Early one morning, while I was on my way to work, I stopped to stalk a couple of turkey hens that had been crossing the road and went into the woods. Sometimes, they stop just inside the woods, and that was what I was hoping they had done. We have several that live in our woods, but I’ve never been able to get a good photo of one. Unfortunately, these girls had kept going, and by the time I was able to stop, they were long gone (or peaking out at me from a safe hiding spot laughing at me, more likely!). But a little walk by the woods in the morning air is never a bad thing, so I took a short stroll along the wooded edge looking for anything interesting (this technique is often very rewarding).

And there along the edge of the woods was an interesting looking flower. It reminded me a lot of a sunflower, but it was much smaller. I definitely didn’t know what it was, so I thought I should take some photos. There was a small patch of them in that one particular area, and I didn’t see any others around. When I got closer and started taking my photos, especially as I was taking some closeups I thought they smelled a bit like chocolate! But then again, maybe I was just hungry…

Honestly, I kind of forgot about this pretty little flower until about a week ago, when I was scrolling through some of my photos, and there it was! That reminded me to research this one and find out what it was. I’ve talked about the PictureThis app before because it’s usually my first place to research plants and flowers. If you download a photo of a plant or flower into the app, it identifies your specimen and gives you some basic information about it. I always follow up with other research as well, but so far, it’s never been wrong! PictureThis told me that this was a chocolate flower (also known as a chocolate daisy or lyreleaf green eye). And low and behold, it’s called that because if you eat the stamens they are supposed to taste like unsweetened chocolate, and it smells like chocolate, too (so I wasn’t just hungry)!

Chocolate flowers are not actually native to Florida, but instead grow wild in the desert southwest and Mexico. They are a perennial herb that is pretty hardy and can grow in dry, rocky areas that get full sun. In their native habitat, they bloom from early spring through fall until the first frost. After the frost, the plant and leaves die back, but the tough root hangs on until the next spring. The beautiful flowers, which attract bees, wasps, hummingbirds, and butterflies, along with the pleasing chocolate scent have made chocolate flowers a popular ornamental and commercial flower. They reproduce via seed production, and those seeds can be spread by wind, and by wildlife, so I’m sure that this little patch of chocolate flowers were the result of someone’s garden somewhere. I still haven’t gotten a good shot of a turkey, but I am glad I found and learned about the chocolate flower!