I recently had the opportunity to visit Fairchild Tropical Gardens and Everglades National Park with a group I was guiding around the city. I was amazed to find who was at home at this season. This is some of what was observed.

The Everglades is a unique treasure found in South Florida, a subtropical wetland ecosystem, not a swamp, including two million acres across central and south Florida. The water comes from the Kissimmee River to Lake Okeechobee. During the wet season, the lake overflows and releases water into a very slow moving, shallow river dominated by sawgrass, called the “river of grass” by Marjorie Stoneman Douglas. The water flows southward, passing through diverse habitats, including cypress swamps, wet prairie, and mangroves, until it reaches Everglades National Park and eventually Florida Bay. This shallow, slow-moving sheet of water is a network of ponds, marshes, and forests. Over thousands of years it developed into a balanced ecosystem.

By the 1800s, developers started digging canals to drain the wetlands. Between 1905 and 1910, large tracts of land were converted to agriculture. By the 1920s, visitors and new residents flocked to towns like Fort Lauderdale, Miami, and Fort Myers to “buy land by the gallon!” And more canals were dug. Canals, roads, and buildings took the place of native habitats. Over the years, the alteration of the wetlands, and increasing population, damaged the natural system.

With the formation of the Park in 1947, alligators, birds, frogs, and fish have returned to the “Glades.”

Alligators are a great attraction and plenty were out catching the warming rays that day.

Our ranger/guide pointed out that two alligators together usually mean it’s mating season and only seen infrequently. We saw two pairs during our tour.

Crocodiles, who live in salt water are also not often seen … we saw two! Their teeth are pretty fierce looking.

My introduction to the anhinga was in Oklahoma. We were reviewing museum collections as part of exhibition development with a group of tribal leaders. One of them attributed the feathers on a dance rattle to the snake bird. Imagine the trade routes some hundreds of years ago to bring feathers from the southeast to the Great Plains.

Two birds I love to see in town occasionally are the egret and great blue heron. Imagine in the early 20th century the rich bird populations were decimated to fulfill the fashions driven by bird plumes.

The delicate swamp lily was the only flower I was able to snap.

The final day of our weeklong tour took us to the phenomenal Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden named for Dr. David Fairchild. He created the Section of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction of the US Department of Agriculture in the late 19^th century. During his lifetime, Fairchild traveled to over fifty countries in serch of seeds for new crops that would expand the limited American diet and beautify our nation, including mangos, alfalfa, avocados, cashews, dates, kale, nectarines, pistachios, red seedless grapes, soybeans, and the flowering cherry trees that grace Washington D.C. In 1898, he established a center for growing and studying tropical plants in Miami.

The garden was opened in 1938 to continue his legacy of study and the pleasure of local residents and the growing number of visitors, i.e. tourists, to the area.

Waiting to greet us were Marjorie Stoneman Douglas with her everpresent hat and a beautiful egret.

Just a few of the trees we saw on the excellent walking tour:

I love pointing out resurrection fern during tours; this epiphyte lives on the spreading branches of trees. It curls up and dries out during the winter when rains are not frequent. During the summer summer rainy season it effloresces or “resurrects. “

Since the start of Art Week in 2002, Fairchild has hosted art displays. Dale Chihuly‘s magnificent glass was the first to be shown. This piece remains in the Gardens.

Our guide know only the name “Cruz” for this carved tree on the grounds, probably remnants of our of our summer storms.

Like many botanical gardens, Fairchild also hosts a butterfly garden where we saw blue morphos and owl butterflies.

This is just a sampling of who’s home during out winter season.