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

New Tour

Sometimes when I tell a guest about the tours I give here at the Gardens, they will say something about how they are not really a "plant person." If you can relate to this, then you, sir/madam, are exactly the type of person I especially want to take on a tour. Don't get me wrong, "plant people" love the tours and I very much enjoy touring people who know their plants, but I especially enjoy the reactions I get from people who know little about them.

Joe, our Gardens' Director, who has only a relatively newfound interest in plants and no formal education in Botany is a great example of this. At one time he couldn't have cared less about plants and probably would have been one to choose to skip the tour during his vacation, but after coming across some ways in which people depend on plants, he became the botanical version of a born-again Christian. One day at work, I remember he excitedly asked me, "Rick! Did you know plants make themselves completely from only water, sunlight, air, and a few ounces of soil and that they are ultimately the source of all our food???" To which I responded, "Yes..." as though he had just asked if I knew that he has two legs and sleeps at night. To him, learning something like this about plants is a sort of revelation, and although I probably felt similarly when I first learned about the same thing, I (as well as other plant people) have known it for so long that it is something I take for granted.

This orchid in our orchid house doesn't even use soil - it produces this incredibly colorful and profuse bloom from just air, water, and sunlight. Veritable alchemy!

Last year saw the development of the introductory ethnobotanical tour here at The Botanic Gardens at Kona Kai Resort, which focuses on the way people use and depend upon plants today and throughout history, as well as some of the fascinating morphological and ecological aspects of the diverse range of tropical plants in our collections. Over 250 guests and visitors have taken this introductory tour since its inception last year and the abundance of positive feedback from both "plant people" and "non-plant people" has been extremely encouraging. I've had plenty of people like Joe who have been overwhelmed by fascination and newfound appreciation for plants as well as many a veteran gardener who ended up learning more than a few interesting things, which, as one guest said, "is rare for me these days."

Food made from the underground stem of the coontie plant (Zamia integrifolia) was one of the only things soldiers gassed in World War I could eat shortly afterwards without vomiting.

Motivated by such feedback, I have been developing a second tour for those who have already taken the first and are hungry for more. This tour focuses less on how people use plants and more on the similarities between plants and people, especially when it comes to our senses. Most of the time, we live as if plants aren't much more than rocks, but I hope this tour will lead to an appreciation of just how alive and active plants are as well as the many parallels that can be drawn between plants and people.  The tour also incorporates ways in which we are dependent upon one another on a global scale, in contrast to the more specialized local scales explored in the first tour. The feedback so far from this tour has been just as good as that from the first, and it has in many cases led to some great philosophical questions and discussions along the way, which our guests have had a great time exploring further long after the tour is over.

The tendrils of the skyflower vine (Thunbergia grandiflora) have an observable sense of touch - they coil around any nearby objects they find.

I hope you'll find the time to take a tour with me during your next stay with us here at Kona Kai. You can also take a tour even if you aren't staying with us - call our Front Desk at (305) 852-7200 for details.

Hope to see you soon!

Rick Hederstrom
Associate Director

From Life To Death To Life

Breadfruit. I would be interested to hear what people who never heard of this tree before imagine its fruits to be like. Maybe large tan-colored spheres that taste like Wonder Bread - grab a couple jars of peanut butter and jelly and hit the breadfruit groves for lunchtime deliciousness. Alas, the reality is not as scrumptious. Breadfruit is a fairly substantial fruit, should be cooked before eating and got its name from its underwhelming blandness. Today, breadfruit is actually gaining popularity as a versatile "filler" ingredient since it is able to take on the flavor of whatever seasoning is used in a dish, much like zucchini. It is doubtful, however, that the culinary techniques used today for breadfruit preparation were as fine when it was introduced in the late-1700s (remember, spices were luxuries), and a good helping of the prepared fruit might have ended up tasting/feeling like plain pieces of tofu (roasted) or a bowl of warm, soggy bread (boiled)...yum! (more on that later) Breadfruit has also recently become quite popular because of the tree's quick growth rate and the substantial crops of fruit it can produce, making it a valuable solution for both reforestation and hunger in tropical climates. Native plant advocates, however, have mixed feelings about its use in the Western Hemisphere because of its vigorous growth and potential to displace native plant communities.

Breadfruit just so happens to be the dictionary photograph of "delicious" (from ntbg.org)

The breadfruit tree (Artocarpus altilis) is native to the South Pacific island of Tahiti and was introduced to the Caribbean by Captain William Bligh in 1791. The retrieval of this plant was the objective of his expedition, as there was a high demand for cheap sources of food for British slaves in the Caribbean. A monetary reward for successfully retrieving this plant from Tahiti was offered and Capt. Bligh was game. His first expedition for the plant ended in disaster because of the now-famous "Mutiny on the Bounty," but after remarkably making it back home to England despite significant adversity, he tried the expedition again a couple years later and was successful in bringing the plant halfway around the world to the Caribbean, where it grew excellently. Unfortunately, the slaves refused to eat the fruit once the trees started producing it - what a disappointment! I don't know if it was the taste / texture of the cooked fruit (see descriptions above) or if it was more of a cultural aversion. Regardless, if I was Captain Bligh, I would have been a little upset to hear that all I had gone through was apparently a waste of time (well, at least he got the monetary reward).

William Bligh - breadfruit superfan

We actually happen to have one of these infamous breadfruit trees here in our tropical fruit garden. It was once a very large tree, dominating a good portion of available fruit garden canopy. During the "winter" of 2010, however, temperatures got down into the low-40s during the night for about a week, and this was enough to apparently kill the tree; all the leaves quickly turned brown and dropped. But lo! Life unseen yet remained and tiny shoots began emerging out of the bottom section of the trunk like glorious rays of light piercing through the black clouds of despair that no doubt had been gathering in the minds of Veronika and Joe. The tree was soon cut back to about five feet tall (where the shoots stopped emerging) and this is how I found it when I arrived a couple months later.

The Kona Kai breadfruit tree sprouting from its trunk.

While it was good to see that the tree was still alive, I knew that this was not the ideal way for a tree to grow. The trunk split into two trunks about two feet off the ground (less than ideal in terms of structure) and was beginning to rot at the tops of each of these trunks. In addition, the shoots, even though they were healthy, would not be very stable as they grew larger because of their weak attachments to the sides of these trunks. So after some research and talking with Veronika and Joe to get a better idea of the nature of the tree (a vigorous grower), I made the recommendation to cut the trunk entirely to the ground and then wait for sprouts from the roots to emerge, selecting one of these shoots to become the "new" breadfruit tree since these would have much better health and structure. Understandably, this approach seemed pretty drastic and risky after the near-loss of the tree, so we didn't take action immediately. A couple months after our discussion, we began to see a tiny shoot next to the tree, which you can see in the bottom-right corner of the picture above. This made the decision to cut the main trunk easier, as we could now concretely see that sprouts would indeed emerge from the roots. And so, shortly thereafter:

Timberrrr!!!

Breadfruit blood - don't worry, it heals quickly.

After the tree came down, we waited and watched the soil, hoping to see more seedlings emerge. Before long (within a month), we had more than a few healthy sprouts emerge, much to our relief:

And today? We're left with two "seedlings" after we thinned out less-than-ideal specimens and they have become beautiful full-fledged trees about twelve feet tall after only a year and a half of growth. Rates of growth like this are shocking to a northerner and when I ask folks how old they think the largest of the two trees is, the guess is usually 5-10 years old.

Our now-stately breadfruit trees.

We're still debating whether or not to take out one of the trees to leave the other without competition for space and other resources. While this is a practical solution, it's always hard to cut down a beautiful tree. I'll keep you updated and hopefully the next breadfruit post will include harvest and preparation of the legendary fruit, once under-appreciated but now in the spotlight as an integral part of solutions to effectively reforest areas in tropical regions while at the same time ameliorating hunger. Speaking of that, if you're hungry for more information on breadfruit and its value, visit The Breadfruit Institute's website here.


Rick Hederstrom
Associate Director