It was Easter Sunday 1513, when the Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de Leon wet his boots wading ashore onto what he believed was but another Caribbean island. In his native Spain Easter was called Pascua Florida or Flowery Easter. Hence the land became La Florida.
In botanical tech-talk,
florida is a vastly more all-encompassing term used to indicate a species that is profusely flowering. It has nothing to do with the place of origin of the plant.
Cornus florida, the flowering dogwood tree, for example, is native to North America from Nova Scotia to the Dakotas and on south to, yes, Florida. Although its true flowers are botanically ‘insignificant’, it is the ‘bracts’ surrounding them that are seen and admired. Nevertheless, it has been described with some justification as the world’s most beautiful blooming small tree.
An even more distant specimen is that beloved garden shrub,
Weigela florida. Originating in northern China and Korea, it was named after the German botanist Christian Ehrenfried von Weigel (1748-1831), and bears some of the very best red flowers so beloved of hummingbirds. In recent years it has been extensively hybridized, not always with the most auspicious results.
The Ponce de Leon may have discovered Florida but the French first colonized it. More than a half-century passed before Menendez de Aviles flushed out the French and founded the city of Saint Augustine in 1565. Claiming to be the oldest city in continental North America, it has had a somewhat hapless history. Two hundred years after it was established, the colony was ceded to England 1763, only to be returned to Spain twenty years later. In 1819, it was sold the U.S., becoming a territory before finally finding political permanence in 1845 as the 27th state.
A plant native to the state of Florida may be designated as f
loridanus or, perhaps,
floridanum – that is, of Florida. For instance the orchid
Oncidium floridanum extends from Florida into the West Indies. Unusual for tropical and subtropical orchids, it is a terrestrial, throwing up a spike of greenish-yellow flowers from sturdy pseudobulbs bearing long leaves. And to prove the point that
floridanum indicates a plant that originates in Florida but is not necessarily profusely flowering, or indeed has any flowers at all, there is an epipetric fern found in limestone sinks and on hammock rocks that resounds in the name
Trichomanes punctatum subsp, floridanum or to its familiars, the Florida bristle fern.
Alas for the eastern seaboard of Florida, nobody knows for sure exactly where the Ponce de Leon first set armoured tibia. This is a matter of no little importance to communities so dependent on tourism there. The 500th anniversary of the event arrives on 3rd April. Communities are duking it out for bragging rights – and tourist dollars. St. Augustine now has a Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park, since the conquistador was searching for an elixir that would prolong life. Dying at the not-exactly ripe old age of 47, like St. Augustine, he was out of luck – or so say historians. Some informed individuals consider Melbourne Beach, a short drive to the south, a better bet. But with his written log having vanished before the 16th century had run its course, who can say for sure which shore it was? It is ever thus.
Much to the distress of mere mortals, who spend hours swotting up on the official nomenclature, taxonomists are every eager to disturb the status quo. Thus
gardenia, that most popular of scented flowers so beloved by amongst others the late Natalie Wood, is no longer to be known as Gardenia florida but G. angusta. May the spectre of the Ponce de Leon haunt herbariums, there to terrify taxonomists.
