The Lost World — Florida’s Flora And Fauna
The Lost World is the title both of the more recent The Lost World: Jurassic Park movie, the second of the Spielberg trilogy, and a much older novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Both narratives depict plants and animals, flora and fauna in biological language, from long ago and thought to be extinct in the modern world. As we know, truth can be much stranger than fiction. As the British geneticist and evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane famously wrote,
“Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose… I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy. That is the reason why I have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for dreaming.”
“Science and Theology As Art Forms” in Possible Worlds and Other Essays (1927), p. 227
We occasionally hear of some discovery in a tropical rain forest or the sea, of a previously undreamed of species, sometimes a throwback to an archaic geologic epoch. Examples such as the Coelacanth, Ginkgo Biloba, Horseshoe Crab, and Dawn Redwood come to mind. But no one has yet found a living dinosaur or been able to sculpt one from recovered DNA.
The Great State of Florida is famous for many things, such as its current prominence as the COVID–19 capital of the world. But like other tropical locales, it has its share of biota not usually seen in temperate zones. Some of these are uncommon in the senses of “not usually seen elsewhere” as well as “odd, peculiar, exotic”.
I only have to step outside my Sister’s home to find a riotous profusion.
The Flora
Right across the street is this enormous containment pond. Well, it was supposed to be a pond/lake, but the developer did not properly seal the subsurface interface, and it never filled up. There is just a little bit of standing water there right after a torrential downpour, but it quickly seeps away. Of more interest are the large trees bordering the “pond”. Every one of them is a Southern Live Oak.
Most of us are familiar with the many species of oak trees in Pennsylvania. While there are quite a variety, all have the familiar lobed leaves. Not the Live Oak — unless you knew what you were looking at you would not think they were the same genus.
The leaves are one distinctive feature of the Live Oak. Then there is Spanish Moss. It is not moss at all, it is a bromeliad, an epiphytic plant growing above ground on other plants, although not as a parasite. It uses the other plant solely for support and gets all its nourishment from rain and any organic matter that collects in crevices and pockets on the host plant. Orchids are also epiphytes, although they have enormously more visual appeal than Spanish Moss. In this neighborhood, every last Live Oak is lavishly draped with Spanish Moss, and Spanish Moss grows only on Live Oak and not on any other tree, at least here.
You can get five pounds of the stuff, cleaned and dried, from Amazon for only $49.87. If you want to save fifty bucks, just let me know and I’ll fill up a 55 gallon trash bag and bring it back with me. Cleaning and drying is on you.
Another common plant used widely in landscaping around here is the palmetto. These look like palm trees but are much smaller. Otherwise they are not so remarkable except for one thing: Palmetto Bugs!
The Palmetto Bug is the medium– to large–ish Florida Woods Cockroach. It lives mostly outdoors, where it can find its preferred damp, dark habitat. They are generally harmless left to themselves, but if disturbed they can squirt a horribly foul–smelling fluid in the direction of the disturbance. They also stink up the place if squashed. For the most part I stay in my lane and they stay in theirs. All creatures great and small, you know.
Then there is the Croton, a variegated evergreen indiginous to Asia and Oceana and widely cultivated as a houseplant. In the wild the tree can grow to a height of 20 feet. In the tropical South, it is cultivated as a bush and is widely used in landscaping. The one shown here is a modest example — there were bigger ones in the neighborhood but this one was catching the full morning sun. The red and brown leaves are not dying but are vibrantly alive and healthy, just part of the overall color scheme. The whole plant is toxic and its fluids are a powerful skin irritant. Guess I should wear gloves when gardening!
Saw this banana plant as well. It’s a variety that does not bear fruit.
I wasn’t sure what the huge bush depicted below was at first, but now I think it is a Philodendron. The name derives from the Greek “philo”, meaning love, and “dendron”, meaning tree. You could freely translate it as “tree hugger”. The species might be either Thaumatophyllum Xanadu or Philodendron Bipennifolium. On the other hand, this South American genus has over 450 species! So it could be something else entirely. Anyway it’s a big one and a beauty.
Our final indiginous Floral example is a type of grass, St. Augustine (Stenotaphrum secundatum), also known as Buffalo Turf or Grass. It is found everywhere up and down the length of Florida. It forms a dense mat of broad, thick blades best kept mowed about four inches high. It crowds out weeds and grows like crazy, so not more than a couple of days after mowing it’s a jungle out there again. There is a small town just south of Jacksonville on the Atlantic coast with the same name. It is the oldest settlement in America, and in it is located the oldest fort in America, El Castillo De San Marcos. Both the grass and the town (pronounced AW–Gus–Teen) take their names from St. Augustine of Hippo, pronounced Aw–GUS–Tin.
Fauna
There are plenty of unusual, even exotic animals in Florida, just not in the neighborhood for the most part. One exception is the common gecko, the Tropical House Gecko. They are everywhere. You can get within about two feet of one before they virtually instantaneously burst into motion and scurry away with a characteristic undulating gait. This is forced upon them by the horizontally splayed legs that come with the reptile body plan. You can’t run and keep your spine straight unless your legs hang down beneath the body.
I haven’t mentioned this so far, but I spent the last THREE DAYS disassembling the motorcycle, removing the saddlebags, sissy bar, seat, gas tank, windshield, and fenders to get access to all the chrome parts, assiduously polishing said parts, and reassembling the bike. Oh my DOG is it beautiful, though one runs the risk of retinal detachment by gazing upon its gleaming curves for too long. Anyway during one of these marathon polishing sessions I felt a sharp pain on my left forearm and looked down to observe I was getting stung by an ant. Thank DOG it was not the infamous Florida Fire Ant. Definitely want to stay away from even one of those, never mind a swarm of them.
There are two more iconic animals that make their homes in Florida, but neither one is known to frequent suburban neighborhoods. Well, hold on there that is not entirely true.
The American Alligator is best known for its Florida habitat, but it is found all along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts in the American South. So how do you tell the difference between an alligator and a crocodile? One of them you see later, the other you see in a while.
Perhaps the most iconic of all of Florida’s animal species is the Manatee. This fresh water aquatic mammal is descended, like dolphins and whales, from quadripedal land lubber animals that lived 50 million years ago, or more. One scientist familiar with the fossil record has described these herbivorous ancestors as something like a cross between a hippopotamus and an otter. I cannot visualize this.
The manatee is endangered, although they have no natural predators. The third most common cause of death is devastating slashing injuries caused by boat propellers. They live and graze in shallow waters, and despite “No Wake” zones in channels and harbors, knuckle dragging, slope–browed, alcohol besotted, yeehaw whooping motor boat operators run over and kill dozens every year. So far in 2021, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has recorded 72 deaths due to collisions with watercraft. In 2020 a total of 90 were similarly killed, so it looks like that number will be surpassed significantly by the end of this year.
All the best,
From Tampa, FL on Friday, 08/20 at 8:45 PM
Rex
