Tomorrow Night: Learn to Use a Plant Key

You can count on Annie Schmidt to make anything fun and exciting! Come hear her talk tomorrow night and learn basic botany terminology and methods that will help you identify, or "key out", an unknown plant.  A powerpoint presentation and hands-on demos will be used.

Annie is an environmental scientist with GPI Southeast, Inc., an engineering planning firm. Formerly she worked for the Pinellas County Environmental Lands Division. She has a Master's degree in conservation biology from the University of South Florida in Tampa, and is currently the chair of the Policy & Legislation committee for FNPS.

"Talk the Talk; It’s Not Hard"—Botanical Terminology and How to Key out Plants. Speaker: Annie Schmidt, MS, Botany & Conservation Biology

Place: Pinellas County Extension, 12520 Ulmerton Road, Largo [map]
Time: 7:00 pm

Caladesi Field Trip Saturday: Ride or Paddle, Your Choice

Members of the Pinellas Chapter will head to Caladesi Island State Park this Saturday, February 6th. Some of us will take the ferry, but a few intrepid souls are planning to paddle from the Dunedin Causeway or the Marina to the Island. More information about the trip can be found here. You must RSVP for the field trip; you can do so on our website or through our Facebook page. If you have questions about the trip, please contact Alexa Wilcox-Huegel at (727) 422-4792. If you'd like to join the paddling group, please contact Jim McGinity at (727) 733-2928 to make arrangements to meet other kayakers.

Climate Change Forum in Kissimmee Feb. 18th

The Pine Lily Chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society is sponsoring a forum with Randall W. Parkinson, Ph.D., P.G., Administrator of the Space Coast Climate Change Initiative.

Topic: The Science of Climate Change and Rising Sea Level

This special event is co-sponsored by Kissimmee First United Methodist Church. The forum will be on Thursday, February 18, 2009, at 6:30 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, 101 W. Dakin Av, Kissimmee FL 34741. For more information about the forum, call (321) 373-0976.

Support FNPS with GoodSearch and GoodShop

You may have noticed the GoodSearch toolbar at the bottom of our home page. It's a painless way to support the Florida Native Plant Society while you shop online. Install the toolbar, powered by the Yahoo! search engine, and specify FNPS as your preferred charity. Thereafter, each time you use the toolbar to search, FNPS will benefit. Selected merchants (and there are many) have signed up with the service and will donate a portion of your purchase to FNPS, too. When you visit any participating merchant, the toolbar will show you what percentage of your purchase will be donated, and also give a list of any online coupons you can use. The chart below shows how much money has been raised by this method through the end of January.

Year	No. of Searches	$ Raised from Searches	$ Raised from Shopping	Total
2008	213	$2.30	$49.03	$51.33
2009	2242	$23.41	$51.14	$74.55
2010 (Jan.)	283	$2.83	$7.49	$10.32
Total	2738	$28.52	$107.66	$136.18

Forestry Professor Says Longleafs Are Sturdy Trees

This was passed along by Ray Wunderlich. It's from an email sent by Grant Rimbey:

Dear longleaf pine enthusiasts:

I’ve contacted Dr. H. Glenn Hughes, PhD, Extension Forestry Professor, MSU Extension Service, who is an expert on Longleaf Pines.

I wanted to get some parameters from him on the planting of longleaf in the urban forest, below is his lengthy response, feel free to contact him you’d like:

I grew up in Hattiesburg, MS, located about 60 miles inland, and went through Hurricane Camille in 1969. I still live in Hattiesburg , and more recently lived through Hurricane Katrina. From Katrina we saw and learned a lot.

One thing we did not see in significant numbers were the tops of longleaf pine trees twisting off. However, the trunk breaking was much more of a problem with slash and loblolly pine. In those, breakage generally occurred between 5 and 25 feet in the air. Longleaf pine fared far better than the others.

All of these failures, whether a top blown out, tree trunk snapped off, or a tree blown over by the roots can be catastrophic. What I would not recommend is to plant loblolly pine in hurricane prone urban areas, as it is much more susceptible to failure than the longleaf pine. Slash fared better than loblolly, but not nearly as good as longleaf.

Just last year I planted a longleaf about 30' from my house. I am willing to live in an area periodically subject to hurricanes, and am also willing to have trees fairly close to my house.

So what are we seeing after Katrina? I actually had a longleaf about 20 feet from the house fall over and just lean against the end of the house, causing minimal damage. Had it been 60 feet away, it would actually have caused much greater damage because of the increased momentum and it being about 90' tall. Others might differ, but I am not willing to remove all trees. That being said, if I have a hazardous tree, it comes down in a heart beat. This includes pines killed by bark beetles or trees being killed by disease and posing a threat to human safety.

The longleaf has been much maligned over the years and is quite a very tough and resilient tree, there is no need for fear.

Regards,
Glenn.

H. Glenn Hughes, PhD
Extension Forestry Professor
MSU Extension Service
P.O. Box 348
Purvis , MS 39475
Ph: 601-794-0671
Fax: 601-794-0676
Cell: 601-270-8729