Sam Comer of Hayslip Landscaping stands with a defoliated Bougainvillea (Bougainvillea spectabilis). This specimen was completely defoliated during Hurricane Jeanne. The foliage on a Bougainvillea drops off even in mild storm events, but will be fully flush with new foliage within months.
When I was 5 years old and the eye-wall of Hurricane Betsey, 1965, hit my parents’ home in New Orleans, my most vivid memory of the storm was that my favorite pecan tree split in half and disappeared forever. After Camille, 1969, I remember traveling the Gulf Coast region and seeing areas where homes had been scoured from the landscape, leaving only brick chimneys, concrete stairways and the defoliated skeletons of century-old live oaks. The storm surge of Hurricane Hugo, 1989, left water stains at eye-level in my favorite hotel in Charleston – but remarkably the Civil War-era live oaks, again leafless, remained upright.
Andrew, 1992, tested the South Florida landscape like no other hurricane in memory. After Andrew, one of my clients lost only a dozen roof shingles off their Coral Gable estate but had to replace over $2 million in landscaping. Today, I sit in Vero Beach staring at the shredded fronds on the Coconut, Date and Royal Palms. The landscape buffer that once visually separated A1A from the perimeter homes on John’s Island is now nearly completely defoliated.
Read the entire article in the December 2004 issue
True Tails is a series written by Amy Robinson for Vero Beach’s dog lovers. Ask Amy about your dog’s behavior by clicking below.
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