Wild Green Minute
About
The Wild Green Minute is a short fact file segment exploring Florida's wildlife and wild places.
Produced in collaboration with WKGC-FM Panama City, each episode features one of Florida's wild places, organisms, or other natural phenomena. From river otters to Spanish moss, listen in for a quick bite of natural history.
Scroll down to hear past episodes and learn more!
Episode 15: Apalachicola Rosemary
The Florida panhandle is home to many rare and endangered species of plants and animals, some of which can be found nowhere else.
Among the oaks and pines of Liberty County’s sandy uplands lives one such species - a plant with glittery, white-and-purple flowers known as Apalachicola rosemary.
There are ten known populations, several of which are found within Torreya State Park. These may be the only places on Earth where the Apalachicola rosemary’s distinctive, minty smell can be found, wafting from the knee-high shrub’s needle-like leaves.
The plants in the false rosemary genus use chemical warfare to compete with grasses and other low brush - they produce terpene herbicides that kill most plants within a small radius around them. Some false rosemary species can even be found in satellite photos by looking for the characteristic rings of bare sand surrounding them on the savannah floor. These compounds may be helpful to humans - those produced by the related etonia rosemary have been studied for their potential use as mosquito repellent!
Aside from direct uses, small-range species like Apalachicola rosemary are keepers of our deep history- their existence and location reflects the shifts in habitats and human land uses throughout time, and collectively they create distinctions that make the panhandle different from any other place.
Note: This fact file was originally written for broadcast exclusively within Bay County/Panama City, Florida, from the perspective of Rhett Barker.
14. Nine-banded Armadillo
With their armor plating, giant ears, and snuffling noses, 9 banded armadillos are a strange sight!
Mostly active at night, armadillos sniff the ground in search of insects and small prey. I once followed one as it dug a series of little, V-shaped holes over the course of a hundred foot long ant tunnel, apparently unbothered by the stings of the fire ants it was slurping along the way.
Largely creatures of sound and smell, they are not very visually aware of their surroundings and could even absent-mindedly run into a person who stands very still.
Active burrowers, an individual armadillo might dig ten or twelve burrows, each up to 7 feet deep and 25 feet long! Another strange fact about the species: every time they reproduce, they have identical quadruplets!
First crossing the Rio Grande in the 1800s, 9 banded armadillos have expanded wildly across the southeastern United States. The reason for their expansion is unknown, but might have something to do with changes in habitat over the past two centuries. What is for certain is that they are doing great in their expanded territory, and their loud, leaf-litter shuffling is a common sound across the twilit panhandle.
Note: This fact file was originally written for broadcast exclusively within Bay County/Panama City, Florida, from the perspective of Rhett Barker.
Episode 13: Two-toed Amphiuma
Ditches and wetlands across much of the southeast and all of the panhandle hide a secret: one of the world’s largest amphibians!
Two-toed amphiumas are giant salamanders that are sometimes confused for eels. Their legs are tiny and vestigial, meaning that, like the human appendix, they no longer have a useful function. Each is tipped with, as the name implies, two toes! Unlike their little limbs, two toed amphiumas are really big - they can grow to be just under 4 feet long.
If you grew up in the Panhandle you have lived among them for all your life, but probably never seen one! That’s because they are active only at night. Even then, they stick to mud and muddy waters with a lot of vegetation, making the odds of an encounter with daylight-loving creatures like us humans even more unlikely. Unlike many more familiar amphibians, two-toed amphiumas don’t have a permanent land stage, and instead retain gills throughout their lives.
The murky, muddy, dimly-starlit waters they occupy don’t provide much in the way of visual information, so the two-toed amphiuma’s eyes have shrunken down to little points. Instead, they rely largely on their sense of feel, even having a set of specialized dots across their body that allow them to sensitively detect shifts in the water around them.
Much is still unknown about this species. It’s not known how long they can live in the wild, but captive individuals have survived for decades. They are known to eat essentially any animal they can fit in their mouths, ranging from insects to small reptiles, other amphibians, and fish, but their hunting behavior in the wild is largely unknown.
Though two-toed amphiumas mainly use their cryptic nature and slippery skin to avoid danger, they also possess sharp teeth which may be the cause of scars sometimes found on their predators, the brilliantly patterned (and dully-named) mud snake.
Note: This fact file was originally written for broadcast exclusively within Bay County/Panama City, Florida, from the perspective of Rhett Barker.
Episode 12: Tate's Hell Dwarf Cypresses
Tate’s Hell State Forest is named for a local legend: the possibly real and definitely unfortunate late-eighteen hundreds misadventure of a local farmer named Cebe Tate.
So the legend goes, Tate was chasing a panther and followed his dogs into the swamp, then got lost. Very lost. He found his way out seven days and seven nights later, but only just barely. Mosquito-plagued and snake-bitten, he lived just long enough to tell his discoverer, “My name is Cebe Tate, and this is my Hell,” before dropping dead. If Tate had time to look around in his surreal wanderings, he might have noticed a strange natural wonder: a grove of dwarf pond cypresses!
Members of a species that normally grows to around 60 feet in height, the cypresses of this particular grove have been stunted by the swamp’s low nutrient availability and a shallow underlying layer of clay into natural bonsais.
Topping out between 6 and 15 feet, the dwarf cypresses of Tate’s Hell are up to ten times shorter than average, creating a fantastical, miniaturized sight.
Passable forest roads from 98 lead to a great boardwalk that rises into the dwarf cypress canopy, offering excellent views of the trees by day and of the stars at night!
Note: This fact file was originally written for broadcast exclusively within Bay County/Panama City, Florida, from the perspective of Rhett Barker.
Episode 11: Swallow-tailed Kite
With their sleek design, striking black and white color pattern, forked tails, and swooping flight, swallowtailed kites are among Florida’s most beautiful raptors.
Migrating as far as ten thousand miles from central and south america to breed, the species once nested throughout much of North America but is now limited to the wetlands of the southeastern coastal plain.
Swallow-tailed kites are a common sight in Florida between February and September, when they can be observed gracefully circling over tree-covered wetlands in search of flying insects and small canopy-dwelling prey items like lizards and frogs.
In the United States they prefer to nest high in loblolly pines and cypress trees, where they typically lay one to three eggs at a time. They can be territorial during nesting season, warding off interlopers with a chase and a call, but are often seen roosting and flying in large groups, especially during migration.Â
A few dozen swallow-tailed kites in flight is a sight to behold, and certainly worth keeping an eye out for throughout the summer.Â
Note: This fact file was originally written for broadcast exclusively within Bay County/Panama City, Florida, from the perspective of Rhett Barker.
