While much of the northeast has been experiencing triple-digit temperatures, south Florida was in the balmy 80’s this past holiday weekend, with large bouts of rain thrown in. At our weather station we got more than Π inches of rain, which kept me from getting out and doing much in the way of shutterbugging. But here on our front porch, right in front of the overflowing rainbarrels, was Randia aculeata, white indigo-berry in flower, thus demonstrating part of the reason for its name:
This is a nice shrub with a fairly distinctive growth pattern of opposite stems angled away from the main stem. It’s a nectar plant for Schaus’ swallowtail and some other butterflies that occur in Florida but that I’ve not seen in my yard. According to Dan Austin’s invaluable (and too expensive for my budget!) Florida Ethnobotany, the edibility of this fruit is described as “variable and some think the fruit a last resort. . . . The related species R. echinocarpa has been described as bitter and overly sweet…, and that pretty much sums up R. aculeata” (562).
But it’s certainly got a nice little flower that’s not at all out of place on a rainy Independence Day when the fireworks are soggy.