In 2017, FLORIDA TODAY ran an article about the Atala butterfly that was previously thought to be extinct but had been discovered again. Since that time, the butterflies have made a resurgence and ...

A rare butterfly that was previously believed to be extinct is returning to Florida, according to a report. On Saturday, the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation (SCCF) posted on Facebook about the ...

Sarasota is a city of arrivals. Spring breakers flood our quartz-sand beaches, the return of the rainy season promises summer blooms, and snowbirds reappear with the first breezy whisper of mild winter.

Coontie is one of my favorite plants. It is an evergreen cycad, growing to about 3 feet tall and is native to the Florida peninsula. Its natural habitat is dominated by pines growing on well drained ...

South Florida’s atala butterfly, a quarter-size insect with shimmery turquoise spots on wings like black velvet, was assumed extinct in the 1950s – scrubbed from the universe by man’s plunder of its ...

Editor's note:This story has been updated from its original version. Admission to a butterfly viewing Aug. 13 at Fort Pierce Inlet State Park is free to members of the Lakela's Mint Chapter of the ...

On a recent weekday, Samuel Wright plowed through the scrubby bushes at Crandon Park, passing the stinging nettle, stepping over a prickly pear cactus, and carefully avoiding a poisonwood tree with ...

Rare blue butterfly caterpillars were eating my coonties. I removed the larvae from the coontie and put them on my cardboard palm and they are eating it. The coonties are coming back now. The larvae ...

The coontie, an unusual Florida native plant, often mistaken for a fern or palm, is a cycad - a "living fossil." These primitive plants were a dominant form of plant life during the age of dinosaurs.

A Florida native almost wiped out by the Florida arrowroot flour industry in early the 1900's, the Zamia floridana (Coontie) is making a come back. Rare in the wild, it remains on the Florida ...