San Felasco Hammock Preserve State Park

Earlier in the day when we hit Shired Island, we first visited a place called San Felasco Hammock State Park. There isn't much there in the way of infrastructure. It consists of many acres of protected forest that sits adjacent to the Interstate. While the forest is beautiful (it's a mature hardwood/pine mix), because of its proximity to the highway there is constant noise of engines and tires on pavement. This is distracting, and many of the normal sounds of an unspoiled forest setting are lost in the constant drone of US commerce.


I'd read that this forest is home to some state champion trees. However, I don't know what species, and there's no way to know where these individual specimen are located within the forest. So we picked a trail and began walking. There were two trails from which to choose on the side of the road where we parked, and I quickly tricked Carole into the longer of the pair. We took the 2.3 mile Sinks Trail which took us throug surprisingly hilly terrain and beside a number of sinkholes, one of them quite large.

The forests were filled with various birds. Through the unending drone of traffic we could hear them calling, but did not catch sight of any, save for the occasional shadow or the quick flash of movement in distant limbs. As for wildlife, we saw nothing at all. Not even any bugs of note. The temperature was unseasonably cool that day and the wind was very brisk, which made for a nice environment for hiking, but not much good for seeing wildlife.


The most interesting thing in this patch of woodland were the sinkholes. Some of them were quite old and were in the process of being filled in by detritus and new plant growth. Maybe in a few hundred years the older of the bunch will be just low bowls covered in leaf litter where occasional rain creates pools that quickly drain away.

All in all, it was a pleasant hike, but I wish I'd had the information to be able to find some of those champion-caliber trees I'd heard about. The weather was actually perfect that day for tramping cross country in otherwise bug-infested and snakey territory.
This was one of the older sinks, filled with larger types of growth. Someday it will be dry land again. (Click to see at full size.)

Video of a quiet stream through the forest.

Florida Trees

Trees: Their House, Your House.

The southern cedar, representative tree of the barrier islands along the Gulf. We saw a lot of these trees. Initially, this was the reason these islands were settled--the virgin cedar forests were cut and the ecosystem gutted, along with employment. When the timber companies finished removing the cedar forests, they abandoned the people they'd previously employed.

On my trips, even though my knowledge of trees is highly limited, I'm always on the lookout for very large or unusual trees and plants. I found a few such flora on this latest trip. I did manage to locate a couple of pretty big darned cypress trees. One of them was between the headsprings at Manatee Springs and the inlet of the run along the Suwaneee River. This was the first day we arrived at the park before the flood waters reached the area and river current became too fierce and too filled with flood debris to make canoeing a safe bet.

A nice bald cypress along the Manatee Springs Run.

I talked Carole into letting me beach the canoe in the swamp so that I could pick my way to the base of the big cypress where she was able to take my photo. I'm not sure, but I suspect this particular cypress was hollow, since all of the other cypress trees in the area were nondescript and the only reason this one wouldn't have been felled would be that it was hollow and the timber company allowed it to stand.

Not sure what this is. But it makes for a colorful photograph.

A couple of days later I found another large cypress inside the Fannings Spring State Park. It had been surrounded by water from the rising river, so I wasn't able to walk right down to it as I could have if I'd found it earlier. However, I climbed over the boardwalk trail (much to Carole's dismay) and she was able to take a good shot of me before the big cypress.

Wish I'd found this one a couple of days earlier before the flood waters started rolling in.

On another day we took a hike through the San Felasco Hammock State Park and that was a rewarding trip. But just in the fact that we were able to take a 2.5 mile hike through a mature hardwood forest. The park claims to have some champion caliber trees, but I didn't see anything that looked like more than your average second growth hardwood groves. Still, it was a good day to be out and about with cool temperatures and a nice breeze. The bugs were kept to a minimum. Later we visited Cedar Key State Park and I saw a Sand pine, a species I'd never encountered.
A Sand pine. These live only in limited areas along the Gulf coast of Florida and a tiny bit of coastal Alabama. They require sandy, well-drained soils. They're a very rare tree.