South Florida's Habitats

•  Click on a habitat to learn more! You can also find out which native plants are recommended for that habitat in your ZIP code area (if the habitat is recommended for your ZIP code and data are available.)

•  After learning about habitats and plants in your ZIP code area, you may want to try your hand at restoring a specific habitat in your native plant garden!

In South Florida, habitats are composed of a mixture of temperate, subtropical, and tropical species. The natural landscape is dominated by many types of wetlands, ranging from the vast Everglades to deep cypress swamps and coastal mangrove forests. Upland communities such as rockland hammocks, prairies, and pinelands also are present. Other Coastal landscapes, such as beach dunes and coastal berms, are other special habitats present in South Florida.

The native plant species that inhabit these ecosystems are exceedingly diverse - from giant oaks to colorful bromeliads, golden prairie grasses to endemic wildflowers, lacy ferns to coastal sunflowers. Many of these native species are found nowhere else in the world, or occur only in Florida in the continental United States.


Bayhead
Beach Dune
Coastal Berm
Coastal Grassland
Coastal Strand
Depression Marsh
Dome Swamp
Flatwoods/Prairie Lake
Floodplain Marsh
Floodplain Swamp
Freshwater Tidal Swamp
Hydric Hammock
Mangrove swamp
Maritime Hammock
Marl Prairie
Mesic Flatwoods
Mesic Hammock
Pine Rockland
Prairie Hammock
River Floodplain Lake
Rockland Hammock
Salt Marsh
Sandhill
Scrub
Scrubby Flatwoods
Shell Mound
Sinkhole
Slough
Strand Swamp
Swale
Wet Flatwoods
Xeric Hammock

 



 
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