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- Sawgrass
- Cypress
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- Coco plum
- Air plants
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Cypress swamps consist
of two types of cypress, towering bald cypress and shorter pond cypress.
Because their seeds can't germinate under water, cypress require land that
is dry for part of the year. Cypress swamps occur on slightly elevated land
in places where lower land is freshwater marshes as well as on slightly
lower land in pinelands. They are typically wet for 200-300 days each year.
Within the panther's range are cypress domes, dwarf cypress forests, and
cypress strands (long narrow features). Before it was logged in the 1940's,
Fakahatchee Strand was a cypress forest with huge, centuries-old trees.
Today the strand is a dense, mixed hardwood forest. Understory plants are
relatively sparse in cypress forests. White-tailed deer are less numerous
in cypress-dominated habitats than they are in more varied habitats with
marshes, pinelands, prairies, and hammocks (McCown
1994).
Birds: great crested fly catcher, red-shouldered hawk, swallow-tailed kite, wild turkey, nesting site for endangered wood stork, yellow-crowned night heron.
Mammals: Big Cypress fox squirrel, black bear, gray squirrel, mink, river otter, White-tailed deer.
Reptiles and Amphibians: cottonmouth, ribbon snake.
Invertebrates: deer ticks, mosquitoes.
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bromeliads,
buttonbush, cabbage
palm, coco plum, cypress,
leather fern, myrsine, orchid
red maple, royal palm, sawgrass, strangler
fig, wax myrtle, and willow.
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