Immediately outside the city areas of greater Miami, the agriculture starts. Lots of squash and tomatoes — the fresh produce that stocks grocery stores in the winter months. A few minutes beyond and you reach Everglades National Park.

As with all of Florida, a few inches difference in elevation completely changes the ecosystem. From the Long Pine Key day use area, the short Three-in-One Trail covers pine rockland, tropical hardwood hammock, and freshwater marsh. As we are here in the dry season, the marsh had no standing water, allowing us to cross the grasses dry-footed to the Long Pine Key Trail.

We saw several halloween pennant dragonflies patrolling the marsh grasses and pinelands. (by zanna)

Quoderat spotted and photographed this red-banded hairstreak while I was trying to get more red-breasted woodpecker shots.

In the dense tropical hardwood hammock, we entered deep shade accompanied by a several degree drop in temperature. (by zanna)

Backlit gumbo-limbo bark. (by quoderat)

Though thistles are everywhere, we aren’t familiar with this particular kind. (by quoderat)

Ours was the only vehicle when we first pulled into the easy Pinelands trail. Signs explained that the tree snails in the Everglades developed distinct color patterns in isolated hardwood hammocks where they eat lichen in the (even more) humid summer months and estivate (hibernate) through the dry months. In the past, collectors had sometimes burned down hammocks after harvesting the snail shells in order to make their collection more valuable. (by quoderat)