Fall Wildflower Festival: A Flittery, Flowery Good Time

Florida wildflowers pop up in the fall when summer’s oppressive heat fades to more manageable 80 and 90 degree temperatures. Just like wildflowers, festivals in Florida take advantage of more comfortable weather to draw people out of the air conditioning. Fall is the time of year when fairs and festivals return. The weekly farmers’ markets. Movies in the parks. Sunset music series. Arts and crafts shows. And the Fall Wildflower Festival at Tampa’s Brooker Creek Preserve. At the Wildflower Festival, volunteers share the beauty of Brooker Creek’s many wildflowers and insects with families and children, instilling a lifelong love for nature.

I love flowers and especially native wildflowers. In the last few years I’ve made a concerted effort to learn more about the plants which are native to Florida. In doing so, I’ve learned that I have six edible native plants growing in my little suburban yard. As soon as I realized that, I stopped spraying herbicides and pesticides. Didn’t want to poison myself when I ate the plants. As the native plants spread around the house and across the yard, I noticed more butterflies and bees visited those plants. It was a win-win.

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The Importance of Florida’s Wildflowers and Native Plants

Many of what we see in a conventional Florida yard is not native to Florida. Grass, for instance. Or many of the palm trees. A lot of the shrubs. The hibiscus and variegated ginger and bougainvillea. Property owners want the tropical look they think is Florida and end up planting exotic plants instead. Some of them invasive and destructive to our natural plant systems. The result drives a continuing potential for ecological disaster and collapse. Florida’s fragile aquifers and waterways, many of which feed the unique ecosystems of The Everglades, were not designed to withstand the onslaught of pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, and daily lawn watering that we subject our yards to. Many of the state’s iconic freshwater springs have dried up or flow significantly less than they once did. 

Native flowers are not “weeds”

Many of our native wildflowers, like Bidens alba and goldenrod, are considered “weeds”. To maintain those vast, green, grassy lawns, we spray weed killers to rid our yards of those “unsightly” weeds. The native bees lose their biggest sources of nectar. Butterflies, such as Monarch and Gulf Fritillaries, lose their food sources. And the insects our crops rely on for pollination dwindle in numbers. Likewise, years of fertilizer use has contributed, in part, to giant algal blooms in our freshwater canals, streams, and rivers. This algae washes out to the Atlantic Ocean or Gulf of Mexico and feeds the red tide bacteria, causing larger and longer-lasting red tide blooms which kill marine life and close beaches.

Yes, it is all connected.

Florida municipalities have started to make changes to their policies to try to reverse some of the damage caused. Many places now ban fertilizer use during the rainy season when run-off is more likely to wash fertilizer into the waterways. It is now illegal for Homeowner Associations to prevent homeowners from using Florida-friendly landscaping. For many years, the less manicured look of Florida natives were not allowed in many communities because they believed the yards looked overgrown and weed-ridden. Some towns even use native plants to landscape their roadways and public lands.

It’s a start, a good one.

About the Fall Wildflower Festival

Places such as Brooker Creek Preserve strive to educate the public about the local ecosystems. One of Brooker Creek’s most popular events is the annual Fall Wildflower Festival. The event takes place one Saturday each October and teaches children, in particular, about the many beautiful plants and animals in the Preserve. 

This year they had a butterfly tent (with long lines to get in!), a bee exhibit, beeswax candle making, and a wildflower treasure hunt along one of the Preserve’s many trails. The education center, with its many displays, was open as well. Volunteers from Friends of Brooker Creek stood at every turn ready to answer questions. Near the parking lot, a native plant sale encouraged visitors to take home a plant or two.

About Brooker Creek Preserve

Brooker Creek Preserve stretches across 8,700 acres in north Pinellas County in the Tampa Bay area. It is the largest natural area in the county. Most of it is inaccessible to the public, though more than four miles of hiking trails allow visitors to walk through parts of it. The Preserve encompasses a variety of ecosystems – swamps and wetlands, pine flatwoods, and oak hammocks. Brooker Creek, waterway for which the Preserve is named, flows through the Preserve on its winding journey to Lake Tarpon, Pinellas County’s largest lake. Brooker Creek is the lake’s biggest tributary. Deer, panther, bear, possums, raccoons, snakes, hundreds of bird species, and thousands of insect species make their home in the natural land of the Preserve. To hike through some of the more far-flung trails is to step back in time to when native people co-existed with the land and animals here.

At the 11th Annual Fall Wildflower Festival

The Fall Wildflower Festival started at 10:00 AM. I arrived around 10:30 expecting to beat the crowds. I didn’t. The parking lot was already more than half full. With camera backpack slung over my shoulder, I followed a young family down the boardwalk that leads to the Preserve’s buildings.The wetlands around the boardwalk immediately displayed the reason for holding the Festival in October. Cinnamon ferns thrust their curled reddish spikes towards the sky. Yellow marsh flowers bloomed in the drier areas. White frostweed dotted dense green foliage. Near the buildings, the frostweed grew in large bushes, happier in the dry soil. Alongside them purple clumps of berries clung to the stems of American beautyberry while native coffee, not in bloom, provided a distinct textured leaf to the landscape.

The amazing truth about bees

I headed to the screened-in pavilion first where bee exhibits hugged the perimeter of a large room. Straight to the back, I found empty bee hive boxes on display, as well as a bee keeper’s outfit. Behind glass, a living bee hive invited the curious to find the queen bee. I spoke to the volunteer there for quite a while and received quite an education from her. After we located the queen, I learned:

• Only female bees exist in the hive. They collect nectar, pollinate plants, make honey, feed the larvae, and feed the queen.
• Male drones are raised only when the hive needs a new queen. 
• The male drones are the only ones that can create the “royal jelly” required for making a queen.
• Several queens are hatched. The first one to grow from larva to bee becomes the queen and kills the other queen larvae.
• An old queen will be kicked out of the hive. This signals the worker bees to create drones who will create the queen larvae.

Pretty interesting, isn’t it?

From the bees, I found the butterfly tent. A couple of escapees caught my eye, and I spent some time photographing those. Seeing a line for the butterfly tent, I decided to come back after my hike. Unfortunately, the line was insanely longer when I returned. For the butterflies’ safety, only a few people at a time were allowed in the tent. I peeked through the netting and saw a flutter of brightly-colored wings as the music of delighted giggling drifted out.

Hiking trails at Brooker Creek Preserve

I had not hiked the Brooker Creek trails in a few years so that was part of my plan that Saturday. On my way to the trails, I passed the table where the wildflower treasure hunt began. Orange flags along a short part of the first trail identified places to stop and spot a wildflower. On a clipboard, you found the flower and marked it off. Those who found all the flowers received a certificate when they returned.

I declined the treasure hunt and made my way across the boardwalk that spans Brooker Creek and the surrounding bottomland swamp. At the far bank, the trail continued as a sand trail through oak hammock. I turned right to take the Wilderness and found myself alone within minutes, surrounded by pine flatlands. This ecosystem has lots of tall slash pines with undergrowth of saw palmetto. The occasional dark green oval foliage of wax myrtle broke up the landscape. At the Flatwoods Trail, a gate closed off the Wilderness Trail so I turned left onto the Flatwoods. A 70 acre wildfire burned through a large portion of the trails in June. Those trails are still closed to allow for recovery. When I visited in October, only about 1.5 miles of the Preserve’s 5.2 miles are currently open. 

The pine flatlands continued on the Flatwoods Trail, as expected. Here I also saw an abundance of grasses and wildflowers like candyroot, goldenrod, and meadowbeauty among the blackened trunks of longleaf and slash pines. The trail took a right turn into denser flatlands thickened by wax myrtle, fetterbush, and gallberry giving this part of the trail a deeply forested appearance. Back on the Ed Center Trail, I found myself in the oak hammock ecosystem where native people and later settlers would have built their villages and home sites. Signs along the trail pointed out harvester ant colonies and shared information about how indigenous people would have lived in the Brooker Creek watershed.

Finished with the hike, I rounded up some much-needed water and sought out the air conditioned education center. This, too, has changed a lot in the last few years. The center is several thousand square feet of educational exhibits, like animal skulls and skins, an insect exhibit, and interactive displays about Brooker Creek and Florida-friendly landscaping. One end of the center is designed specifically for kids. Several play areas encourage children to climb, play, and touch, while two corners with floor to ceiling windows invite parents and kids to sit in rocking chairs and read one of the many books stored in woven grass baskets.

Conclusion to a Fun Day at Fall Wildflower Festival

As always, Brooker Creek Preserve brings Florida’s natural beauty to the public, both in this fun festival and through all of the exhibits and trails. It’s one of the county’s many free resources, and while education is a key component, the Preserve’s true value lies in preserving this wild land for the animals and plants that live there as well as for future nature lovers.

Getting to Brooker Creek Preserve

Where to Stay Near Brooker Creek Preserve

Other Nearby Things-to-Do

Historic Tarpon Springs

Tarpon Springs is well-known for the historic Sponge Docks and the town’s reputation as the “Sponge Capital of the World”. Greek men came to Tarpon Springs in the early 20th century, bringing their sponge diving knowledge as well as their families and culture. If you visit in January, you might see the largest Epiphany celebration outside of Greece.

Golf

Six golf and country clubs are located within ten miles of Brooker Creek. The most famous of these is Innisbrook Golf Resort in Palm Harbor, home of the PGA’s Valspar Championship.

Bass Fishing on Lake Tarpon

Pinellas County’s Lake Tarpon provides angler with some of the best freshwater bass fishing in Florida. The lake covers 2,500 acres with grassy shallows and deep water holes. Several resorts and boat ramps provide boat access or charter fishing opportunities.