In the center of the photograph, you'll see something unusual growing. A royal palm tree, right smack in the middle of the swamp. How it got there is anyone's guess, but a seed perhaps carried by a bird managed to find a spot dry enough to germinate and thrive. Royal palms are ubiquitous in Florida as landscaping trees, but they're actually considered endangered in the wild within their limited natural range, which apparently doesn't include Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary but does include Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park a few miles down the road to the south.
To the left of the royal palm, near the edge of the photo you'll see the roots of a strangler fig snaking down the trunk of a cypress tree. Strangler figs kill their hosts by outgrowing them and blocking out sunlight, but that rarely happens with cypress, which can reach 100 feet or more into the sky.
BACK TO THE START: Look! Up in the Sky!
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To the left of the royal palm, near the edge of the photo you'll see the roots of a strangler fig snaking down the trunk of a cypress tree. Strangler figs kill their hosts by outgrowing them and blocking out sunlight, but that rarely happens with cypress, which can reach 100 feet or more into the sky.
BACK TO THE START: Look! Up in the Sky!
RETURN TO THE TOUR PAGE—||—RETURN TO THE MAIN PAGE