Where the dense hammock opens into pine flatwoods and marsh — the park's other faces.
Notice how the forest changes as we drive — how the dense, dark, jungly hammock opens up here and there into something completely different: airy stands of tall pines over a floor of palmetto and wiregrass, and open, grassy marsh. That's the wonder of this park; in three easy miles it carries you through several whole worlds. The hammock grows where the ground is a little higher and richer; the cypress where it's wettest; and the pine flatwoods where it's sandy and burns now and then — because fire, believe it or not, is the friend of the flatwoods, clearing the brush and popping the pinecones open.
Each of these worlds has its own animals and plants, and the seams between them, where one gives way to the next, are the richest places of all for wildlife. Keep watching the tree line and the water's edge; you never know what this old park will show you around the next bend.
Photo: scott.zona · CC BY 2.0
