Wild Coffee (Psychotria nervosa) blooms in the spring and summer here in partly shaded areas. The beautiful large, dark green, veined leaves shine in the filtered sun. This plant attracts a lot of attention from hikers, in the spring because of the white flowers against the green and the multitude of insects enjoying those flowers, and especially in the autumn when the contrasting red berries against the dark green look wonderful and attract birds and other wildlife.
On a recent hike the profusion of blooms attracted my attention, and the attention of numerous insects. May is spring love bug season. Yes, here in central Florida we get two love bug seasons, our second one in September. Love Bugs covered the most blooms of the coffee plants as I walked by though I did see other insects including honeybees and a red beetle.
With the distinctive red body and black head and legs I didn’t expect any issues in identifying this guy. So far, no luck.
The honeybee finally landed in the sun so I could get this shot. I took all of these with my Canon 100mm – 400mm fully extended at 400mm for the close-up.
Florida is slowly re-opening. None of our regular activities have been resumed yet, and we suspect that it will be July before most start up. We hoped to be able to camp in our RV the beginning of June at one of the state parks. To date, our reservations have not been cancelled, but the park is still closed to camping. We will see. We are eager to get going again, but also conscious that it will be slow steps.
