A visit to the Lake Wales scrub

   Recently I headed up US 27 for a little woods time, this time in the Lake Wales scrub. As I was headed up for the Caladium Festival in Lake Placid the same weekend this worked out perfectly. I could visit Archbold Biological Station and then found out about a volunteer opportunity in the area that would allow me to see other scrub areas I wouldn't have seen otherwise. So I signed up to volunteer with the Ridge Rangers in their final planting of the year.
   These volunteers work with Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission on FWC properties. They are trying to restore some property the state recently purchased, seeking to connect more dots of wilderness for a wildlife corridor. The Ridge Rangers volunteers had collected acorns from scrub oaks*, grown them out, weeded the pots, and now they were ready for planting out in the scrub. The sand in the area is really deep and even one of the four wheel drive trucks had gotten stuck up to the axles. It was one of the water trucks with a full tank and pump on board to water the plants in. Luckily, it was stuck where it could be unloaded to water the plants. This is really a production very well organized with these volunteers.

    We passed through this area (below) on our way out to the scrub area.

This is called a "cut throat" seep.

I am continually amazed by the phone, these are phone photos taken from a moving UTV rolling along at a good pace, much faster than I've traveled through Big Cypress Preserve on a swamp buggy. Negotiating this sand with vehicles is a tricky deal. Rather like riding a rolling surf.

Below is the type of area we were planting in, there are some invasive grasses that hopefully the new oaks will shade out and allow more natives to come back in. There are oaks, rosemary clumps, saw  palmetto, Opuntia cactus, and Smilax to trip us up. Only one tortoise burrow in this area that I saw. This is high ground northeast of Lake Istokpoga. With few clouds, and a  bright July sun we were very happy to have some breeze out there as temps were up in the 90° range.

  Florida  rosemary Ceratiola ericoides. This is one of the smaller rosemary plants. These plants can be hundreds of years old, they get burned down in fires from lightning, and then re-grow. The Florida rosemary plants are allelopathic, meaning that they will not allow other plants to live near them, so we had to be sure to not plants any of our little oaks near them. Plants can be considered allelopathic by using  chemicals to repel or kill other plants, or sometimes by just being a more efficient consumer of the nutrients in the soil, or by shading out other plants. As an example turf is allelopathic to trees, as it can grow six times faster than the tree, consuming water and nutrients before they can get to the trees roots.




Here's the crew packing up the canopy,  water hoses, and tools. Even where the canopy stood will be planted with oaks. So as we leave plants are still going into the ground, given water and good wishes so they too can live hundreds of years in this amazing habitat.



















*Scrub oaks can be Quercus myrtifolia, or Q. inopina, Sand live oak Q. geminata, or Chapmans oak Q.chapmanii.  Source US Fish & Wildlife Service

Update: The Ridge Rangers volunteers planted 1,415 scrub oaks over this summer.