Wild Florida Photo - Erythrina herbacea

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Erythrina herbacea

CORALBEAN

CHEROKEE BEAN

REDCARDINAL

Florida native

 

A frequent shrub mainly of hammocks and found throughout much of Florida. The range extends through the southeastern coastal states from Texas to North Carolina and also Arkansas and Oklahoma.
The showy red flowers appear in tall terminal racemes from winter through summer, often before or just as the distinctive leaves emerge. Later in the year, the namesake poisonous red seeds develop in a loment that splits open when it matures. The alternate, compound, trifoliolate leaves are made up of trianglular leaflets that are somewhat three-lobed.
Of the dozen species of Erythrina found in the United States, this is the only one occurring in Florida. At one time it was proposed that the larger, more treelike specimens found in south Florida were a separate species - E. arborea - but recent treatments consider them all E. herbacea.

 
Erythrina herbacea is a member of the Fabaceae - Pea family.
 

Florida Wildflowers in Their Natural Communities

  Walter Kingsley Taylor
Walter Taylor's guide will help readers recognize and identify wildflowers by where they're most likely to be found growing - their natural habitat.

This book is the first of its kind for Florida. Taylor provides detailed descriptions and color photos of each community - pine flatwoods, sandhills, upland pine forest, scrub, temperate hardwood forest, coastal uplands, subtropical pine forest, tropical hardwood hammock, and ruderal sites - and of the wildflower species associated with each.
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Atlas of Florida Vascular Plants (Institute for Systemic Botany) profile for this species

USDA Plant Profile for this species

Date record last modified:
Nov 01, 2008