Lake Wales Ridge State Forest: An Enchanting Land of Cuthroat Grass and Rare Seepage Bogs!

Pink Sundew by Riverbanksoutdoorstore

Laura, my out of town guest and partner-in-crime, and I headed to Lake Wales Ridge State Forest to continue on our Trailwalker Journey this past weekend. After missing the Schoolhouse Road street sign twice, we finally honed in on the McClean Cabin Nature Trail. This one mile interpretive loop sits in the middle of the 22 mile Reedy Creek trail maintained by the Florida Trail Association and is a beautiful hike! From the interpretive kiosks along the path, we learned about cutthroat grass and seepage bogs. These seepage bogs are protected areas in Florida State Parks and Forests and can only be seen in a few places throughout the state. While in these areas we were lucky to come upon the Pink Sundew, a carnivorous bog plant, sprouting up in the middle of the trail (see above photo)! The rare cutthroat grass was also growing in abundance along the trail.

From here we headed over to the Walk-N-the-Water tract to hike the 2.8 mile Scrub Jay Loop and the 3.6 mile Bay Loop Trail, which turned out to not actually be a loop. The Bay-Loop Trail takes you through beautiful scrub with spots of Oak Hammock back to a lake. Then we spotted an end-of-trail sign. Your options are to complete a loop on a plow-up forest road/firebreak or return the way you came. We opted for the scenic return route back on the trail.
The Scrub Jay Loop is a pretty hike throughout a classic Florida Scrub habitat lined with low growing Lyonia bushes, young scrub oaks, and spots of young Florida Rosemary bushes sprouting up as if to someday claim their own scrub. Although we did not see a Scrub Jay on this hike, there was an abundance of small birds including warblers, wrens, and robins flying about. Both trails were well marked and very scenic and an enjoyable hike on such a cool sunny day!

For more photos on Lake Wales State Forest visit flickr.

More about Lake Wales Ridge State Forest….

Within Lake Wales Ridge State Forest lies the endangered ecosystems of ancient scrub, sandhills, and cutthroat grass seeps.  This protected lands of Lake Wales Ridge has the highest concentration of endangered plants on the continental United States.  
The ancient Scrub consists of long isolated islands that were actually shorelines.  The deposits were made when the rest of Florida was covered by rising seas.  The scrub is “Florida’s Desert” and consists of white open sand areas and low growing vegetation such as lyonia, oak, and Florida rosemary bushes. 
The sandhills on the ridge consist of long leaf pine, turkey oaks and wiregrass.  Both the scrub and the sandhills share some of the same wildlife including scrub-jays, gopher tortoise, Florida mouse and the scrub lizard.
The most exotic ecosystem is the cutthroat seeps characterized by the rare endangered cutthroat grasses.  These seeps occur only in Central Florida at a slightly lower elevation that scrub.  Scientists estimate that only one percent of these seeps still exist.

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