(*Photo[s] of the Month)
OK, what do epiphytes
and chelonioidytes have in common? Actually, not much, except that I
encountered them both during some recent hiking in Florida!
Epiphytes are also known
as ‘air plants,’ plants that can attach themselves to just about anything, from
tree bark to power lines, and receive all the moisture and nutrients they need
from the air, sun and rain. Obviously, they tend to be more prolific in warmer
and more humid environments. Chelonioidytes are a family of sea turtles, and
though I didn’t actually see the creatures themselves, I was out at sunrise and
was the first to see their tracks on the beach, fresh from the lady having laid
a clutch of eggs the night before.
Florida is covered with
epiphytes, from bromeliads (that can also be seen as houseplants or planted in
landscaping) to orchids to ferns to the ubiquitous Spanish Moss hanging from
pine and oak. My favorite is the Cardinal Wild Pine, pictured here twice, a
strangely-named bromeliad with a spiky red flower. They were prolific in a bald
cypress swamp, the boardwalk of which was part of a hike I made in the DuPuis
Natural Management Area in western Martin County. The plant can be two feet
broad and the flower two feet tall and more.
Over on the coast, I
went nearly every morning to my favorite place in the area, Hobe Sound National
Wildlife Refuge on the northern half of Jupiter Island. March and April is
nesting time for Florida’s three kinds of sea turtles – loggerheads, greens and
leatherbacks. I would typically say that these two separate sets of new tracks were made by loggerheads,
by far the most abounding genus of the three to hit the beaches there. The only
odd thing was that the particular mama in the first photo was enormous, much larger than the
average loggerhead: the track of the carapace alone being dragged across the sand looked to be about three feet
wide, with the flipper tracks extending to nearly six feet. This made me wonder
if it was a leatherback, the largest sea turtle, but far more rare and
endangered. The turtles come in the night, lay hundreds of eggs, and are gone
before the first hint of dawn. Several weeks later, if the nest survives
predation, the little hatchlings will look for the light of the moon over the
ocean to guide them toward their watery abode. I remember snorkeling in the
Pacific one time and seeing a sea turtle ‘in flight.’ What a beautiful sight.
To say the least,
natural beauty captures me, and I imagine if you are a regular reader of this
blog, the same is true for you. One of my favorite authors is Henri Nouwen, who
said in his book Creative Ministry
that we must be careful we are not
…like the busy man who walks up to a precious
flower and says, “What for God’s sake are you doing here? Can’t you get busy
someway?” and then finds himself unable to understand the flower’s response: “I
am sorry, sir, but I am just here to be beautiful.”
~~RGM, April 17, 2015
