Fern forest

Last week we flew to South Florida where C. had a three day business meeting in Pompano Beach, between Boca Raton and Ft. Lauderdale.  While he was working during the day, I was left to my own devices with a rental car.

Early in the week I drove 8 miles due West to Fern Forest Nature Center, an urban wilderness preserve featuring native plants and wildlife viewing areas.

Online reviews advise visitors to bring insect repellant, but nights in Florida are cold in January, so there are no mosquitos in the wetland areas.

Trails wander among several native plant habitats.  Through the swamp and hammock, a raised walkway keeps visitors dry.

Wetland habitats are thick with vegetation that press onto the walkways. 

Trees twist overhead to gather sunlight.  In the hammock, vast trees and strangler figs with mottled trunks are draped in Spanish moss.

In the swamp, there are 30 types of ferns, large and small.

 

 

The prairie habitat has few trees and wide open spaces.

Visitors online complain that they saw no wildlife and that was the case for me last week.  With one exception.  Along a path not far from the Nature Center, I saw two zebra longwing butterflies doing a courtship dance.

Ten years ago in my garden in NC, I planted native passion vines to attract zebra longwing butterflies but they never visited.  Seeing those two black and yellow butterflies in their native habitat in Florida last week was a surprise treat.