Trip Report: The Audubon House

While in Key West last month, we visited "The Audubon House."  You would think with a name like this that the house would have once been under the ownership of someone with the name of Audubon.  It turns out the connection is a little less direct.  John James Audubon, the well known historical figure for his art depicting American birds, traveled to the Florida Keys in 1831 in order to paint the native birds of Florida.  While he was in the Keys, he stayed at the house next door to this house.

The Audubon House

John James Audubon's trip to the Florida Keys

The house has been preserved and connected with Audubon because he admired the gardens while he was in the area and supposedly painted some of the trees and plants into his portraits of various Florida birds.  The gardens have been kept in great condition as a tribute.

Roseate Spoonbill portrait by John James Audubon - my favorite from the Florida collection.

Tree loaded with blooming orchids in front of Audubon House

The house is now a shrine to his work and has a very nice garden outside.  We toured the house and gardens outside, enjoying the beautiful setting.  I think Christie and I could settle into this house just fine.  The trees outside are covered in orchids, and many of them were in bloom for our visit.

Brassavola orchid

Crinum lily bloom

Other interesting plants filled the flowerbeds, including a couple of large Crinum lilies, some yellow Walking Iris (Neomarica longifolia), and a nice Chenille plant (Acalypha hispida).

The yellow walking iris - Neomarica longifolia

Chenille plant - Acalypha hispida

There were lots of Calatheas scattered throughout the gardens, and concentrated here and there.  I have seen these growing in many botanic gardens, but not very often in an outdoor setting.

Calathea Peacock (so the sign reads)

The gardens also contain some Florida native plants, which would have been important to Audubon, as he preferred to paint his birds sitting on authentic trees and plants to the area where he would find them in nature.  One of the natives I really liked was this cycad, Zamia floridana.

Florida native cycad "Coontie" - Zamia floridana

Christie under a nice Staghorn fern

Philodendron stenolobum

There were also some nice aroids, including this large Philodendron stenolobum (above) and Alocasia portei (below). I loved the pendant Anthurium vittariifolium, with its pink berries showing (two below) and now have a small seedling plant from a recent plant trade. I hope my plant is this attractive some day.

A large Alocasia portei (in the center of the image)

Anthurium vittariifolium with berries on spadix

Chamaedorea metallica

My second favorite palm in the entire family is Chamaedorea metallica, which is called the Miniature Fishtail Palm, or Metallic Palm.  It has silver-blue leaves and striking orange flowers and berries.  It is small for a palm, with a maximum size of only 5 or 6 feet tall, and it is therefore usually growing as an understory tree.

Bed of Sansevierias - probably Sansevieria metallica.

You probably already know that I like Stapelias. Am I crazy or do the buds of the Stapelia below look just as cool as the open bloom? Yes, I did bend down and stick my nose into the flower to smell the pungency. And yes, I did request Christie do the same. She grudgingly did so - after a third or fourth request.

Stapelia leendertziae in bloom.

The Audubon House sits on a lot large enough to have several wandering paths through the gardens and 2 separate set-aside gardens: a water garden and an herb garden. The water garden was very tastefully designed, with some heron statues in the pond. I'm sure JJ Audubon would have liked to sit and stare at these nice statues.  The setting of this garden is similar to what I have talked about doing with a portion of our backyard, with the ground paved in either bricks or rock and a shallow pond or other small water feature.  Just a relaxing place to sit and enjoy the outdoors.

The appropriately decorated Audubon water garden.

Walking Iris in bloom

It was almost four years ago when I stumbled along an unusual looking plant at "The Greenhouse" - a local greenhouse that charges too much for their very nice plants.  It reminded me of an Iris, but the leaves were more glossy and thin.  Those features, along with the fact that it was potted in a hanging basket, had me guessing this was probably not a winter hardy plant.  The coolest feature of all was that towards the ends of many of the leaf blades there were new plants forming!

Baby plant forming on my Walking Iris (Neomarica gracilis) back in August 2006, when I purchased the plant.

I handed over the big bucks for this plant and quickly posted pictures of it to different forums online, looking for an ID.  I got one pretty quickly: Neomarica gracilis, commonly called Apostle Plant or Walking Iris.

I learned that the plant flowers from the ends of the leaves and then produces new plants there.  The leaves sag with the weight of the new plant and the new plants take root, hence the name Walking Iris.  Therefore, the plant that I had just bought had finished blooming.

I found an empty hanging basket and placed it next to my plant and buried each of the new plants, leaving them still attached to the mother plant.  A couple of months later I courageously cut the mother leaf free, leaving myself with two pots full of Walking Iris.  It was actually almost indistinguishable which was the "mother plant."  I was proud.

I kept my plants pretty healthy over the last couple of years, but there were a couple of rough times where my plants dried out and I would lose some of them.  Last summer I lost a whole hanging basket and a half - but some hung on!

And for the first time last week, my plants bloomed!

First bloom

I'm so glad to have these blooms, as much for their appearance as for the promise of new plants.  I can start to fill in my hanging basket again.  And hopefully I can keep them all happy until next Spring.

Closer look at the first bloom

The blooms are very attractive, but only lasted one day.  My plant produced three blooms, each a couple of days after the previous.  So conceivably, a fuller plant than mine might have a couple of blooms at a time over a period of a couple of weeks.  I have something to look forward to.  (Please forgive the ending of this post with a trailing preposition.)