Trees and Plants Along the Anne Kolb Nature Trail

Trees and Plants Along the Anne Kolb Nature Trail & Ethnobotanical Uses

PINELAND PLANTS

1. Saw Palmetto Serenoa repens

A palm with a low, prostrate trunk more or less buried or lying parallel to the ground that forms dense clumps. Sometimes the trunks may be upright, having the dimensions of a small, erect tree, especially in moist, shady hammocks. The fronds are fan shaped and may be silvery blue or green in color. The frond petioles are armed with sharp curved spines reminiscent of a saw blade. The fragrant flowers are creamy white. The fruit is yellowish or orange, turning black at maturity.

Wildlife – These flowers are a nectar source for many butterflies. The fruits are important foods for a variety of animals including foxes, raccoons, opossums, and even gopher tortoises.

The fruits have a long folk history as an aphrodisiac and have been used for centuries in treating conditions of the prostate. Native American Indians used the saw palmetto fruits as a subsistence food in the fall. The bases of new leaf stalks were also cooked or eaten raw. The Seminoles used the plant for fiber, baskets, brooms, fans, and ropes. Further uses included fish drags, fire/dance fans, and dolls. American tribes use the fruit as a diuretic, a sedative, an anti-inflammatory, and for asthma, colds, coughs, chronic bronchitis, diarrhea, and migraines. Modern-day development of a purified extract from the berries greatly improves the symptoms of an enlarged prostate. Florida is the biggest source and producer of saw palmetto products. With about 2,000 tons harvested from South Florida and exported to Europe each year, the fruit crop estimate is $50 million a year in the state.

2. Beautyberry Callicarpa americana

Beautyberry is a multibranched deciduous shrub. The leaves are opposite and simple, and both sides are covered with star-shaped hairs. The young stems also have star-shaped hairs. The leaves are aromatic when bruised. The small flowers are pink and followed by densely clustered, magenta-colored berries along the branch.

Wildlife – A favorite food of the mockingbird.

Favored among the eastern Indian tribes as a ceremonial plant and as a tea used in sweat bath rituals. Also popular as a Southern folk remedy: The berries, roots, and leaves are steeped in a tea to treat dropsy, skin disorders, stomach disorders, and colic. 3. South Florida Slash Pine Pinus elliottii var. densa

This tree can grow up to 100 feet. The leaves are needlelike and are typically bound together in fascicles of two, occasionally three, and extend brushlike from the tip of the branch. This tree typically grows in fire-dependent communities.

Wildlife – Squirrels use the trees like jungle gyms and scold each other as noisily as children. These trees do not sucker from the base, and the branches are sparse, so the forest is open and wiry, just right for cardinals and jays, crows, hawks, owls, doves, woodpeckers, and sapsuckers.

The exceedingly hard heartwood has always been a favorite in Southern folks’ indigenous architecture, resulting in large-scale logging, with harvesting continuing into the 21st century. Commercial processes include use in the paper and chemical industries (turpentine and gum resins). Resins are obtained by slashing the pine bark like a “cat face” and harvesting the compound. The United States is the world’s largest producer of turpentine, with much of it coming from Florida. There are also medical applications as a counter-irritant applied topically. Limited references imply the eating of inner bark for food during famine times.

4. Gallberry Ilex glabra

Gallberry is an erect, evergreen shrub with creeping rootstock. The leaves are dark green above and pale green below with scattered reddish glands. Leaves are often toothed or notched. Petioles have a powdery pubescence. The tiny white flowers have six petals and are in dense clusters. The fruit is black and shiny.

Wildlife – Flowers are rich in nectar, which yields high-quality honey.

As the common name “gallberry” implies, the leaves and fruits are bitter. The whole plant is emetic. Gallberry is an important commercial source of honey in Florida. The bush is used as a yard broom in the Low Country.

5. Wax Myrtle Myrica cerifera

An evergreen shrub that sends up multiple trunks. The leaves are alternate and simple and typically toothed toward the apices. The leaves are aromatic when crushed. The flowers are borne in catkins at the leaf axils. The fruit is small but conspicuous, round, waxy, and blue.

Wildlife – Larval host plant of the red-banded hairstreak, Calycopis cecrops Winter flocks of swallows spiral down to feed on the fruits. This behavior seems unusual because these are normally insect-eating birds.

Waxy berry coating is removed by boiling. As four pounds yields one pound of wax, other plant relatives are more commonly used for bayberry candles. Seminoles fermented leaves into a tonic for headaches, fevers, and stomach aches. A mixture of wood ashes was placed on tongues of newly married couples to strengthen their marriages. Introduced to European settlers in the 1700s, the wax was an ingredient in surgeon’s soap, shaving lather, and sealing wax. Wax myrtle is planted around homes to keep fleas out and placed in closets to keep cockroaches away. Crushed leaves rubbed on your skin reportedly repel mosquitoes.

HAMMOCK PLANTS (including maritime)

6. Live Oak Quercus virginiana

A massive, evergreen tree with rough grayish, often deeply furrowed bark. Leaves are simple, alternate, leathery, and dark shiny green above. The leaves underneath are pale gray and hairy. The cups on this acorn are shallow, enclosing about one-quarter to one- half inch of the nut. This is a long-lived tree. According to legend, a live oak tree grows for 200 years, lives for 200 years, and dies for 200 years.

Wildlife – Larval host to the gray hairstreak, Strymon melinus, tropical checked skipper, Pyrgus oileus, and white “M” hairstreak, Parrhasius m-album, varieties of butterfly. Quail, woodpeckers, and blue jays feed on the acorns.

Live oaks are of the “white” oak group, having acorns less bitter than “red” oaks. Native Americans, settlers, and explorers alike harvested the acorns for food, but southeastern U.S. tribes used them as animal feed. Also the wood (still prized) is often utilized as fuel, as well as in tool making. Uses include as a building material (lumber, timbers, etc), as a component of mortar and caulks, as a source of lye, and for tanning hides. During the War of 1812, the warship U.S.S. Constitution defeated five British warships and captured numerous merchant ships and earned her the nickname of “Old Ironsides.” Her success was in part due to her inner frame construction of live oak.

7. Gumbo Limbo Bursera simaruba

A deciduous tree losing all its leaves in early spring before new leaves appear. The resinous, reddish bark peels away in thin flakes and contributes to the common nickname “tourist tree.” The leaves are alternate, glossy green, and pinnately compound, with five to nine leaflets. Flowers are inconspicuous, with creamy white or greenish petals in many-flowered panicles. The fruits are dark red, containing one or two hard-shell seeds.

Wildlife – Host to the dingy purplewing, Eunica motima, butterfly. The seed is an example of what might be termed a “pebble-fruit,” ingested by certain seed-eating birds and utilized not as food but as grinding stones in their crops in lieu of pebbles.

The tree has been used to make living fences. The aromatic resin reportedly was used to make incense. It was also used in the treatment of gout and in the manufacture of varnish.

8. Short-Leafed Fig Ficus citrifolia

An evergreen tree with smooth gray bark and white milky sap. The leaves are alternate, entire, leathery, smooth, and dark green. The fruit turns from yellow to dark red on long stalks.

Wildlife – It is the larval host of the ruddy daggerwing, Marpesia petreus, butterfly. Many birds and animals feed on the figs.

The Seminoles ate the fruits and used its adventitious roots as cords. The latex is chewed throughout the range of figs and used, at least by children, as a birdlime to catch birds.

9. Paradise Tree Simarouba glauca

A tall, straight-boled tree with finely fissured bark. The leaves are pinnately compound, dark, and shiny green above and gray below. The flowers are yellow to cream-colored, with five sepals in terminal clusters. The fruit turns from red to purple to black at maturity.

Wildlife – The seeds are attractive to a variety of birds, and much of the fruit is consumed before ripening.

This tree has been cultivated commercially as a source of oil.

10. White Stopper Eugenia axillaris

This is an evergreen shrub or small tree, with smooth grayish-white bark with small, white, fragrant flowers. The leaves are opposite, glossy, and simple. The green fruit turns red to black upon maturity. When there is a little breeze, the air near these plants is often perfumed with the odor of skunk, which emanates from the leaves.

Wildlife – Fruits are eaten by birds and probably by mammals, thus spreading the seeds.

The Seminoles historically used the stems for bows. A decoction of white stopper is used to treat colds and for “building up men’s energy and body.” The wood is hard and rot resistant and is used in fences and local carpentry. 11. Coral Bean Erythrina herbacea

This is a deciduous shrub that has red tubular flowers and trifoliate, three-lobed, alternate leaves. The pod holds poisonous, bright-scarlet seeds.

Wildlife – It attracts hummingbirds and is the larval host plant of the Florida purplewing, Eunica tatila, butterfly.

Also known as the “cry baby tree” because the nectar is so abundant the tree “weeps.” Young leaves and flowers are reportedly edible when cooked. Seeds are toxic to man and animals but are often strung like beads. The juice from the stem is used to treat scorpion stings. Seminole Indians used leaf decoctions as a remedy for dog ailments.

12. Blolly Guapira discolor

An evergreen shrub or small bushy tree with smooth, gray bark. The thin, light-green leaves have translucent mid-veins and thickened, wavy margins. The small flowers are tubular-shaped with a greenish-yellow or purplish calyx and no petals. The fruit is hot pink if growing in full sun and may be red when growing in the shade.

Wildlife – Various birds feed on the fruits.

The specific epithet refers to the two surfaces of the leaves being unlike in color. The berries are edible and the wood is useful.

13. Spanish Stopper Eugenia foetida

An evergreen shrub or small tree that has light-brown bark scarred by old leaf bases. The leaves are aromatic, opposite, oval or elliptic in shape, and have fine black dots on the underside. The small, fragrant, white flowers appear in stalkless clusters along the branches. The globular fruit changes from red to black as it ripens.

Wildlife – The fruit is a favorite food of many native birds.

Spanish stopper was historically used in baths.

14. Silver Palm Coccothrinax argentata

A medium-size palm whose deeply divided leaves are fan-shaped, showy green above, and silvery gray beneath. The unarmed leaf stalks may be three feet long and flexible. The flowers are very small, ivory-white, and fragrant. The fruit is red, turning purple or black when ripe. As with most palms, the heart is edible, as are the fruits. Oil from the seeds is used in Haiti to renew the sense of smell. Leaves are used to make brooms. The stems are hard and are used to make pilings in saltwater for fences. Leaves are used to thatch houses and to make baskets, ropes, twines, and hats.

15. Sea Grape Coccoloba uvifera

An evergreen sprawling shrub or tree with leathery, almost round leaves with red veins. The flowers are fragrant, inconspicuous, and yellowish-green to white on slender racemes. The fruit turns from red to purple as it ripens one grape at a time.

Wildlife – The ripe fruit falling on the ground is attractive to bees. Birds feed on the fruit.

The ripe fruit is edible raw. It makes excellent jelly and is also used to flavor meat. Bark from this tree has been used as a febrifuge. The red wood has been used for fuel and in cabinet making.

16. Lancewood Ocotea coriacea

This medium-size evergreen tree has a narrow crown. The bark is reddish with round deposits of cork. The leaves are alternate and aromatic. The fragrant, creamy-white flowers are in clusters. The fruit is a dark-blue or black, nearly spherical drupe with a red or yellow cup.

Wildlife – Birds love the fruits, especially veeries and thrushes. The canopy, because it is dense, makes a good nesting area for mockingbirds.

The Seminole warriors used the wood for bows. The wood has light-brown sapwood, and the dark-brown heartwood has been used in carpentry, in cabinetwork, for poles, and to make charcoal. Reported to be a honey plant.

17. Jamaica Capper Capparis cynophallophora

An evergreen shrub or small tree with reddish-brown bark, which has glossy, leathery, oval-shaped leaves with a notched tip. The flowers are very showy, with purple filaments and yellow anthers extending beyond the petals. The fruit is a slender cylindrical pod.

Wildlife – The flowers are fragrant at night and attract many moths. Birds eat the fruits.

Large plants were used as wood for construction, tools, and fuel. An infusion or decoction of the leaves or roots is used as a diuretic and emmenagogue. Red fruits have been used to treat venereal disease. 18. Crabwood Gymnanthes lucida

An evergreen shrub or small tree with alternate, leathery, elliptical leaves that are sometimes toothed near the apex. Flowers are developed almost a year before they function. The flowers are red. The flowering branches resemble small catkins. These shrubs flower only once every five years.

Wildlife – It is a larval host plant for the dingy purplewing, Eunica monima, butterfly. The adult food supply comes from tree sap and rotting fruit.

A favorite for fancy wood turning because of its high contrast between the heart and sapwood. The wood has been used for fence posts, canes, handles, backs of brushes, mirrors, and ornamental articles.

19. Black Ironwood Krugiodendron ferreum

An evergreen shrub or small tree that has gray bark with woody ridges. The leaves are simple, glossy, and deep green, and persist for two to three years. The flowers are small, yellowish-green with no corollas on auxiliary clusters. The fruit is glossy black with a thin skin and a single hard stone. The wood, which lacks growth rings, is extremely hard (hence the common name). It is the densest of all woods native to South Florida.

Wildlife – The small flowers are visited by a variety of bees and wasps.

These trees are used for posts, crossties, and canes.

20. Red Mulberry Morus rubra

A small, deciduous tree that has alternate, heart-shaped leaves. The leaves are glabrous above with toothed edges and are softly hairy underneath. Milk latex is present but not abundant. Trees tend to be small and multiple-stemmed with roughened bark. The wood has distinct annual rings and is ring-porous. Juvenile leaves may be deeply lobed. The flowers are minute spikes. Fruit is red, ripening to dark purple.

Wildlife – Kingbirds, great crested flycatchers, titmice, crows, and summer tanagers are attracted to this tree.

The red mulberry was considered a staple for the Indians. The Seminoles made bows from the branches and used the fruit, leaves, and stems for dye. A decoction of the roots was used to treat urinary problems. The sap was used to cure ringworm.

21. Pigeon Grape Coccoloba diversifolia

A densely foliated evergreen tree with light-gray bark tinged with brown. The leaves are leathery, alternate, bright green above and paler below, with clasping petioles and diversified in shape. The flowers are inconspicuous without petals, a creamy white, cup- shaped calyx on two-to-three-inch-long spikes. The fruits are dark purple, thin-fleshed, round or pear-shaped.

Wildlife – Many birds and animals utilize the fruit.

An important food of the Mikasukis, or Miccosukees. The Seminoles dry and rehydrate the fruit to diminish the astringency.

LOW HAMMOCK PLANTS

22. Sugarberry Celtis laevigata

A deciduous tree that has corky outgrowths on the bark. The leaves are alternate, simple, and lanceolate. The flowers are tiny, in small elongated clusters in the leaf axils. The fruit is a fleshy, rounded drupe, turning from orange to red on maturity.

Wildlife – The fruit is eaten by wildlife, especially birds (towhees, flickers, thrashers, and robins). The warty outgrowths are often aggravated by the work of yellow-bellied sapsuckers. This tree is the larval host of the tawny emperor, Asterocampa clyton, and the hackberry emperor, Asterocampa celtis, butterflies.

Historic Indian camps are readily identified by the presence of sugarberry. The Seminoles ate the fruits. People all across the southern United States used this plant for food or medicine.

23. Cabbage Palm Sabal palmetto

The palm is covered with jagged “boots” (old leaf bases) until fairly old. Leaves are blue- green, fan-shaped, slightly folded with arched midrib and slender drooping segments, with many threadlike fibers. Flowers are small and fragrant in branched clusters. Fruit is glossy brown with a tough skin. This palm is the Florida state tree.

Wildlife – Many birds utilize the fruit for food. Many bees, flies, and wasps visit the flowers and pollinate them. Literally hundreds of species and thousands of individuals are fed and served by this palm, according to a study made some years ago.

The Indians reduced the dried fruits to a coarse meal that they made into bread. The terminal bud, or “cabbage,” is a delicacy raw or cooked. Leaves were used for thatching traditional Seminole homes. The leaves were also used to make potato drying mats, fish drags, and rope. Aborigines used the fruits for food.

24. Laurel Oak Quercus laurifolia

A large, monoecious, deciduous tree that has dark grayish bark and most often a buttressed base. Leaves are alternate, simple, and entire. The acorn has a flattened base, with the cup covering about one-quarter inch of the nut. This is a short-lived oak (75 years on average).

Wildlife – Larval host of the Horace duskywing, Erynnis horatius, and white “M” hairstreak, Parrhasius m-album, butterflies.

Native Americans ate the acorns; they also used their oil for cooking and flavoring other foods such as hominy.

WETLAND PLANTS

25. Pond Apple Annona glabra

A small to medium-size evergreen tree with gray bark and a buttressed base. The leaves are alternate, simple, entire, shiny green, and leathery. The tree sometimes grows in clumps. The flowers are distinctive and arise from a triangular bud. The petals vary from white to cream color with a purple splotch inside. The petals are thick, resembling dried apple slices. The fruit is green and egg- or heart-shaped, maturing to yellow with many flat, black seeds.

Wildlife – Larval host of the giant sphinx moth, Cocytius antaeus. The fruit is an important wildlife food.

CAUTION: The seeds are reportedly poisonous. Early Indians and settlers used the fruit as a food and the seed as a fish poison. The soft wood has been used in rafts, as floats on fishing lines, and as corks for bottles. Seeds and leaves are insecticidal.

26. Leather Fern Acrostichum danaeifolium

A large fern that may grow to eight feet tall, with the fronds alone three to six feet long. The fronds are dark green and shiny. The fertile fronds are cinnamon-colored, resembling suede leather underneath. The fern changes little during the year, but provides a continuous green mass of foliage.

The Seminole use this fern as a febrifuge. The fern fronds are placed in hen nests to kill lice. 27. Paurotis Palm Acoelorraphe wrightii

A cluster-forming palm of many trunks. The leaves are fan-shaped and divided only to the middle of the leaf. The leaf stems are thin, with orange-colored saw teeth on the edges. The flowers are small and yellow-green, growing on a stalk coming from among the leaves and extending beyond them. The fruit is globular in shape and orange-colored, turning black as it ripens.

Leaves are used for thatch and rope. The fruits are edible.

28. Cocoplum Chrysobalanus icaco

An evergreen shrub or small tree with leaves that are simple, alternate, leathery, and shiny dark green. Flowers are small and greenish white. The plants whose new leaves are red have white fruit that changes to purple when ripe. The shrubs whose new leaves are green have green fruit turning to yellow with a pink blush when ripe.

Wildlife – Many animals, including foxes, raccoons, and probably birds, eat the fruits and plant them with their droppings.

Indians considered this plant as a source of food, arrows, and medicine. The Seminoles used this plant to treat gossips through a “cleansing ritual.” The seeds may be strung on sticks and burned like candles. Leaves and fruits yield a black dye. In many areas, a tea of the bark and roots is used to halt dysentery and as a general tonic.

29. Red Maple Acer rubrum

The red maple is a deciduous tree with light bark. The leaves are opposite, simple, and usually three-lobed. The tiny flowers are borne in fascicles and are red or pinkish without petals and appear prior to the new leaves. The fruit is a pink or red samara, which kids refer to as helicopters because of their whirling movement when falling to the ground. Fossil leaves suggest that its range was even wider in recent geological time.

Wildlife – The flower secretes nectar, which might attract insects. The tree is one of the larval hosts of the eastern tiger swallowtail, Papilio glaucus, butterfly.

The Seminoles used red maple to treat “ballgame sickness” (sores, back or leg pain, and hemorrhoids). The inner bark was used to make bread.

30. Royal Palm Roystonea regia

A stately palm with a grayish trunk and a conspicuous crown shaft subtending a cluster of long, arching leaves. The leaves are pinnate, deep green, and borne along the rachis in four distinct rows. The flowers are borne in a single inflorescence, whitish and ascending, with numerous branches and flowers. The fruit is blue and round.

The terminal bud is edible. The root is made into a diuretic medicine, and some think it is also good for diabetes. Fruits have been widely used as a swine food.

31. Bald Cypress Taxodium distichum

A deciduous tree, with smooth gray bark and a buttress base. Leaves are needlelike, typically spreading from their supporting shoots, thus featherlike in appearance, often appearing like leaflets in a compound leaf. The fine, light-green leaves of the springtime later turn dark green and then rusty red in autumn. The main trunks are surrounded by cypress knees, which promote gaseous exchange between the atmosphere and the subterranean root system, because they grow in a waterlogged, oxygen-deficient environment.

Wildlife – Gray squirrels feed on the cones and various birds feed on the pollen.

Glades Indians used the wood for cups, bowls, and tubs. The Mikasukis, or Miccosukees, used cypress to build houses, canoes, dance posts, coffin logs, medicine bowls, spoons, food paddles, to make arrowheads, drums, ox yokes and bows, heddles, mortars and pestles, ball poles, spoon ball sticks, and dolls, and in tanning. GLOSSARY

Apices – tips of the leaves Birdlime – an adhesive substance used in trapping birds Deciduous – leaf drop after growing season Decoction – a method of extraction by boiling Dioecious – having male and female reproductive organs on separate plants Diuretic – a compound that causes increased urination Emmenagogue – herbs that encourage menstruation Ethnobotanical – was probably first coined as a term in 1895 by Harshberger, and describes the study of the interaction between people, plants, and culture. There are many components to ethnobotany, including food, fiber, medicine, shelter, fishing and hunting, religion, mythology, magic, and others. In this booklet, the interactions quoted are usually the uses of the Seminoles and the Mikasukis, or Miccosukees. Emetic – a substance that induces vomiting when administered orally Infusion – steeping plants in water or oil Monoecious – having male and female reproductive organs on the same plant Staple – a food that is eaten regularly and in such quantities to constitute the dominant part of the diet. REFERENCES

Ginger M. Allen, Michael D. Bond, and Martin B Main 50 Common Plants Important in Florida’s Ethnobotanical History EDIS – University of Florida Publication Cir# 1439

Dan F. Austin A Field Guide to the Plants of South Florida’s Pine Rockland A Pocket Guide to the Common Plants of Southern Florida’s Pine Flatwoods Community Florida Ethnobotany Coastal Dune Plants – The Common Plants of Southeast Florida’s Ocean-side Communities Coastal Park Plant Guide – The Native Trees, Shrubs & Vines of Boca Raton’s Hammock and Mangrove Parklands Pine Rockland Plant Guide – A Field Guide to the Plants of South Florida’s Pine Rockland

Julia F. Morton Folk Remedies of the Low Country Wild Plants for Survival in South Florida

Eddie Nickens Restoring Old Ironsides – The Frigate U.S.S. Constitution (The CBS Interactive Business Network)

J. Paul Scurlock Native Trees and Shrubs of the Florida Keys

Georgia Tasker Wild Things – The Return of Native Plants