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The EVERGLADES, Florida’s Eden CR Vol. 9 #1 April, 1999

(February, 2024 edit by Dennis Cathcart)
 
Our travels in quest of new species have taken us to some of the most interesting, wild and exotic locations on earth. We have trudged through swamps, forests laden with bromeliads and orchids, and tree studded savannas abounding with unique flora. But for all the exotic locations that we have visited, few can surpass our own Everglades, which contain these and many more interesting habitats.

Florida’s tropical connection. To many, the Everglades are just a swamp or forest, foreboding and insect ridden, a place to be avoided. However, to some, it approaches paradise. Far from just the ‘River of Grass’ that the Indian word ‘Everglades’ means, it encompasses a myriad of habitats, most of which are critical to the survival of a host of plant and animal inhabitants.Certainly, vast areas of the eastern ‘Glades are an endless, flooded sawgrass prairie. Sawgrass gets its name from its stiff leaf blades, up to 6ft long, armed with flesh ripping, tiny, but razor-sharp spines. To the west begins a vast cypress swamp, hundreds of square miles large, bordered to the north by pine flatwoods and to the south by mangrove forests.

Scattered throughout are ‘islands’ of other more diverse biotopes. Hardwood hammocks spread throughout the Everglades region composed of underlying limestone domes or marl, supporting an incredibly varied flora in a multi-layered canopied forest. Here, lives the most diverse woody flora in the Everglades, with many of the more ordinary trees such as various oaks, maple, and pop ash, interspersed with wild tamarind, Bursera, mahogany, Banyan, and many other tropical species. Within the hammocks, the air is cool and moist, a haven for orchids, bromeliads, and rare ferns. Endemic tree snails, with a different variety for every isolated hammock, feed on an array of lichens. These tropical islands most resemble habitats otherwise found only in the true tropics.

Cypress sloughs, which are like shallow rivers flowing through forests of giant cypress, form cathedral-like chambers with tall columnar trunks and a leafy canopy. Open areas of deep water are home to Pond Apples (Annona glabra) which form massive, buttressed bases. Here on their enormous boles, many species of bromeliads and orchids abound. Some found nowhere else.

Outside of the sloughs, the cypress is often stunted, growing in seasonally flooded savannas with shallow topsoil over a limestone base. A six-foot tall tree with a four-foot-wide buttressbase can be over 100 years old. The trees are leafless through a third of the year and the sunlight is intense. Despite the rugged living conditions, a walk through the flooded, stunted forests will reveal a wide variety of epiphytic plants. Here such sun loving bromeliad species as Tillandsia paucifolia, balbisiana, x smalliana, flexuosa and fasciculata abound. A few orchids, like Cyrtopodium punctatum, prefer this habitat.

A tropical wonderland.

There are, in fact, over 20 distinct plant associations or forest types within the Everglades. One of the most famous is the slough called the Fakahatchee Strand.

Here, in a flooded tropical forest, are to be found most of Florida’s rarest epiphytic plants. Bromeliads such as Tillandsia pruinosa and variabilis, Catopsis floribunda and nutans, and the only naturally occurring colony of variegated Guzmania monostachia. Orchids abound, with such rarities as Polyradicion lindenii, the ghost orchid, and over forty other species, mostly of tropical origin. Ferns, including our only native Asplenium, four species of Peperomia, Rhipsalis and many more interesting epiphytes, found on tree trunks, limbs, stumps and fallen timber. There is simply no other forest like this in North America or perhaps anywhere else.

Paradise (almost) lost.

There is little of apparent monetary value in the vastness of the Everglades. However, to those who would apply hard work and technology, it is a rich resource. Shortly after the devastating hurricane of 1926, a series of levees and canals helped to drain extensive areas of this swampland so farmers, notably sugar cane growers, could exploit the rich muck lands just south of Lake Okeechobee. To create pasture, they drained land to the West. Wholesale harvesting of orchids and other plants was, and still is, to a lesser degree, a problem. Now rather rare, Cyrtopodium punctatum was once harvested and hauled out by the wagonload for manufacturing glue. Palm species, notably the Paurotis (Acoelorraphe wrightii) and Royal (Roystonea elata) were harvested for landscapes, many as recently as the 1970s, to decorate central Florida amusement parks. Of all, though, perhaps the most unconscionable invasion occurred in the Big Cypress and Fakahatchee strand. During the late ‘30s to the mid ‘50s, loggers had their way with these magnificent forests. Cypress was their primary target, but they harvested other species, including tropical timbers such as mahogany. To penetrate the daunting swamps, they constructed temporary train tracks, laid on beds raised from digging ditches on either side. Palm logs, and the trunks of other noncommercial tree species, became cross ties. From the network of rail spurs, crews cut all the giant cypress timber, leaving only damaged trees, those too small or of no commercial value. This, the most unique biosphere in North America, was laid waste. Today, while the Fakahatchee may seem a pristine paradise,one only needs to look around at the giant tree stumps and old rail beds to wonder what a magnificent place this must have been only a generation ago.

And what of the future?

Despite past destructive activities, the Everglades are still in fairly good condition. However, this irreplaceable real estate is still under constant if more subtle attack. The canals dug earlier to drain and channel water from the Everglades have interrupted the delicate balance of wet and dry seasons. Cultivation in the northern muck lands has funneled pollution to all parts of the Glades. Rock quarries and housing encroach from the edges while invasive, weedy destructive trees such as Melaleuca and Brazilian Pepper spread within. Much of these endangered lands are now incorporated within the Everglades National Park, Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve, and the Big Cypress National Preserve. However, much critical habitat is not within any preserved area. Stricter management policies need to be enforced, evidence a recent access road constructed into the heart of the Fakahatchee, right to the habitat of several critically endangered species! What were they thinking?

Time is fleeting to save the Everglades and its unique biological zones, one of the greatest heritages we could leave for future generations.