Page8, The PALMETTO,Spring 1992 ~ tJuturefor Gopher ~ppCes by Fritz Wettstein supply, get a good grade on my report card, and perhaps free up some time to go fishing. The Florida Native Plant Society Con- ference in Gainesville put me in touch with the right people. This group ad- vocated the benefits of native plants to water and energy resource conserva- tion and protection of Florida natural communities. More importantly, they were providing practical advice for realizing these ideals. During a seminar on the propagation of native plants, nurseryman Jim Haegar ofVero Beach described a native groundcover: low, drought-tolerant, evergreen, and fruit- bearing - the gopher apple. Imagine my delight when I realized that vengeance for the gopher tor- toise's untimely death could be at the hand of a plant named for the noble creatu reoI wanted to know more about it. Resembling suckers, or seedlings, of any of the common scrub oaks, this sub-shrub is inconspicuous when one walks by it. But from the car, driving to the beach and back, gopher apples could be seen as glossy, bright green patches fifty feet across wherever the grou nd was su n ny, sandy,and dry. I saw it at the beach, along road cuts, in pine flatwoods, and in vacant lots. Friends traveling with me usually stayed at the car while I went gopher apple hunting, inspecting each patch While driving S.R. 436 home from across 55 mph highways from then on, for flowers, fruit, or white fuzz on the Apopka on a sticky September after- I found it difficult to engage in grand undersides of the leaves. But they noon back in 1981, I resolved to be gestures of quixotic eco-heroism, could see how green and spreading the more than a casual observer of the loss tilting at windmills in the defense of low patch of upright leaves appeared, of wild things in central Florida. A nature against humankind. A coupleof and easily began picking them out for friend and I were stuck in traffic. The back-to-back dry summers in central me at 65 mph. light had changed, but nocars lurched Florida in the early 1980s,when the Once we dug one up and found that afternoon showers did not come like forward. A gopher tortoise was making the plant was actually a tree with all but its casual way across the six lane clockwork, put me on the water con- its twigs underground. Sweaty and highway, to the applause of some and servation bandwagon and on the side covered with yellow sandhill soil, we the irritation of others, when a Chevy of roadside wildflowers and native dug down seven plus feet and still did van coming up in the right turn lane plants. The condemnation of luxuries not get to the tip of the tap root. The struck it, sending it skittering onto the such as lawn irrigation systems was incredible tap root must be able to road shoulder. easy for a rebel college boy who had pump moisture out of the deepest Feeling good one second, then wasted many a su m mer day cutti ng the sands. We also noticed white and watching the smashing of a tortoise grass two times a week. With guidance orange fungal mycelia clinging to the next, with my friend beginning from Bill Partington, a Rollins professor the coarsely rooted underground at the time (and former Florida Native to cry and me beginning to smolder branches.These must help the plant - then is when I decided to do Plant Society director), I set off in attain moisture and nutrients in dry, search of drought-tolerant alternative something. sterile sands. But beyond helping 3 mph animals groundcovers to savethe future's water The plant fascinated me. I followed The PALMETTO,Spring 1992, Page9 it through the seasons: floweri ng (May Geobalanus oblongifolius (Michx.) in coils and then bury them in the through June) and fruiting (August Small - shares botanical features with ground. I also tried to propagate them through September). Gopher apple Rosaand Prunus, but morecloselywith by root cuttings and tissue culture. All stands often bloom profusely and at- coco-plum, Chrysobalanus icaco. were pretty much failures for me. tract small bees and other insects, but Prance distinguished gopher apple Gopher apple fruit (if you can find a and coco-plum from the Rosales by the many times they fail to set seed. When patch where the varmints are few) can presence of a style that emerges from the wh ite, oblong fru it does ri pen to its be collected in reasonable quantities, purple-tinged, softened maturity, it is the base of the ovary, silicate hairs, and cleaned of its gooey pulp, and planted hard to beat the varm i nts to them to get secondary xylem. immediately, and it will germinate. It a taste. Frankly, they can have them. The Licania and Chrysobalanus are the takes a couple years of weeding and apples, which to me have a sickly sweet only North American genera of the white fly and leaf spot control to grow if not quite rank taste, are the favorites pantropical family Chrysobalanaceae, a sizable landscape plant. It's not like of gopher tortoises and fox squirrels, which has seventeengenera and about a chunk of ground juniper that can be which movethe seedaround. Someof 430 species. Gopher apple is the most rooted and grown to salable size in two the seeds are then eaten by quail and temperate family member, found in growing seasons. Ten years after my journey started, rodents, and some become new sandhills, dry pinelands, and oak scrub stands. as far up the coast as North Carolina, however, quantities of gopher apple are Gopher apple, Licania michauxii and west to Louisiana. being marketed by severalof the larger Prance - formerly called Chrysoba- In addition to the fruit and growth Florida native nurseries. Janus obJongifoJius Michx. and habit, it is distinguished by terminal The plant is perhaps best used as an inflorescences of small white flowers, evergreen filler in a dry wildflower GROWING GOPHER APPLE a smooth, hard seed, and heavy white garden, although it may respond to in the NURSERY fuzz underneath many of the mature pruning and care as a traditional land- The most difficult part of growing oblong leaves.The variable presence or scape grou ndcover. I prefer the former gopher apples in the commercial nursery absence of these hairs have led some since cultivation of several seasons of is findingthe seed. One can go to hun- botaniststo concludethat two species short-lived wildflowers will allow the dreds of large patches and not find a of gopher apple exist; however, this distinctive glossy patches of green to single seed. The plant doesn't ruit as well variable condition exists on leaves ap- slowly fill in. in the shade as it does in the sun. Many parently of the same plant, and within Let'shope that a futu re for the gopher patchesof opherapples grow along the most habitats supports the premise apple will brighten the future for the roadside, flowering in the spring and that these are phenotypic variations gopher tortoise. ipening in September,but mowing wipes out the seed. within one species.As with the largely Seeds don't ripen all at once, but over underground growth habit, the hairy Fritz Wettstein is a landscape archi- a period of weeks. They are white or pink leaf undersides appear to be an adap- tect and a member of the Magnolia when ripe and smell like apples, but don't tation to survival in hot, dry sands. Chapter FNPS.He works for the De- be tempted to eat them because they are All pumped up with new-found partment of Natural Resources in not tasty! knowledge about this native plant, I Tallahassee. The seeds must be gathered when ripe tried growing it. Jim Haegar had because they won't ripen after picking. described ways to wrap the branches And, of course, it would not be in the best interestof the gopher apple to pick all the seeds in a patch. The seeds must be planted immedi- ately, because if the kernel dries in the sun, the embryo dies. The flesh around the seed must be scrapedoff. I rub them on hardware cloth, and then plant them in a large pot in a sandy mix with no peat, usually two seeds to a pot. Fertilize and water lightly; it's easy to over-water them. The seeds sprout right away, and can be sold after about six months when the Support Your Local Retail Nurseries. plantsare about6" tall and have six to eight leaves. After a year and a half, Ask for Native Trees they can be sold in gallon-size pots. Gopher apples are purchased for use Native Palms in gopher tortoise preserves to create or Native Shrubs and more enhancethe gopher tortoise habitat. They serve mostly as a curiosity as a landscape plant, perhaps mixed with wildflowers to create an evergreen patch. Bulldozed patches of gopher apples reveal dug-up roots as big around as your arm. It may be that large patches of gopher apples are really one plant that may be hundreds of years old. 17250 SOUTHWEST232 STREET.HOMESTEAD. FLORIDA 33170 (305) 247-4499 . David Drylie, ASLA.