Hike Bike Paddle Camp Florida with authors Sandra Friend and John Keatley as your guides
Identifying trees in Florida, including cypresses, mangroves, pines, oaks, and many other species found in Florida.
A giant among trees, the bald cypress is an imposing sight. Unlike its relative the pond cypress, it prefers growing along water in motion, such as rivers, streams, and sluggish swamps.
Black mangroves have shiny leaves and dark round seed cases. Their most distinguishing feature is their pnuemataphores, finger-like protrusions around the tree like slender, miniature cypress knees.
Buttonwood grows upland, on the land side of the mangrove community, tolerant of rooting in loose sand, rock, and dried marl.
The state tree of Florida, the cabbage palm (also called sabal palm) is an iconic symbol found in almost every habitat in Florida, although it is less frequently seen in upland areas.
Southeast Florida is home to two poisonous trees, the poisonwood and the manchineel. Learn how to recognize them so you don’t get too close, and find out how truly dangerous they are.
The tallest of Florida’s pines, longleaf pine also has the longest needles, more than a foot long. Favored for lumber, most of the longleaf pine forests of the Southeast have been logged, but you can still immerse in impressive longleaf pine stands on Florida’s trails.
Red mangroves are the easiest of the mangroves to identify due to their “walking legs” root systems. Note the bean-pod-like “roots” at their bases: these are miniature mangroves spawning, fully formed plants waiting to float off with the next high tide.
Also known as the swamp maple, the red maple is one of the more common large trees found in Florida’s floodplain forests. It’s by far the most colorful, too, sporting bright crimson leaves in late fall and early winter.
Slowly suffocating its host by creating a leafy canopy above it and roots that surround it, the strangler fig (Ficus aurea) earns its name. You’ll see it throughout tropical habitats in South Florida.
One of the easier trees to pick out while walking through the hardwood forests of the Appalachians, the tulip poplar has distinctive tulip-blossom shaped leaves and a large and extremely showy flower. It’s found in Florida as south as Winter Springs.
White mangroves are the most tree-like of the mangrove family. They have oval light green leaves—the other mangroves have dark green, elliptical leaves.
