BAY CEDAR

 BAY CEDAR

 Suriana maritima 

The photo on the left shows the bush/shrub that is about 3 feet tall and 3 feet wide.  The close up on the right shows the small yellow flowers in bloom.

This has been a carefree plant since it was put in the ground a few years ago.  It has grown from a small 1 foot plant what you can see here, with little help from me.  I do try to treat my plants with compost tea and liquid seaweed occasionally, but I am pretty lax about it, so this bush may have gotten some attention from me three or four times in the past year.  I don't recall trimming it at all.  

    


The Bay Cedar is a host plant fo the Mallow Scrub Hairstreak and Martial Scrub Hairstreak Butterflies. 
I have seen many butterflies in my yard, but I haven't made a special effort to identify which ones.  That will be a new project for me to work on!! 

 This plant was purchased from Native Butterfly Flowers, a native plant nursery in West Melbourne, Florida. 

These photos were taken in early March 2022.    

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sweet Potatoes - a Great Ground Cover

Image
There is an empty lot next to our house that I'm trying to beautify.  My Native Landscape contractor solarized the 75'x10' strip (left it covered with black tarp for about 8 weeks) on the south edge of the property, then took out the dead grass, lined the area with coquina rock, and filled it with about 5 inches of pine bark mulch. Because the soil test came back showing the area was quite alkaline, I had him add some elemental sulfur as well. In May 2025, I planted some trees along the edge of the empty lot next to our house.  I wanted to have a ground cover to protect the mulch  and soil while the trees got established.   The first photo (taken on May 11, 2025) below shows how it looked soon after I planted most of the trees in the ground.   (I often forget to take "before" photos;  the location previously had Bahia grass and St. Augustine grass up to the hedge you can see on the right side of the strip.) I was concerned about leaving the small ...
Read more

What's blooming in my garden in June 2022? PART 1

Image
Rouge Plant   (Rivina humilis)  This one is a volunteer that came up next to the front porch.  The plants that come up as volunteers seem to thrive better than the ones that I planted in the first place!                  Lantana  Involucrata  These lantana are native to Florida  - and both of these are volunteers as well.  I didn't realize that the white flowers fall away and become purple berries - I hadn't really noticed that before.  the small plant shown on the right has small purple berries, that I didn't recognize.  I had to use the google lens app to tell me it was a Lantana Involucrata. Bush Allamanda - very pretty yellow flowers;  non-native;   although currently "not a problem species", it is considered a "high invasive risk".  I transplanted this from a previous house  because I loved the beautiful flowers.  I may decide to take it out, given the focus ...
Read more
Image
 Brazilian Red Cloak - propagation from cuttings A friend gave some cuttings ftom her yard yesterday. I cut off several stems just belkw a leaf node, then dipped in rooting hormone and  Placed into potting mix.  I put three cuttings in each pot. It should take about 4 to 8 weeks to develop roots. I plan to set these outside near my potting bench where they will get watered once a day. I will update this in a month or two.
Read more