A dead, decaying log on the ground may support another miniature plant [community]—a carpet of mosses, ferns, and other small plants that thrive in such moist situations.
Strangest of the [hammock] plants is the strangler fig, which first gets a foothold in the rough bark of a live oak, cabbage palm, or other tree. It then sends roots down to the ground, entwining about the host tree as it grows, and eventually killing it. On the Gumbo Limbo Trail you will see a strangler fig that grew in this manner and was enmeshed by another strangler fig—which now is [threatened] by a third fig that already has gained a foothold in its branches.
Best known of the glades [hammocks] is Mahogany Hammock. A boardwalk trail in this lush, junglelike [tree island] leads past the giant mahogany tree for which the hammock was named—now, because of Hurricane Donna, a dismembered giant. This fine tree island was explored only after the park was established.
An array of large and small vertebrate animals, mostly representative of the Temperate Zone, populates these tropical hardwood jungles: raccoons and opossums, many varieties of birds, snakes and lizards, tree frogs, even bobcats and the rare Florida panther, or cougar. Not surprisingly, invertebrates—including insects and snails—abound in this luxuriant plant [community]. The tropical influence is evident in the presence of invertebrates such as tree snails of the genus Liguus, known outside of Florida only in Hispaniola and Cuba.
Cypress Head
Standing out conspicuously on the glades landscape are tall, domelike tree islands of baldcypress. Unlike [hammocks], which occupy elevations, cypress heads, or domes, occupy depressions in the [limestone] bedrock—areas that remain as ponds or wet places during seasons when the glades dry up. Water-loving cypresses need only a thin accumulation of [peat] and soil to begin their growth in these depressions or in smaller solution holes in the limestone.
BALDCYPRESS ALLIGATOR HOLE (often in middle of cypress head) SAWGRASS
TURKEY VULTURE