Hidden Wonders Revealed

Ok, I've kept you waiting long enough - here are the full photos of the tiny previews from my previous post, along with the scientific and common names of each plant.  All the photos are of plants here in The Botanic Gardens at Kona Kai Resort - enjoy!

The fruit of Annona squamosa (sugar apple), which is delicious!  In our tropical fruit garden.

Billbergia pyramidalis (bromeliad) inflorescence (flower stalk).

Flower of Hibiscus rosa-sinensis 'Fifth Dimension' (hibiscus).

Fenestraria aurantiaca (window plant or baby toes) in our Aquascape Garden.

Leaves of Cryptanthus 'Black Mystic' (bromeliad).

Chamaedorea seifrizii (bamboo palm) infructescence (fruit stalk).

A hairy petal and succulent stems of Stapelia gigantea (African starfish flower).

Bromeliad inflorescence (flower stalk). The purple and white parts are the individual flower buds.

Pineapple (Ananas) top and ornamental pink fruit.

Codiaeum variegatum (garden croton) leaves in the afternoon sun.

Ravenala madagascariensis (traveler's tree) fruits. Lemurs, which can see blue exceptionally well, disperse the seeds.

Dypsis decaryi (triangle palm) fruits developing.

Cordyline fruticosa (ti plant) inflorescences and leaves.

Male cone of Encephalartos ferox (Zululand cycad).

The nectar-rich inflorescences of Schefflera actinophylla (umbrella plant).

Fronds emerge from the center of Platycerium angolense (elephant ear fern) in our tropical courtyard.

Syngonium podophyllum (arrowhead vine) in bloom as it climbs up a mahogany.

A Tillandsia (air plant) growing in an orchid's pot in our Orchid House.

Male cone of Zamia integrifolia (coontie).

The bloom of Strelitzia reginae (orange bird-of-paradise).

From these photos alone, you can get a good idea of the incredible beauty and diversity of plants. Beyond being beautiful, they are incredibly useful to humans and the world as a whole, their diversity providing a range of products and services we have come to depend on for our survival and well-being, often in ways we don't fully realize or appreciate. With conscientious stewardship on our part, plants provide us with both beauty and utility - when it comes to nature, we really can "eat our cake and keep it, too!"


Rick Hederstrom
Associate Director

Beauty Unseen - "Hidden Wonders" of the Gardens

The Botanic Gardens here at Kona Kai Resort certainly are beautiful. Beyond the readily perceivable "macroscopic" beauty of the landscape as a whole, however, lies a world of "microscopic" beauty that goes largely unseen by most guests and visitors unless one knows when and where to look. One of the reasons people enjoy taking a tour with me, beyond the fact that they learn an incredible amount about plants and their relationships with people, is the uncovering of hidden wonders of intricate detail and great beauty that they would not have otherwise found. Below, I have included cropped sections of photographs I have taken of some of these hidden wonders here at Kona Kai. If you have a guess as to what any of these might be, feel free to leave a comment!  I'll reveal the identities of the plants as well as the full photographs in my next blog post.

To see and learn more about these and many other "hidden wonders," be sure to take a tour the next time you stay here at Kona Kai or pass through the Keys!


Rick Hederstrom
Associate Director

Blue Beauty

I was greeted by a nice surprise as I arrived at the Gardens the other day - the water lily in our front pond has sent up its first bloom! I must say, the cultivar name 'Blue Beauty' is indeed appropriate. Take a look at the "time lapse" of the bloom in the photos below, which occur in pairs (one of each is a close up of the bud or flower) at approximately two-day intervals. You will notice a change in the water from my pictures of the pond in the previous blog post - we dyed it black because the algae was getting out of control and the pond looked like pea soup. This is what I expected might happen, but we wanted to try it without dye anyways. I do love the look of the black: it makes a great reflecting pond and makes for a very nice contrast of the water with the water lily leaves and flowers. You can also still see the Gambusia when they come close to the surface, which we were hoping would be the case.

Doesn't look like another leaf...

Continuing to rise higher above the water...

Boom!

Stunning...and still a little ways to go - you can see the centermost part is still closed.

The water lily bloom is especially interesting because it closes up near the end of the day and re-opens in the morning. That's quite a bit of folding and unfolding for a bloom this size (about 4" across). The flowers will supposedly not open if it is too cloudy, but fortunately for us, we don't often have that problem here in the Keys.

The pollination strategy of the plant is an interesting one. In the early stages of the bloom, the flower's female parts are receptive and a good amount of nectar is produced over these parts. Insects are attracted to the nectar, which they will fall into by design if they find it. Any pollen collected by these insects from other flowers sticks to the nectar when they fall into it and is directed to the female parts, resulting in pollination if the right pollen is present. In the later stages of bloom, pollen is produced by the flower instead of nectar, and the flower is no longer receptive to pollen. This separation ensures that the flower is pollinated with pollen from a different plant - clever, right?

Every part of the plant has been recorded as edible in some capacity, although a couple accounts I came across of effects after eating them would make me cautious of making a salad of the plant. The plant's roots have quite a few medicinal attributes, many of which were originally discovered by Native Americans and are now being investigated by modern medical science. Be sure to take a tour with me on your next visit to the Keys to learn more about this plant and many of the other fascinating and beautiful specimens we have here at The Botanic Gardens at Kona Kai Resort!


Rick Hederstrom
Associate Director

Ethnobotanic Entry

Over the past several months, Joe, Veronika and I have been re-thinking our entry garden area, which is located immediately before the palm-framed bridge at which you leave any remaining cares and concerns as you enter into our center courtyard. It made sense that these entry gardens have hitherto served a purely aesthetic function, but now that we have established the Gardens to serve an ethnobotanic mission of education about the importance of plants to people, we thought it would be appropriate for this mission to be well-represented at the entry. Once we established that this is what we wanted to do, we set about searching for plants that would not only have ethnobotanic interest relevant to our mission, but suitable characteristics for the locations in which they would be grown. We also had to be able to get a hold of these plants, which is more difficult for some than others. After narrowing down the list, we came up with a great list of plants and the nurseries where we could find them. I then set out on a couple trips to nurseries up in Homestead to bring our specimens back for planting; here are a few I visited:

Doug Ingram & Sons' Nursery is a giant facility with a very wide selection of plants. (Image source: Google Maps)

Redland Nursery specializes in palms and cycads, many of which are hard to find. You can see the many rows of plants; the dark colored areas are covered with shade cloth for plants sensitive to sunlight. (Image source: Google Maps)

Bullis Bromeliads is our favorite place for bromeliads. They have quite a large, colorful selection, as you can see in the video above.

After a couple trips up to the nurseries, we had all the plants we needed. The plants checked in for a brief stay in our own little nursery here at Kona Kai and were then laid out by Ronnie and Veronika, who both have a great sense of aesthetics, as is evident in the rest of our gardens. They not only used the plants we had acquired from the nurseries but also incorporated other plants from throughout the grounds to complete the design. After the plants were laid out, Veronika and I put them in their new homes. Veronika had worked very hard a couple weeks earlier to clear out the plants (especially their root systems) previously in these gardens, and had also worked with Ronnie and her husband Rene to rearrange the rocks in the area and dig the big holes for the new bamboo. It was great seeing the gardens taking shape as the product of so much consideration and preparation. Below are a number of photos of new plants in the gardens as well as a couple of shots Tracey (our front desk manager) took of the planting in action.

Digging homes for the new plants.

Searching for buried treasure. There were a lot of shipwrecks and pirates on and near the Keys, so you never know.

Catharanthus roseus (Madagascar periwinkle) - an example of plants used for medicine, in this case the treatment of leukemia and Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Mimosa pudica (sensitive plant) illustrates one way in which plants are similar to people - it can sense and respond to touch! You can see the leaves folding after my touch in the photo above.

Cyperus papyrus (papyrus) is the tallest sedge in this little area, which was used to make early paper by Egyptians and other Mediterranean cultures over 5,000 years ago.

Bambusa odashimae is a bamboo with especially tasty stems that are being used extensively in culinary creations. Dwarf Santa plants spring up spontaneously this time of year and can even become weedy, but we keep them under tasteful control.

The final product - beautiful! So beautiful that we had to enlist the help of a fierce alligator to protect the plants...can you spot him?

In addition to the garden beds, we also did something different with the entrance pond. What was once a chlorinated pond is now a miniature ecosystem. The centerpiece is a large specimen water lily which we are looking forward to having spread across much of the pond's surface and produce striking blue blooms. Tiny fish called Gambusia, courtesy of Florida Keys Mosquito Control, feast on the mosquito larvae, which are frequently found in ponds such as this. Creating the velvety green backdrop is a type of alga that clings to the sides of the pond and provides oxygen and additional food for the fish. It also removes nutrients from the water, thereby limiting development of undesirable types of algae such as planktonic and filamentous algae.

Nymphaea 'Blue Beauty' (fragrant water lily) - edible, medicinal, and showy.

The Gambusia seem to be enjoying the pond very much.

I'll be looking forward to telling you more about these and many other plants here at The Botanic Gardens at Kona Kai Resort during your next visit. I hope you'll find the time to take a tour with me whether you'll be staying with us or just passing through the Keys. I know you will have a great time, learn more than you can remember, and come away with a newfound interest and appreciation of plants. Until then!


Rick Hederstrom
Associate Director