Another Yard in Fort Pierce: Volunteering at Heathcote Botanical Garden, Day 2

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Volunteering at Heathcote Botanical Garden, Day 2

Today was the second day of volunteering at Heathcote Botanical Gardens. We were introduced to many of the other volunteers and the director of the Gardens today as well. Aaron and myself are now referred to as the "Palm Guys", they love the fact that they have 2 young guys in there to help out. And we are having a blast doing what we are doing. And it is official we are the Palm Walk maintainers now. SWEET!
I remembered to take a few pictures before getting started on the projects at hand today. And this is what we have been working on. Or at least this 25sq ft section. The Palm Walk is a large part of the gardens. And it is very over grown. So over grown that today when we were clearing out this part we found a few palms that had been lost to the over growth. We have dubbed this section as the "Danger Zone". Last week we began clearing this out in shorts and went home with cuts all over, so we both had pants on today. Between the Macaw or Gru-Gru Palm that has needles on every inch of the trunk and fronds, to the 20ft clump of huge Bromeliads, and an Encephalartos whitelockii Cycad which has a 10ft leaflet that has a lot of small, nasty spines on them, and we have been pretty torn up. But the time we donate to them has already begun to pay off. There are 2 large seeding Foxtail Palm Trees in this section, and they told us that we could have the foxtail seeds off the ground. This is hundreds of seeds.

Each week I going to take pictures of each of the palms in the area that we our going to be working in. This is going to help me learn all the differences between palm trees and you can check back to see new palms every week. This week I have pictures of
Livistona muelleri; Dwarf Fan Palm
Trithrinax acanthocoma; Spiney Fiber Palm
Bismarckia noblis; Silver Bismarck Palm
Acrocomia aculeate; Macaw Palm, Gru-Gru Palm, Coyol Palm
Wodyetia bifurcate; Foxtail Palm