The Woods and Davidsons enjoyed a fine weekend in southwest Florida.  We enjoyed a walk in Lakes Park, walks, jogs, swims, and great meals at Heritage Cove.  Mark and Mary Helen were blessed to have both sets of parents here. They enjoyed their time in the warmth and returned to a storm in New York on Tuesday.  We resumed our more hum-drum schedule here but made a wonderful canoe trip on that day.  See notes on that below. 

Mom & Dad are variously engaged in their activities including bocce.  The weather is warmer than last winter, and we are enjoying that. 

Best wishes to all.

A Paddle to Mound Key
Fine February weather and favorable tides prompted Anne and I to rise early and drive to the Estero River paddle shop.  We arrived a few minutes before opening time and waited for the operator to arrive and open up the shop.  Walking in, we found him still setting up the register, but his dog gave us full attention demanding caresses.  He conveyed a bag of live shrimp to a fishing guide before preparing our craft, a decent sixteen-foot polyethylene canoe.  We were on the Estero River at 7:30 a.m.

The outfitter is located between Ft. Myers and Bonita Springs at the Tamiami Trail (U.S. 41) crossing of the Estero River.  We would call it a creek in Pennsylvania.  At the shop the channel was perhaps 15 meters wide and a meter deep.  There was little evidence of current though it had rained lightly during the night.  Downstream at the “narrows” we would encounter tidal current, but this was to be a flat-water experience.  The water was relatively turbid.  In places in the bay we would see a meter to the bottom, but mostly we could see barely 10 centimeters below the surface.  Minnows and mullet scattered as we pushed from the dock. 

In a few moments we passed under the highway bridge and began following the winding  stream overhung with Live Oak, Sand Live Oak, and Sable Palms.  Spanish Moss and bromeliads indicated that we were deep in the South.  I learned long ago that one gets a much clearer picture of an area from its waterways than from its highways that are made sterile by traffic and development.  We soon reached the Koreshan State Park with its picnic area and boat ramp.  Here in 1894 a religious group settled in the sub-tropical wilderness to establish “a new Jerusalem.”  It has faded away, but the estate is now a secular retreat.  Along the opposite shore is development variously in the form of trailer parks, a campground, and modest and extravagant houses. 

In between are patches of pine flatwood parkland where south Florida Slash Pines rise scattered among palmetto thickets and prairie.  After some five miles we reached the Estero Bay Preserve where we stopped to walk a few minutes down a sandy path through pinewoods and by a small oak “hammock.”  Palm, Myrtle, and Prairie Warblers probed the vegetation and hawked for small insects.  A Bald Eagle sat on the top of a pine and watched us until an osprey, probably with a nest nearby, flew in and began harassing it.  The eagle complained but decided to move on after the osprey’s second swoop. 

Already along the creek were Mangrove trees even though the absence of barnacles and oysters on their hanging roots and the presence of cattails told me that the water was still fresh.  The scientific name of the Red Mangrove is Rhizophora mangle.  Rhizophora means root-bearer and is wholly appropriate for this tree that not only drops roots from its branches but whose seeds sprout a long root before dropping from the flower.  I have never found where the name mangle comes from but I like to think it relates to the mangle of roots that makes walking through an intertidal mangrove swamp nearly impossible. 

As we approached Estero Bay the flatwoods gave way completely to mangrove swamp.  The mostly 10-15 meter tall tangle that is called mangrove forest reaches its northern limit not far from here.  At Tampa there are clusters  of mangrove, but most of the intertidal is in salt marsh.  Mangrove cannot tolerate freezing, but at the mouth of the Estero River there are fine mangrove trees with hanging roots covered with barnacles and oysters.  Shaking tips of such roots that have not yet penetrated the mud into a bucket would reveal a diversity of crustaceans and other marine creatures. 

We had timed our voyage properly and the outgoing tide pulled us into the Estero Bay where oyster beds and mud flats protruded from the shallow water.  We noted the channel markers indicating the entrance to the river so we could find our way back and tried heading across the shallows toward Mound Key, a prominent nearly round island among many in the bay.  We paused to observe Roseate Spoonbills, Egrets, and Ibises feeding and studied a group of terns and gulls roosting on a bar.  We discovered that a direct path would not work at the full moon low tide and returned to the channel where we had to put up with the small number of power-craft moving about the bay. 

Soon enough the water deepened and we turned directly toward the island.  It at first appeared to only another mangrove island.  We knew there was a landing for the park there, but, not knowing where it was, picked a direction, clockwise, to go around the roughly 1 KM roundish island.  The channel leading to the short landing beach was, of course, some 270 degrees around the island.  Still, the circle was interesting and along the way we spotted Gumbo Limbo and Royal Poinciana behind the mangrove in places indicating high ground.  We got our exercise moving against the gentle wind for half the circle, but the water was almost calm and clear enough to enjoy watching the sand bottom for passing fish. 

Almost completing our circle of the key we intersected the path of a pair of kayakers and first joined them in watching an osprey work at killing and eating a rather large fish.  This couple had been to Mound Key before and told us where to find the partially hidden entrance to the landing.  We made land ahead of them and began following the trail across the island to find many wonders.

This island in the bay is significantly protected from frost by the surrounding water and supports tropical vegetation.  This far north it is occasionally touched and “pruned” by the cold.  Still, it is home for plants that I have seen nowhere else in this area.  Partly that is because of the climate, but also almost all of any high ground near the sea in this area has been cleared for development.  Even this island was clearly settled by Europeans who brought in exotic vegetation including the Royal Poinciana trees.  About one-third of the island is now in private hands and now supports a herd of small goats that have clearly much of the vegetation below two meters tall on the private land. 

The island has at least two hills that are some ten meters high.  These, it is obvious from the erosion along the path, were built up of shells by the Caloosa Indians.  It is remarkable that so much elevation could be achieved from the apparent dumping of mollusk bone.  These people may have lived almost entirely from their catch of seafood, still that is a lot of clam, oyster, whelk, and snail.  The trash from this fishing made a new environment. 

I imagine that during their time there, the Caloosa kept the mounds mowed to allow for fabulous views of the surrounding water and keys.  After they disappeared, probably made extinct by diseases contracted from the Spaniards who visited but were driven away by native hostility, the island remained desert until the arrival of the English almost one hundred and fifty years later.  In that time the tropical forest had turned the higher ground on the island to a fine jungle.  This was probably largely cleared by settlers in the 1800s.   The land was sold in1894 to the Koreshan group.  They maintained the clearing below the larger trees.  The State of Florida acquired the land in 1961, conducted archeological studies and established a trail.  The tropical vegetation is now filling in the intermediate layers between the ground and the tree tops. 

The low land of Florida is periodically above and below the surface of the sea and so none of the island inhabitants have been there long.  Still there are “native species” that found their way there by floating seed through the air or across the water or having fruits eaten by birds that dutifully dropped still fertile seeds into the earth made sweet after its emergence from the sea.  This natural colonization and the establishment of “exotic” plants by humans provides the community of plants now upon Mound Key.  Undoubtedly there will be continued human intervention, if only to remove some of the more agressive “invasive aliens” such as Brazilian Pepper and Sansevaria (mother-in-law's tongue).

Among the island shrubs is Upland Cotton.  Our schizoid relationship with this plant in south Florida is, sadly, rather typical.  It is currently illegal to grow cotton in Florida without a permit.  Permits are granted only for commercial production.  I don’t believe permits may be obtained to grow cotton in south Florida.  As recently as the 1960’s governmental efforts were made to eradicate cotton from south Florida.  Today it is protected as an “endangered species.”  Twenty years from now, who knows what its legal status will be, but it will probably continue to grow along what is left of coastal prairies in south Florida.  Among the cotton will be the Pink bollworm that the Department of Agriculture wants to keep away from commercially grown cotton. 

Whatever its vegetation in the past or future, the island’s upland center currently has a plant community that is probably unique.  The canopy includes Royal Poinciana, Gumbo Limbo, Strangler Fig, and a few Sable Palms.  The Poinciana is deciduous and in this season the branches were largely bare of their ferny bipinnate leaves.  The understory has at least three species of Stoppers, Sea Grape, Cat-claw Pithecellobium, and Lime Prickly-ash.  There are scattered clusters of Upland Cotton, American Agave, and Spanish Bayonet.  Woven among trees and shrubs are tropical vines including Barbed-wire Cactus.  The ground cover includes dozens of species of native and exotic forbs, herbs, and succulents. 

The upland hammock is surrounded, of course, by mangrove forest with Red Mangrove, Black Mangrove, White Mangrove, and Buttonwood.  The branches of these trees are adorned with an assortment of epiphitic bromeliads and orchids.  All this makes the island a botanist’s delight. 

We walked to the still open lookout at the top of the highest hill for a view of the bay.  There we found several Florida Privet shrubs, already in full bloom and drawing honey bees and flies.  We also saw a strange bird, a thrasher, that might have been a Bahama Mockingbird, but it avoided giving us a decent view. 

After walking the length of the island and even finding the herd of goats, we returned to the canoe for lunch before launching on a return voyage.  We had paddled more than ten miles and the crew was ready to return with the tide up the Estero River.  The run was uneventful except for a near collision with a Manatee.  The afternoon was sunny and warm as we docked after a fine naturalists’ cruise into the Estero Bay.