Tropical Hardwoods

I don’t know of anything more interesting
without seeming to be interesting
than the tropical hardwoods of South Florida.
It makes their destruction doubly tragic.

















Just a few miles into Florida, at Little Talbot Island State Park, we stopped to take a walk. The forest was uncommonly beautiful. There were red cedars, live oaks, cabbage palms, red bays and slash pines among the trees, and saw palmettos, sparkleberries, red-berried yaupons, and tangles of greenbrier in the understory. We were walking amid old sand dunes, with forested swales below the trail and occasional sandy knobs rising above it. Palms and palmettos were backlit; the foliage of bays, pines, and cedars contrasted with one another; the nearly horizontal limbs of live oaks held gardens of resurrection ferns and Spanish moss. It was such a beautiful woods, and so much more diverse than what we had been seeing, that I found it hard to imagine anyone seeing it and thinking it would make a great golf course or housing development. Somehow, people came to Florida and evidently saw nothing but warmth and sunshine. How else could they think of leveling something like that woods? Everywhere outside the parks, we drove past housing developments, condominiums, and shopping centers. The shopping centers had the same old stores as all other shopping centers. The towns looked like New Jersey with palm trees. To think that lovely maritime forests were replaced with that! I guess locals could now say, “It was just another oak woods,” or “Now, we’ve got an L.A. Nails!” But the traveler could see that it was the woods that was different and that what replaced them was the same old stuff. The developers would argue that they were simply responding to demand, but all their billboards along the highways proved that they were lying.

In southernmost Florida, I was especially interested in seeing tropical hardwood forests and learning some of the trees that grew in them. In Everglades National Park, the Gumbo Limbo Trail led through a hammock forest which had been damaged by Hurricane Andrew, but the trail provided no help in identifying the vegetation. One sign simply asked if we thought the trees were different: “Do the leaves have different shapes?” Another said we might recognize Virginia creeper or sumac, but seventy percent of the trees were of tropical or subtropical origin. So, what were they? I recognized the distinctive brownish-red bark—peeling slightly—of gumbo limbos, but, damn, I wished the signs told us what some of the other trees and shrubs were. One sign pointed out that oval, tapered leaves were extremely common, their pointed tips being helpful in draining moisture off the leaves.

Back in Miami, I searched at a Barnes & Noble for a book on subtropical Florida—either a field guide or a book of essays—but didn’t find one. There were books on the Everglades or on the Keys, or on all of Florida, but nothing specifically and collectively on subtropical Florida. Somewhere to the north, smothered by development and invisible in our final-day rush to West Palm Beach to meet Laurie’s mom (who was flying there from New York), we passed a boundary where largely familiar vegetation yielded to the overwhelmingly mysterious tropical and subtropical plants of the Everglades and Keys. A book such I was looking for would not only help me and other visitors, but might also educate local residents to what they were ignoring and allowing to be destroyed.


Near the start of the Keys, at John Pennekamp State Park, I found what the national park had failed to give me. An exhibit at the start of the Wild Tamarind Trail illustrated poisonwood so that visitors could identify it, and a planted poisonwood stood nearby, with yellow leaf margins and dark sap spots on its limbs and leaves. There was also a fiddlewood, distinguished by orange leaf stems, and a soapberry, with winged bipinnate leaves—“like wild lime,” said a sign, as if I knew what wild lime looked like. Best of all, signs along the trail identified trees throughout the woods: Jamaica dogwood, which looked pretty much like poisonwood to me; coffee colubria, with large, veined leaves that were nearly (but not quite) opposite and with rusty or copper-colored fuzz on new leaves; blolly; crabwood or oysterwood; wild coffee, with leaves that had a “quilt-like texture”; black ironwood, whose wood was so heavy it sank in salt water; and pigeon plum, related to sea grapes, with bark that peeled in flakes and leaf stems that wrapped around the main stem. Signs also identified Spanish stopper, cinnamonbark, West Indian mahogany, and gumbo limbo. The gumbo limbos were common and unmistakable; poisonwood was rather common and pretty easy to identify; the leaves of mahogany were bipinnate and had a stiff and dense appearance. A prominent tree with gray bark was not identified, nor was a small one with large locust-like leaves. A sign identified wild tamarinds, which were among the largest trees. Shrubs called lancewood had curved leaf stems, and torchwood had leaves of three leaflets. I walked the trail a second time, looking for photographs and feeling only slightly more knowledgeable than I did the first time. From the woods, I could hear the sound of jet skis and of kids yelling in a picnic area near the trailhead; and nearby buildings were visible through the foliage, reinforcing what a small fragment the forest was. Previous visitors, instead of treating the trees as precious survivors, had carved their initials in the smooth bark of many of them. Trying to view the situation positively, I saw that such fragments of forest would eventually repopulate the Keys after the humans were gone. When I left the trail after the second time around, I passed the family with the noisy kids and heard the insistent “choonk, choonk, bump-bump-bump” of Top 40 radio.

All three of us—Laurie, her mom, and I—got another look at tropical hardwoods on Lignumvitae Key. Our guide Melba (“like toast”) pointed out gumbo limbos and poisonwoods, 20 percent and 10 percent of the forest, respectively. She showed us pigeon plums, with mottled bark and limbs with a “muscular” look; black ironwood, with dark, fairly deeply-furrowed bark; Jamaican dogwoods; lignumvitaes; and the shrubs, snowberry and wild coffee, the latter with its beautiful “quilted” leaves. Lignumvitaes, found in the U.S. only in the Keys, were distinguished by even-numbered leaflets on their bipinnate leaves (no central leaflet at the tip). They possessed the only “self-lubricating” wood in the world, which was used by shipbuilders for bearings. Melba showed us milkbark trees, with light-colored bark that was patterned and lined, and said they were fairly rare. The trail then descended, and we entered a forest of saltwater species. A little disappointed that we hadn’t seen more of the “freshwater” forest, I asked Melba about other places to visit, and she recommended the Windley Key Fossil Reef State Geological Site.

Except for the parks—and the bridges, of course—the most obvious feature of the Keys was insensitive and tasteless roadside development. A billboard advertising “An Island of Luxury Homes” included an aerial photograph to make certain that we understood that every last bit of wild forest had been obliterated. At the Key Deer National Wildlife Refuge on Big Pine Key, an exhibit illustrating the “structure of a hardwood hammock” listed twenty-seven species of trees and shrubs, and not one of them was familiar to us—or, in any case, hadn’t been until we arrived in Florida. A nearby trail, skirting the edge of a hardwood hammock, identified buttonwoods and satinleafs: buttonwoods with curved limbs and dark, willow-like bark; satinleafs with shiny, oval leaves that were said to be copper-colored on their undersides. I turned one over, and it was so copper-colored it was almost startling.

At Windley Key, Laurie and I walked the Hammock Trail, carrying a trail guide from the office and testing ourselves, trying to learn and relearn the trees and shrubs. Marlberry was a small, skinny shrub with large, dark green leaves. Crabwood had mottled bark, the same as pigeon plum, poisonwood, and many others. The bark of blolly was also mottled. Mastic was a large tree with brown bark with suggestions of both vertical and horizontal ridges. The gray bark of Jamaica dogwood was partly smooth and partly ridged. Hog plum had dark, checkered bark, unless we were looking at the wrong tree. White ironwood was “probably the rarest tree in the park, and certainly among the rarest in the United States.” There were gumbo limbos, pigeon plums, milkbarks, West Indian mahoganies, thatch palms, strangler figs, wild coffees, and wild limes. The wild coffees had red berries. Concerned about Laurie’s mom, who was waiting for us, we left the park and drove to a motel in Key Largo. Laurie and her mom utilized the swimming pool while I made a twenty-eight-mile round trip back to Windley Key. Carrying the guide book along different trails, I added a few more species to the ones we had seen earlier: Spanish stopper, white indigo berry, joewood, and wild dilly. Saffron plums had dark, checkered bark, the same as hog plums (or was saffron plum and hog plum the same thing?). The book pointed out velvetseed, Bahama strongbark, and lantana, although I couldn’t figure out which was which, and I never found the leaves with indentations at their tips that were supposed to identify darling plums. Nor could I figure out which shrubs were snowberry or catsclaw.

On another tropical hardwood hike, at Key Largo Hammock State Botanical Site, signs identified some of the trees and shrubs. I found shiny white berries on what I assumed were snowberries. Many of the signs were missing, but I then discovered that plastic streamers tied to many of the trees or shrubs had the species name written on them. Ones that I hadn’t recalled seeing before included inkwood, shortleaf fig, Guiana plum, red stopper, white stopper, spicewood—also in the stopper family—and soldierwood. Soldierwood was named for the “pop” made by its capsules when seeds were ejected. Fiddlewood, I read, was named after the French fidèle, or “true.” Trees identified as Bahama strongbarks had cherry-like clusters of green berries turning to orange; lancewood— related to avocados—was a shrub with red-stemmed dark-blue berries; and a shrub that I would have called lantana was identified as wild sage. At one end of the park, I came to the edge of a limestone quarry. Returning to the park entrance, I noticed how small the park was, and the impression swept over me that the parks were merely scraps and fragments of what the Keys would have been without their human impacts. Henry Flagler’s railroad to Key West tore through whatever it needed; the highway followed; the choicest sites were built upon; others were quarried; and we lovers of wild places got what little crumbs were left.


Among Laurie’s relatives in the Miami area, she and I were the target of good-natured teasing for our ignorance of TV programs, movie characters, and video games. By now, we were well-acquainted with poisonwoods, glades lobelias, and zebra longwing butterflies, but had never seen the Tasmanian Devil, ET, or Indiana Jones. One cousin was a great fan of Disney World and spoke repeatedly of something there—Animal Kingdom, perhaps—that she was certain we would like. On our return from the Everglades and the Keys, another of the relatives wanted to know if we had taken an airboat ride. In respect to Key West, everyone asked about the Mel Fischer Museum, Sloppy Joe’s, and Sunset. Thank heaven that Laurie and I could say, “Yes, we went to Sunset." One cousin, bless his heart, asked about the Hemingway House. No one asked about Windley Key, Lignumvitae Key, or the Key Deer Refuge. They didn’t even ask about the Coral Reef. These are wonderful people, and I love them all, but I can’t imagine that they would ever see Florida the way I do. If we had been anywhere but South Florida, it might have been easier. In Virginia, we could have asked, “Have you seen Crabtree Falls? Or McAfee Knob?” In Québec, we could have asked about Baie Éternité or the Mingan Archipelago. But the wild places in South Florida were frankly not very beautiful or spectacular. Interesting is what they were. And unique. But you wouldn’t take a skeptic there and expect them to be bowled over. They wouldn’t look at a tropical hardwood forest and say, “Oh, wow, now I see why you love this!”

Sometime after we left Florida, I read the following in Wild Plants of America by Richard M. Smith:

To visiting botanists, Florida south of Lake Okeechobee is nothing if not perplexing. Suddenly to be confronted with palm trees, epiphytic orchids, and most perplexing of all, an apparently endless array of unfamiliar woody plants with unlobed, undivided, untoothed, and altogether undistinguished leaves—yet obviously all different—convinces them that they are in an entirely new world and that, since it is warm, it must be the tropics.... One look at a map, however, will tell them that this cannot be, for by definition the tropics begin at the Tropic of Cancer and this lies a hundred miles to the south. Also, it is well-known that even southern Florida is subject to cold snaps—definitely a nontropical attribute.... The truth is that, for a complexity of reasons, southern Florida is able to provide satisfactory habitats for many plants of both the tropical and the temperate zones, and is therefore one of the most diverse botanical areas in the world [Smith 1989: 119].

In other words, South Florida is significant not only for being tropical. It's better that that! Different not only from the rest of the U.S., it's also different from the rest of the tropics.


Traffic was annoying everywhere in South Florida. Never-ending, it seemed. We spent altogether too much time waiting at stoplights, waiting to turn, waiting to re-enter traffic. Near Jupiter, in a habitat that I recognized as “coastal sand pine scrub,” which Hiking Florida described as “globally imperiled,” we noticed signs with the words “Nature Preserve” and stopped for a closer look. The preserve was open to the public and belonged to Palm Beach County. Just beyond it, a billboard advertised “Land for Sale,” and another motorist had stopped beside the sign to copy down the telephone number.

On a boardwalk trail at Cypress Bend, in a fragment of magnificent forest saved from the loggers, I thought of how good it was to have a forest like that—that we needed fragments of what used to be—but I also thought that we didn’t need it all. It should have been possible to compromise with the loggers. They didn’t have to take it all, which they nearly did. It didn’t have to be an all-or-nothing battle. And the same was true of housing developments. Why couldn’t there be developments that preserved tracts of wild country and allowed people to live in the midst of an exotic South Florida environment? The wild tracts would simply need to be linked in corridors for the sake of wildllife. Near Naples, a development advertised three signature golf courses, but said not a word about the absence of hardwood hammocks, mangrove swamps, and pine flatwoods. On our way to Corkscrew Swamp, we drove through a continuing dribble of commerce and housing, where new developments were separated by land that was still open and where much of what was not developed or being developed was for sale. The undeveloped land was forested with pines, cabbage palms, and palmettos, and sometimes with cypress woods: distinctive South Florida landscapes in the process of being replaced by the outskirts of Little Rock, Baltimore, Wichita, and Cleveland. I wondered if it was possible anywhere in Florida to find a housing development that offered buyers a chance to live in proximity to natural surroundings, with native vegetation, protected wildlife habitat, hiking trails, and so on. If you were interested in golf, there was no shortage of opportunity, but not, I suspected, if you were interested in the earth itself.


PHOTO

Poisonwood, Snake Bight Trail, Everglades NP 12/99


SOURCE

Smith, Richard M. Wild Plants of America. New York: Wiley & Sons, 1989.