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Handbook
Hardwood Hammocks
- White waterlillies
- Bladderwort
- Sedges and grasses
- Sawgrass
- Dohoon holly
- Red bays
- Willows
Hardwood hammocks are sometimes described as "tree islands." They are small areas, usually less than 20 hectares, and are found on ground that's slightly higher than the surrounding landscape. They typically have rich organic soil and rarely flood or burn. Vegetation is thick and includes thickets of saw palmetto. White-tailed deer are often abundant in hardwood hammocks. In the fall and winter wild hogs feed in hammocks on acorns and saw palmetto berries.
Saw Palmetto
Found throughout Florida, the saw palmetto has fan-shaped segmented leaves armed with sharp spines resembling a saw blade.
According to biologist David Maehr, "saw palmetto is the single most important plant species for the Florida panther." Panthers use palmettos to rest during the day, as dens for their kittens, and as cover while stalking prey. Panther kittens are nearly impossible to see on the sandy soil among palmetto stems, old flower stalks, and dried fronds.
Many other animals depend on palmetto for cover and food.saw palmetto with fruit Bears and hogs are especially fond of palmetto fruits. Bears make their winter dens among palmetto roots. Vultures nest among palmettos, and hundreds of vertebrates and insects depend on saw palmetto at some point in their lives.
Wild Hog
Wild hogs in southwest Florida today are descendants of escaped hogs brought to Florida by the Spanish and of hundreds of wild hogs released into Big Cypress for humans to hunt between 1961 and 1977.
Hogs are an important part of the panther's diet and may have been critical to the survival of the panther during times of deer scarcity. For example, between 1939 and 1941 thousands of deer were killed in south Florida because it was thought they harbored the tick that caused cattle fever.
Wild hogs will eat almost anything: bulbs, roots, leaves, seeds, fruits, grasses (including aquatic grasses), tubers, acorns, mushrooms, berries as well as snakes, insects, lizards, baby birds and even carrion. Females, called sows, and their offspring usually travel and forage in groups, whereas males, called boars, are usually solitary except when mating.
Characteristic Animals
Birds:
Chuck will's widow, pied-bill grebes.
Mammals:
Black bear, bobcat, cotton rat, fox squirrel, gray squirrel, opossum, raccoon, short-tailed shrew, white-tailed deer, wild hog.
Reptiles and Amphibians:
Black racer, five-lined skink, Florida box turtle, green anole, pygmy rattlesnake, southern ringneck snake, threatened eastern indigo snake.
Invertebrates:
Ants, Florida tree snail, golden orb weaver, mosquitoes, ruddy daggerwing butterfly, zebra longwing butterfly.
Characteristic Plants
More than 150 species of trees and shrubs: bromeliads, cabbage palm, cocoplum, devil's claw, ferns, gumbo limbo, hackberry, lancewood, laurel oak, live oak, mahogany, myrsine, orchids, pigeon plum, poison ivy, poisonwood, red bay, royal palm, saw palmetto, Spanish moss, Spanish stopper, strangler fig, wax myrtle, white stopper, wild coffee.