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Highlands Today

Roadside Research Studies Wildflowers

Kathy Waters/Highlands Today

University of North Carolina Asheville undergraduate student Leigh Cowart photographs a flower Monday alongside U.S. 27, just south of Sebring. She photographs the flower to analyze the features to help understand what makes the flower attractive to pollinators.

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By DOUG CARMAN

Highlands Today

Published: July 17, 2008

SEBRING - The three were just sitting there in the grass, it seemed. One with a camera and the other two with notepads, the trio seemingly camped out there every morning near the entrance to Buttonwood Bay, doing who-knows-what?

So many passersby would stop to ask what they were doing that they eventually had to start printing fliers describing their activity: They're observing the flowers blooming right where they were sitting for research, said Jennifer Rhode, an assistant biology professor visiting the Archbold Biological Station from the University of North Carolina at Asheville.

They kept motionless during their study so they wouldn't disturb the butterflies, bees and other insects swarming the flowers, but many people would stop their cars and ask about them.

"People are always interested in what we're doing," Rhode said. Since her team started July 1, 10 citizens have stopped by to ask about their work and six police officers and sheriff deputies checked on them to see if they were stranded, and she said she was happy to tell them about the research they were doing.

As she said this, a woman pulled up by the ditch to ask them about a net she saw them putting on the flowers a previous day.

Leigh Cowart, the photographer of the group, said that they would come out there from 7 a.m. until about 2 or 3 in the afternoon every day to watch the flowers. Kara Hubbard, a UNC Asheville junior, was recording which insects land on the flowers and timing how long they were on them.

They have 12 sites that they observe at least once a year with two that they monitor every day, including the ditch near Buttonwood Bay and another one a mile and a half north of there.

The flower they were researching is called a pitted stripeseed, It grows all over roadside ditches throughout the state. The team was interested in the flower, Rhode said, because the seeds had packets attached to them that are full of fat and sugar that feed the ants. They take those packets to their nests, discarding the seeds along the way and causing the pitted stripeseed to spread out.

Though these flowers grow all over Florida, they come in two varieties. One's located mostly in the Florida Panhandle and the other is in the Everglades. Both of them are coming together in Highlands County and hybridizing, which is one of the reasons Rhode does her research here rather than elsewhere in the state. Also, she said the flowers along the ditches here are less likely to be sprayed by chemicals since the county isn't as developed as most of the state.

Their research continues until July 24.

Doug Carman can be reached at 386-5838 or dcarman@highlandstoday.com

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