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Pine Rocklands

Southeast Florida is home to one of the crown jewels of biological diversity in the state. Although pine forests in a general sense exist throughout Florida, and were historically its most common ecosystem-type, most of these forests are in the form of high pineland, pine flatwoods, and human-made pine plantations. The pine rocklands, however, are unique to Miami-Dade, Monroe, and Collier Counties. Besides their extraordinary diversity of species, a feature that sets southeast Florida pine rocklands apart is the substrate upon which they grow, eking a living on elevated ridges of exposed limestone bedrock with sparse soils. In Miami-Dade County, an essentially continuous pine rockland forest historically occurred on the coastal Miami Rock Ridge, a limestone rock outcropping that extends south and west from North Miami Beach to Long Pine Key in Everglades National Park.

For over two millennia prior to Miami’s development boom, pine rocklands were inhabited by the Indigenous Tequesta tribe, living side by side with a resplendent array of native flora and fauna. Benefiting from both tropical and temperate influences, the flora consists of over 400 species, many of them endemic to the state, meaning they are found here and nowhere else in the world. Even more of these species are on the state and federal threatened and endangered species lists, a clear indicator of the now imperiled state of this globally unique, irreplaceable, and essential ecosystem.

More like an open savanna than a typical forest, a healthy pine rockland has a relatively sparse canopy composed almost exclusively of South Florida slash pines (Pinus elliottii var. densa) that tower above a rich understory of saw palmettos, silver palms, beauty berries, locust berries, broom grasses, coontie, and many more shrubs, grasses, and wildflowers. A rich diversity of small herbaceous plants such as the ant-pollinated deltoid spurge, the purple flowered milk pea, and the tiny yellow-green small’s milkwort are found nowhere else in the world. True appreciation of a pine rockland thus requires a perspective that looks beyond the trees, zooming in on and recognizing the value of the small and inconspicuous.