Hi Dries, I'm not sure about Sarasota but it should be great. But Clivia grow well in Naples, which is just an hour or so south, down the west coast, in USDA zone 10/11. Naples can have a couple of really cool nights in Jan., most years in the 50s, but some nights in the 40s. It doesn't sound too bad for them, eh? The soil is sand, basicly, with a thin layer of organic matter, litter from lots of really, really, rapidly growing tropical stuff, and depending on the area, pines and palmettos. It rains a lot in the summer, and not that much in the winter.[ hmm, the water was hard in Naples,and full of calcium, and just a little swampy. But rain conditions should give them the water they like. There may be reverse osmosis plants there now.] Sarasota may be just into zones 9-10 and very rarely be hit by a frost. It too, is on the coast. I was kind of shocked, a dozen years ago, when some of the fancy hotels and stores, began using them as bedding plants there. I mean, it seemed a little casual, almost disrespectful. When I got over my snit, gosh, they were lovely. The amarillis I was just getting used to, funny they bloom in late spring, may, june? not in a pot from the store for Christmas. So Yeah, Clivia probably love it there. They do have some native distant cousins. Some Crinums [ cousins?] range up along the states of the gulf coast and up the east coast to the carolinas, a couple are a little hardier. Every few years, like oranges, they might need a sheet over them in a really cold snap, or maybe some extra [pine straw?] mulch? It's so funny to think of them as woodland plants, The big clumps, probably do, tolerate sudden cold snaps. See, I did look at quite a few of your links. Please, do a Clivia growing in the woodland habitat thread, with pictures, if you could. What do they like when they're at home? Who are there favorite neighbors,? etc.. Florida has some great websites for care, and nurseries for tropical and fragrant plants. South Florida is the most jungley part of the US, especially if you have a yard. Try the Florida forum. There's a Florida native plant society, with knowledgable folks too. Wish that I could be more up to to date. Someone is going to have specifics for you. Good luck, Florey

Fawnridge, I love crotons. I have a few, none rare I don't think. I like pink tones, and especially like a small Croton 'Piecrust' I picked up last season at USF. Jupiterplants, I know what you mean about the Sealing Wax palm. I currently have 4 of them. They are growing well. I killed my first one that I had several years ago by planting it too close to the sliding door of the greenhouse, where there was unfortunately a draft. It got a bit chilled and bit the dust. I made certain to plant the new ones (I was really, REALLY lucky and got them for only $10 each when I made a larger order from Hawaii, otherwise I wouldn't have so many)pretty far into the much warmer interior of the GH. I really like palms and am a sucker for the smaller growing understory palms that have new red leaves. This is one of my favorites, Calyptrocalyx pachystachis I am also a sucker for the "finger like" Anthuriums. I bought this Anthurium polydactylon off of eBay 2 years ago as a smallish plant, and finally trained it up a totem. I habe been growing the Costus "Maroon Chalice" for years and love the bright red architectural look of its stems. I discovered by trial and error that the Costus "Green Chalice" is actually root hardy here and comes back, but the Maroon Chalice doesn't. So I keep a goodly patch going in the GH thank you to everyone who has replied so far. I'd like to see pics of your stuff!

Oh, yeah, anthropogenic climate change is definitely real. There's no doubt about it. Heat records are being broken far more often and by much wider margins than cold records, and we're seeing more and more record-breaking floods in already-rainy areas and record-breaking droughts in already-dry areas (which is to be expected because hotter air evaporates more water). Also, average temperatures in most of Tennessee have risen a few degrees in the past decade alone (1991-2020 vs. 1981-2010 NOAA climate data); average precipitation risen a few inches equally rapidly, too. I find it more likely that the destruction of wild palm populations was due to urban sprawl, irresponsible agriculture and rampant fire suppression. (Dwarf and saw palmettos actually thrive in fire-stricken pine savannas.) We've seen this with longleaf pines, too. The construction of reservoirs can't have helped, either; most subtropical North American palms actually thrive in poorly-draining soil, contrary to stereotypes about palms needing well-drained sandy soil. Besides, the wild dwarf palmettos in Cherokee County, AL and Hardin County, TN were seemingly unknown prior to the 21st century and are still little-known; if they could survive the severe volcanic winters in 1783-84 (which caused ice floes off of the Louisiana coast and a frozen Mississippi River in New Orleans) and 1816 (which caused deadly June and August frosts at least as far south as East Tennessee), surely the ones in the Deep South would've been unfazed by a volcanic winter in the Little Ice Age too! My guess as to what happened at Cape Hatteras is maybe a severe Category 5 hurricane snapped or washed away all of the cabbage palmettos (and the land they grew on); it's more hurricane-prone than anywhere other than Florida and parts of the Gulf Coast due to its extremely exposed location right by the Gulf Stream. With the Cuban royal palms in Central Florida, I'd guess that the Little Ice Age did them in (probably same for the Spanish moss in colonial-era Maryland), whereas other palm species were able to adapt to the centuries of a slightly cooler climate; some things are just down to chance. As for the Brazoria palmettos in Texas, I seriously doubt that those are cabbage palmettos. It's more likely that they're an ancient hybrid between dwarf and cabbage palmettos that migrated westwards. Maybe they could also be a more evolved subspecies of the dwarf palmetto than the Louisiana palmetto is. They're too cold-hardy to be pure cabbage palmettos, and them being a hybrid of the dwarf and Mexican palmettos has been ruled out. P.S.: There were no glaciers in Virginia in the Quaternary Ice Age as far as I know. The only Quaternary glaciations that I know of in the South were an alpine glacier on Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina and the southern edge of the Laurentide Ice Sheet covering modern-day Louisville, KY. Even the majority of Missouri, parts of Southern Illinois and most of West Virginia and the coastal mid-Atlantic escaped glaciation during every Quaternary glacial period; anywhere that was once covered in alpine glaciers would have cirques, while the LIS destroyed bedrock in old hills and left behind glacial till on top of whatever was left.

About the only butterflies I'm seeing this year are the Pipevine swallowtails and that's because they're using the scores of little Aristolochia fimbriata plants I've planted throughout the garden. As they strip one I have to carry the caterpillars to another. Nothing has touched the Passiflra caerulea that has fed many generations of Gulf fritillaries, nor have they used the several small native Texas passion vines which are usually eaten to the ground. I've seen only one Gulf frit and it did not lay eggs. I haven't seen but maybe one or two skippers but no sulfurs although I have senna for them, no giant swallowtails, no buckeyes, and I have host plants for them; not even one little hairstreak has been seen, nor any cabbage whites. No Monarchs either. Nothing has used the fennel. There were a few Painted ladies this spring. The only thing using the many nectar plants are bumblebees, a few honey bees and the Pipevine swallowtails. It seems very strange not to have butterflies everywhere, but according to these articles it's happening not only in the US, but in the UK as well. Here, here and here are recent articles that discuss the dearth of butterflies.