FNPS Peggy Lantz Writing Contest

This writing contest celebrates creative voices inspired by Florida's wild flora. Established in honor of Peggy Lantz, an esteemed nature writer, former editor of The Palmetto, and tireless advocate for Florida's native plants, the contest embodies her legacy of blending scientific rigor with practical wisdom. Through her work, Lantz inspired readers to cherish and protect the Florida's natural heritage. We now invite writers, artists, and storytellers of all ages to submit original work that explores their personal connection to Florida's native plants.  

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc1_u9Y84JjnWek_Gr77EYZkKOl765QvZinKyKah9pTT7e0xg/viewform

I played games of cowboys and Indians plenty of times on the ranch with my brother. I could vaguely recall such play when I was very young and visited my grandfather in New Hampshire, and I could painfully remember the ending of a game in Indiantown that taught me my father had little patience with disobedience. The games on the ranch became more complex when Smokey and I taught ourselves how to make bows and arrows out of cabbage palm and saw palmetto fronds and defined ourselves as a local Seminole Indian tribe. I read about Chief Osceola and Chief Micanopy in the several books in the Parrish Elementary School library, and since we didn't have the wherewithal to construct dugout canoes, the bows and arrows helped create our roles as imaginary tribe members.

The petioles or stalks of both plants served as the stock material for our weapons. The cabbage palm could produce leaves that were eight or nine feet long from the end of the stalk attached to the tree to the tip of the blades of the leaf. We would cut the leaf off the stalk of the cabbage palm frond…

From Growing Up Floridian…