What's in Bloom

I love our customers.

Every single day at least one of our customers shares a tidbit or other fun fact that makes me take pause and realize we’re all in the fight to save our world together. Recently, one of our customers told me about the Florida Wildflower Foundation’s “What’s in Bloom” project, which is asking citizen scientists to grab their digital cameras to help document the location and abundance of wildflower species along our state’s roadsides.

The premise is simple: take a photo of a wildflower, note its habitat and location (using GPS coordinates if at all possible) and email it to photos@flawildflowers.org. Two things happen then. If you don’t know the name of the wildflower, the Florida Wildflower Foundation will help identify it. Secondly, Florida Wildflower Foundation uses the wildflower sighting to populate the Florida In Bloom map.     

When I started playing with the information the map displays, I immediately started thinking about all the ways this information could help scientists and committed environmentalists like you and me: not only will the information help us understand bloom times and whether these are changing, the information can help us better connect habitat and develop wildlife corridors.

Unfortunately, the information for Tampa and our surrounding areas is very limited. So, let’s help populate the map with lots of Tampa dots, and then let’s connect them with lots of native wildflowers. Together, we can #NurtureNative.