Imagine being one of Florida's first residents. Now, imagine having to cut through this land to hunt, to forage or just get from point A to point B. You'll have to make your way through a seemingly impentrable wall of saw palmetto, scrub oaks, staggerbush and fetterbush. Plus, all of that is woven together by a tangle of grape vines, love vine, greenbrier and milkpea, all adding immensely to the degree of difficulty of an already difficult task. Your hike has become a major project. This is tough, unforgiving land. Fortunately for us modern day hikers, land managers have done all the hard work for us by cutting the trail we're using. By the way, these lands periodically burn and top-kill many of the plants that grow here. Those plants will regrow, but in the interim new plants will sprout in the newly created voids. Many species require fire to germinate or to thrive here. Under absolutely perfect conditions, land managers will conduct prescribed burns to mimic mother nature. Perfect conditions rarely happen, and because of the close proximity of I-95, nearby businesses and homes, managers rely on mechanical cutting instead to keep the land from getting overgrown — Photo by David Sedore
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