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Central Florida Palm and Cycad Society Meeting 3/29/2014


Central Floridave

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TOUR #1 – 150 W. University Blvd, Melbourne, FL – Florida Institute of Technology’s Botanical Garden – 10:00am-NOON – CFPACS has been to FIT a few times over the past several years and has participated regularly in their Botanical Festival, just held at the beginning of this month. Our Society hopes to become more involved with the development of the palm and cycad garden.

Walking up to the board meeting. Discussions were general club stuff. One great news is the mention of Dr. Young's palms and cycads from over in Tampa are being donated to public gardens in St.Pete. I'll post more info on that. Dr. Young's garden is being sold and they saved the palms and cycads that were planted. That is great news. I've toured Dr. Young's garden during another CFPACS meeting and there were some mature specimens there.

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CFPACS expands from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean and all the counties between in central Florida. Many drove the few hours it takes to drive the across the state. With spring break currently going on traffic is thick near the Theme Parks (ie. disney, universal, etc). Mike Evans, blue shirt, mentioned he missed a few turns and got stuck in traffic. Lucinda, our president, couldn't make the meeting due to a recovery. We missed her there. However, MaryAnn and Ron (Yellow shirt and hat) really ran an efficient meeting. Chuck in photo also. To learn more about CFPACS, visit our website:

http://www.cfpacs.org/

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Here is Phil explaining the latest with Dr. Young's palm and cycad transplanting that will take place soon. FYI, CFPACS made a considerable money donation to save the plants and get them moved to the public gardens. They had to work with the City of St.Pete and others to get this done. If you would like to help us and make a donation to CFPACS with this effort that would be great. MaryAnn is the treasurer and there is a paypal account to make donations if you would like to help or know more information. Dr. Young's garden has been featured on PalmTalk before. Use the search feature to learn more.

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If you haven't heard Phil speak then you have missed one of the great orators. He is dynamic as a public speaker. He is also CFPACS auctioneer and is fun to listen to. He has funny one liners and cliche's. I got some videos I'll post that have him in action I'll post when I get to them.

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Enough of the CFPAC plugs ( it cost money to run a gardening club and any help is greatly appreciated, better yet, join today!)

...on to the Florida Tech Jungle.

As background, this is where it all started. I was originally going to title this thread, "Bring Out Your Inner Dent Smith". But, decided on just the headline that is there now. Dent Smith inspiration continues on well past his passing. I never knew Dent Smith but if you look at your International Palm Society booklet "Palms" you will see Dent Smith as the founder.

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So, hopefully this will bring out your "Inner Dent Smith", meaning to inspire to learn more about...well...everything...Florida Tech is home of the Dent Smith Trail.

There is better info on Dent Smith out there on the 'net. For a quickie, Dent Smith was friends with the original School president of F.I.T., Jerome Keuper. They started the Botanical Garden in the late 1960's.

Photo of entrance to the Botanical Garden and the Dent Smith Trail. The red hut is supposedly the first school building in Florida 1883.

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The F.I.T. Botanical Garden is nicknamed the "Jungle". I'm going to call it the jungle as that is what I know it as. Its a very swampy low lying area that has great canopy. It is semi protected from frost due to that. There are quite a few palms that were originally planted in the jungle still there. But, as you can imagine, hurricanes, droughts, floods, freezes, thieves, vandalism, and everything else in-between has thinned out the original palms and cycads there were planted here. Many other ornamantels and weeds grow throughout.

Here is a foxtail palm at the entrance. Very tall one. Thus, you can see there is a micro-clime here as foxtails sometime succumbs to freezing weather.

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you can see the type of canopy here in this shot:

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Holly, the curator, of the gardens shows up. (red shirt). She said she just started a couple years ago (correct me if I'm wrong). She gave a great opening speech on the history of the garden and her future plans with it. She was a good speaker, very friendly, and open to questions and sarcastic comments! She was very passionate about plants and landscaping. Great tour Holly, thanks!

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Another photo of what we think is Livistona mariae.

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I'm going to be throwing out names of palms and please correct me if I'm wrong. I struggle with the english language much less binomial latin/greek/gibberish. I like common names as I'm a common person (not a scientist) so I may use those as well. Hopefully others include their photos on this thread as I was not the only one taking photos.

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One of the original Royal Palms from the 60s. Holly said this was transplanting into the jungle from a nearby roadway planting that both Dent Smith and Jerome Keuper planted.

This palm was extremely tall. Another indication of the micro-clime here. i would have missed it if Holly didn't point it out.

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Holly pointing out the Royal and explaining the history of it:

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Into the Jungle we go...

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There is a nice 'paved' sidewalk through portions of the jungle. Other spots were challenging. Holly took us through a little journey and had us moving at a good clip but also stopped long enough to talk plants. Who doesn't like to do that?!? We had a couple of inches of rain earlier in the morning so the Dent Smith Trail was wet and slippery. At one stop we had a challenging hop over a waterway. A few people slipped in but everyone laughed it off.

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Holly asked the group if anyone knew what kind of fern this. Nobody knew. Do you?

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Crane Creek runs the perimeter of the jungle. This swamp drains into the Indian River Lagoon. Holly says she uses no chemicals or fertilizers in respect to the lagoon. We do have a pollution problem in the Indian River Lagoon. Brevard County (where we are) just made it illegal to fertilize during the rainy summer months. Hopefully that helps in keeping unwanted chemicals out of the water.

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Here was the challenging part of the hike. See that ravine? Everyone had to forge over that. A couple people slipped and got wet while others skated over it with no problem.

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An easier bridge:

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Are we really in a metropolitan area on the property of a major university? The jungle is a gem of a place.

F.I.T host a lot of international students. I'm sure a little tropical landscaping rubs off on them as they study on this beautiful campus!

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Here is an obit for Jerome Keuper from the Orlando Sentinel. it sounds like he was a cool and smart dude! Rest In Peace and thanks for leaving the legacy of a great palm garden!

Jerome P. Keuper, 81, Fit Founder, President Obituaries
March 27, 2002|By Scott Powers and Martin E. Comas, Sentinel Staff Writers

Jerome P. Keuper, founder and longtime president of the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, died Monday of congestive heart failure. He was 81.

Keuper founded the school as Brevard Engineering College in rented junior high school classrooms in 1958 to provide training for the growing cadre of rocket technicians pouring into Florida's Space Coast.

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2002-03-27/news/0203270139_1_keuper-colleges-in-florida-florida-institute

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In this plaza, Holly stopped us and explained the experiment she is doing on these queen palms in decline. She is experimenting with arborjet, a tree injection technology. Google more on that if you are interested. These queens are on their way out due to disease/etc, so she is performing experiments to see if it works.

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Tree hugger...literally!

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Fantastic collection of photos, Dave! FIT is looking great. Here's a start on Micco. Roomy yard, lots of happy palms. I neglected to get a photo of the Bismarckias. Spectacular.

Here's a situation where the little palm seemingly died, so a replacement was planted

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One of a bunch of Attaleas

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A not-thriving Borassus, but other borassi were thriving.

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Like this one:

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Of course there's a few cycads

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The eye-catching Ravenea. Why aren't these parlor palms planted outside more? I think one's still growing in front of Orlando's Ikea, left over from an outdoor furniture display

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Fla. climate center: 100-119 days>85 F
USDA 1990 hardiness zone 9B
Current USDA hardiness zone 10a
4 km inland from Indian River; 27º N (equivalent to Brisbane)

Central Orlando's urban heat island may be warmer than us

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Lets see.... this should actually be Copernicia baileyana, maybe.

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And the charismatic Majesty. That looks like an Aceolorraphe wrightii (Everglades or paurotis palm) on its right.

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Fla. climate center: 100-119 days>85 F
USDA 1990 hardiness zone 9B
Current USDA hardiness zone 10a
4 km inland from Indian River; 27º N (equivalent to Brisbane)

Central Orlando's urban heat island may be warmer than us

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My photos (these and some more) are at Flickr. (For some reason, I can make the link in Firefox, not in Chrome...) Comments will be appreciated.

Fla. climate center: 100-119 days>85 F
USDA 1990 hardiness zone 9B
Current USDA hardiness zone 10a
4 km inland from Indian River; 27º N (equivalent to Brisbane)

Central Orlando's urban heat island may be warmer than us

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Thank you both for the terrific photos. Unfortunately, I couldn't make the tour...your pix came close to letting me feel as if I was there.

Lucinda

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Thanks Dave, I appreciate all the photos and the history of the gardens.

Searle Brothers Nursery Inc.

and The Rainforest Collection.

Southwest Ranches,Fl.

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Thanks for checking them out!

Here are Jason (red shirt) and Sue's place.

Going to throw up a bunch of photos minus the commentary. Tired from the weekend. It was a good tour. We were here for a tour about 5 years ago or so. His palms really have grown good. He gets occasional freeze and frost.

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A few more photos, then done. Thanks Jason and Sue for hosting the palm tour! Until next time...

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Jason wanted to highlight this palm. I forget the name of it and it is easy to skip over, but when he pointed it out, it was really pretty palm.

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That's All Folks... Thanks CFPACS, Florida Tech, and Jason/Sue for hosting a great outing!

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