Sawgrass Lake Park is a 400-acre park that is extremely important for the areas flooding. In the parks’ recent history, pollution from a nearby shooting range has caused high levels of arsenic and led, but the rangers are working hard to reverse the damage.

After we all parked we saw a Gopher tortoise next to a sign about them, how funny! Not far from this tortoise was a small baby tortoise, who seemed to love our shade.

This park also happens to be the largest red mangrove swamp on the gulf coast!

After starting our walk we talked about the canopy of the park, and identified the following layers: ground floor, shrubs, understory, canopy, no emergent layer.

At the park we walked on all of the boardwalks, looking at plants, being watched by some squirrels, and went out on the two dock-ish parts of the boardwalk over the water. Throughout out walk here are some of the species we identified:

• Cypress: Has “knees” that provide the same function as pneumatophores on black mangroves
• Moorehens: Have webbed feet to be able to waddle on the emergent vegetation
• Maple and other trees have roots that extend out to stay sturdy, as the sediment is not very stable, this rooting is similar to mangroves

Pokeweed (pink color)

Alligator Gar

Some other species we encountered include:

• Rush grass
• Duckweed
• Alligator gar
• Soft shell turtle
• Maples
• Giant leather ferns
• Tent caterpillars
• Cinnamon ferns
• Pokeweed
• Coffee
• Pink parasitic plant on dead tree (unable to be identified)
• Shell fungi
• Azolla, a red color aquatic algae that is symbiotic with ferns
• Apple snail eggs
• Alligator