Sea Grape is a common plant in Florida. We like it and it is as common as pinewoods and palmtrees. In Punta Gorda we even have an art gallery named after it. It can be grown as a tree or a bush and some folks used it for hedging. It has dense foliage of large circular leaves. The small waxy flowers appear on stalks which later become the ‘grape’ clusters I could see the blooms getting denser today and they were attacting a lot of bees. You can see the size of the flower in comparison to this bee.

I notice that there were also some small black ants climbing all over it. I took a couple of shots and when I looked at them on the screen for review I noticed something else in one picture. At first it looked like a dead blossom that was out of focus but, I zoomed in a bit closer and decided it was something else. I went back for another shot, in focus this time, and discovered that it had moved.

Hmmm, a small hairy insect that covers itself in debris as a disguise. This one is definitely going off to bugguide.net for identification.