Also known as Privet wild sensitive plant, Privet senna (Senna ligustrina) is an evergreen, perennial shrub. Its flowers are mainly bee-pollinated, but it is the larval host plant for the cloudless sulphur and sleepy orange butterflies. It is a short-day plant, which means it requires a longer period of darkness to form its flowers.
While many native wildflowers are no longer in bloom during the Florida Christmas season, you’ll find many of our natural areas decorated with ornaments of seeds just in time for the holidays.
Shoreline seapurslane (Sesuvium portulacastrum) is a sprawling, perennial evergreen wildflower with pink, star-shaped flowers. It blooms throughout the year in salt and freshwater marshes, along beach dunes, and in salt flats. It is critical as a dune sand stabilizer as it catches sand between its leaves and stems.
Elliott’s aster (Symphyotrichum elliottii) is an herbaceous perennial wildflower that produces a coronet of lavender blooms. It typically flowers in late fall and occurs naturally in roadsides ditches, wet flatwoods, swamps, and marshes. It is a wonderful plant for attracting butterflies, bees and other pollinators due to its many fragrant blooms.
Clasping Venus’ looking-glass (Triodanis perfoliata) is an annual herbaceous wildflower that typically flowers late winter through spring and even into fall. It occurs naturally along roadsides and in disturbed areas. It is pollinated by bees, flies and small butterflies and moths.
Largeleaf grass-of-Parnassus (Parnassia grandifolia) is a rare and wonderful wildflower. Every part of it is distinctively striking. It blooms only in fall, typically October and November, and occurs naturally in open and seasonally wet savannahs and bogs. It is a state-listed endangered species.