Tonight around my house in Jupiter the temperature is planning to drop to 28 degrees. Hey, icicles don’t happen here (often).   That being so, we better talk about plants in relation to temperature.   Anybody with a car knows that as you drive northward in Florida in winter, every gas stop (clean restrooms at Buc-ees) is colder than the prior reststop.  Might be toasty in Miami and chillin’ in Jax. 

Tillandsia utriculata. All photos by John Bradford.

That being so, it might be fun to look at a large group of plants found across Florida and northward, and see how they deal with the latitudinal temperature gradient.   Hmmmmm, let’s see now,,,,I know!   Tillandsias!  There are lots of Florida species, each having a different N-S range, and each having different relevant leaf traits.

T. setacea

To make a fun evening of data gathering short, using mostly adjectives in the Flora of North America, you can rank the Florida native Tillandsia species by fuzziness, and by leaf roundness (from nearly flat to pencil-shaped). Here’s what I determined.

Skeptics are welcome to scrutinize Flora North America data (it is online) to see if they agree. (If not, please contribute $25 to the Florida Native Plant Society in lieu of emailing me.)

Does having a fur coat help keep a plant safer from frost?   Let’s see.

T. paucifolia

Flat things freeze faster than round things, because flat things have a lot of surface area exposed, and not much thickness to hold heat. Does having roundish leaves help protect leaves from frost?  

T. balbisiana

The graph below…as skimpy as it is…looks like fuzzier Tillandsia leaves  help as the species expand northward, and so does the color-coded leaf flatness. (1= flat, 4=round).

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr