In late February and early March central Florida comes alive with wildflowers. I know that in most of the country April showers bring May flowers, but down here we are early bloomers, literally. All the gorgeous flowers really kept me busy taking loads of photos, for most of March and April, and I almost overlooked a very important flower and a wonderful addition to my life list. It is a pretty little purple flower that grows in clusters along the woods near our kennels and along the edges of some of our roads. When I first noticed it, I was filming a colony of ants outside the kennels. There had been an afternoon rain storm the day before that had covered up the mound, and the ants were very busy digging things out. I guess the rain had also started the flowers blooming, too.

At first, I thought that they were yet another color variation of the phlox that was popping up everywhere. The flowers look similar although the phlox is a little larger, but the plants are definitely different. I thought it might be some close relative to the phlox, but I still wanted some photos for a couple reasons. First, I wanted to research this new plant and identity it, even if it turned out to be a variation of phlox, and second I’m trying to get photos of all the color variations of the phlox. Every time I think I’ve seen and photographed all the ones in our region, I find yet another!

The research took a bit of time because this plant is part of a pretty large family with quite a few species and subspecies that can be found in numerous habitats in the United States. For the first time, my PictureThis app didn’t take me right to the correct species. It did identify my little purple gem as a species of verbena or vervain, but the species it gave me was something not found in Florida. I accepted this as a possibility, especially since I had just researched the chocolate flower, which doesn’t grow here naturally, but must have escaped from someone’s garden for me to find it growing wild. A little more research on Florida verbenas lead me to beach verbena, which looks very much like my plant, but only occurs on the east coast of our state. Finally, I was able to track down Tampa verbena (also called Tampa mock vervain), my plant!

I’m not surprised that the PictureThis app couldn’t identify this particular verbena. It is highly endangered (as is the beach verbena) and only grows in three Florida counties on the east coast and eleven counties on the west coast. Our county is actually the furthest north that this species grows on either coast. Not only do I consider myself lucky to have encountered this flower since it is so rare, but also because it is fairly short lived. It is considered a perennial, but naturalists and horticulturists agree that it rarely grows in the same area for long. Even in well tended gardens it has to be replanted every couple of years (which may be a contributing factor in it’s endangered status). And true to all of my reading, our little flowers seem to have pretty much disappeared now. The plants are still there, and we may get an occasional flower or two throughout the summer, but what will happen next spring remains a mystery. I’m so glad that I was able see and photograph this rare plant in bloom. I hope to get the chance again next spring!