Tall Thangs

Oviposit much?


The hopper is sitting on top of a swamp sunflower blossom in my front yard. Swamp sunflower is a native, often found in damp areas, but it can handle average Florida yard soil moisture too.
Years ago, a friend gave me some from her yard and said, " Just throw them where you want them, they will survive and conquer."
She was right about the survival part, even though I did actually plant the poor wilted things. They conquer at a very manageable pace, nothing I would call invasive, just ... enthusiastic.
They stay almost flat to the ground, just a little rosette of leaves, for much of the year, and then ...SPROING! They suddenly shoot for the sky, arriving there in late summer/early fall.

I don't know what their maximum height can be, but I bet it's up there around 15 feet. I have some towering over my porch roof and I've driven by some that look even taller than mine.

In the picture above, 5'10'' of Pure Florida hombre is stretching his hand up for a reference. In my house, when I do that, I can just touch our 8 foot ceiling, so if we assume my finger tips are at the 8 foot mark, these plants must be 10 or 12 feet tall.

My timber bamboo transplants continue to amaze me. Every day when I park the JEEP nearby, I go over and check on how much they grew since I left that morning.

Talk about your crazy mitosis. These guys are over the top!

That tall curving shoot is the little one I showed you a couple of times in previous posts. When I transplanted the bamboo a couple months ago, it was shorter than the large cut culm it is growing from.

The bamboo in the background is an older stand of a fishing pole sized variety ... I planted it so long ago, I'm not sure of the species.

So there you have it, a short post on tall things ... or thangs if you have one of those sweet southern accents.