Red and Black Mangroves (VIDEO)

South Florida is home the 2nd largest mangrove forest in the world. The largest is in Indonesia and typical of mangrove forests the diversity of trees is low. The forest is often dominated by Red, Black or White Mangroves and in the following short video I explain the difference between the reds and the blacks.

All mangroves grow in a salty or brackish water and each has a unique adaptation to survive there. Red Mangroves are capable of blocking salt water from entering their roots, while

Black Mangroves excrete salt trough their leaves. Below you can see the salt crystals on the leaf.

Below are leaves from the four main species found in a mangrove forest. From left to right - Black Mangrove, Red Mangrove, White Mangrove and Buttonwood.

Mangroves grow from Tampa on Florida's west coast around the pennisula and north to Jacksonville. Well....rumor has it they have one mangrove tree up there. We'll count it. But the majority of the mangroves cap the bottom of the Everglades and makes up what is known as the 10,000 Islands National Wildlife Refuge - a vast wilderness made up of well over 15,000 small mangrove tree islands. Can you blame someone for stopping their count at 10,000? I've simply outlined the area below.

View Mangrove Forest in a larger map

Videography and editing by Patricio Garcia and Jose Espaillet

Squirt

We're starting a new feature here that will hopefully be popular and if enough people like it we'll try doing VIDEO shorts once a week. The following was done with little planning - just a film crew following me into a cypress dome to see what we could find. If you like it - leave a COMMENT by clicking COMMENTS on the bottom of this post. You don't need to register if you don't wish - just toggle the "Name/URL" or "anonymous" button and type away. I hope you like.

Lubber Grasshopper hatchlings

After a few instars (growth stages), the Lubber has grown quite large.

Eventually it molts and takes on its adult form. The colors are a good indication to potential predators that the Lubbers taste disgusting. Short, vestigial wings are used to flair flamboyant orange and pink flashes - if predators hadn't noticed the warning signs before, they usually get the idea now.

The Lubbers are North America's largest grasshoppers reaching lengths over 4 inches long. Like cicadas or locusts, the Lubbers hatch out in cycles - some years being much worse than others. 2007 and 2008 were big years and you couldn't drive through the Everglades without crushing hundreds of them. Although unfortunate, there is no escaping escorting a few of them into grasshopper afterlife, but part of the strategy of some species is to put a lot of offspring out there and hope that at least a few survive to pass on Lubber genes.