Florida Short Poetry, Wildflowers and Haiku

Sea beans
...
prickly liana
spiny pods nest lustrous beans,
wait for sea pearls' fall
...

Gray Nickerbean, Caesalpina bonduc,
Kevin Songer Florida Nature Artist

Rare Miami Blue and Nickerbean Blue butterfly larvae feed heavily of the foliage of Gray Nickerbean whose seed pods are as outrageously beautiful as the lustrous seeds nested inside.  The maritime loving Gray Nickerbean liana aggressively grows into a rambling, impenetrable hedge before flowering and dropping its gray beans onto the seashore.  With the seasons, tides and sargassum flotsam, Gray Nickerbeans travel around the world, carried hence by La Mar.  Sea Beans, also know as Sea Pearls have been used by peoples for jewelry, medicine and artisan wood inlays for millennia.