Things are not always as they seem. Take the popular cashew. It looks for all the world like a nut, it is used culinarily as a nut, and just about everybody calls it a nut. But it’s really a seed, and a strange one, at that. The cashew tree, Anacardium occidentale, is an attractive, mid-sized tree…
Read more
Did you know that the flowers of Bougainvillea are small and inconspicuous? That’s because the features that produce the spectacular colors found in this genus are actually bracts, modified leaves located at the point from which flowers develop. Thus bracts are an integral part of the flowering process, though they are not flowers themselves. …
Read more
After an abnormally-warm fall and early winter, southern Florida finally experienced some significant cold fronts in January. For most locations in the region, the coldest readings were recorded on Sunday, January 18, when widely-scattered frost was reported. While chilly weather can prompt flowering in some fruit species, we remain pessimistic that lychees will produce significant quantities this year. …
Read more
If one word had to be picked to describe the current status of vegetable and fruit crops in southern Florida, it would be “confused.” That’s because weather conditions over past few months have caused many crops to develop erratically. Forecast projections for the period from November through January went wrong immediately: November was predicted to be…
Read more
Your earliest New Year’s resolution for 2014 should be to become more familiar with IFAS, The Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. IFAS is a partnership of federal, state and county agencies charged with generating knowledge in several key areas — agriculture, the life sciences, and human and natural resources — and making that information accessible to the public. IFAS is…
Read more