Richard Lyons’ Nursery likes to pass along newsletters produced by Brooks Tropicals. Here’s a recent one — emphasizing nutritional breakfast ideas — that is particularly timely in view of the expected chilly weather coming up for our region.   Power up daily with a healthy breakfast Breakfast matters. It’s the most…
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January 22, 2016 0

Winter Rains Taking a Toll on Plants in Our Region

A month ago in this space, we reported our expectation that plants being grown in southern Florida would be prone to disease problems if the unusual pattern of significant winter rainfall were to continue. Well, the pattern has continued, and local plants are definitely showing the strain. What can homeowners do to prevent the outbreak…
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January 15, 2016 0

Brazilian Red Cloak Stars in the Winter Landscape

Brazilian Red Cloak (Megaskepasma erythrochlamys) was included in a June 2015 article on this website about hedge material, but it merits special attention now that it is blooming spectacularly. This single-species genus is a New World native that occurs in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Venezuela, but not really Brazil. It is capable of…
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January 8, 2016 0

Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris)

This article was originally posted almost 4 years ago, but bears reposting since we are now in the heart of our winter (although you would never know it except for the calendar date).  I also neglected to give a heads-up to the Hong Kong Orchid Tree (Bauhinia blakeana) which really attracts the ruby-throat at the…
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January 3, 2016 0