Where wet pine flatwoods slope towards Blackwater Bay, a sweeping panorama of wet prairies is host to the largest concentration of pitcher plants in all of Florida, at Yellow River Marsh Preserve State Park.
Resources
Overview
Location: Milton
Trailhead: 30.484300, -87.071500
Fees: Free
Open: 8 AM to sunset daily
Land Manager: Florida State Parks
Phone: 850-983-5363
It can be quite buggy here, given the high concentration of carnivorous plants. The ground is often soggy and boggy, as befitting a huge, productive bog.
Visit this park in April for the most stunning array of pitcher plant blooms on the Gulf Coast.
Directions
Exit Interstate 10 at Bagdad and head south on Garcon Point Rd (CR 191) approximately 6 miles. Turn left onto Dickerson City Rd and immediately left into the small parking area.
Hike
There are no marked trails, so use a GPS or keep within sight of your car as you wander into the open prairies in search of pitcher plants, which line the ditches along Dickerson City Road. You won’t have to walk far to see blooms.
There are some forest roads to amble along on the north side of the parking area, leading to a pond with pitcher plants on its rim.
We rambled along the fence line along the south side of Dickerson City Rd, where a profusion of white-topped pitcher plants were already in bloom in late March. We also followed a trail a little ways into the bog on the south side before it got quite wet.
These are a few of the less showy but still significant species you’ll find in this park.
See all images from our exploration of Yellow River Marsh Preserve
Explore More
Nearby Pitcher Plant Bogs
These pitcher plant bogs also put on quite a show each April.
Clear Creek Nature Trail
Imagine a wonderland of bright red blossoms and lacy white-veined trumpets reflected against reflections of the sky, where everywhere you turn, beauty surrounds you. You’ll find it near Milton at the Clear Creek Nature Trail
Garcon Point Trail
On a peninsula separating Blackwater Bay and East Bay, Garcon Point Preserve presents an open landscape of wind-swept prairies punctuated by oak hammocks and tall longleaf pines
Blueberries Ever After
I drove over here this past Sunday 4/28/19 with the intent to take pictures of the Sun Dews and Pitcher Plants that are still blooming… or what was left of the Pitcher Plants and Sun Dews on Dickerson City Road. I cannot even begin to explain how shocked, mad and sad I was to see all the beautiful plants in the road side ditch were plowed down! You speak of protecting them and how they can be seen in the ditches that line Dickerson City Road… but yet the majority of them were just gone from that giant plow that is still sitting in the parking lot. How could this possibly be protecting a natural resource to plow them down. The ditches didn’t even look like they were opened up. They just have giant ruts where it looks like someone took a joyride on both sides of the roadway all the way down to the next road. I would like to know why, what, and how this happened.
That sounds terrible! And I’m also shocked that nobody has commented on this? Who is monitoring this page?
Hi, Ryan! We are authors who write about the parks, not the park itself. I sent along this report to the director of Florida State Parks when we received it. Hopefully something has been done.