State guide

Florida Nature Guide

Florida is North America's subtropical edge, where a long flat peninsula slides from the temperate Panhandle longleaf-pine forests of the north into the only true tropics on the United States mainland at its southern tip. Its nature runs on an inverted calendar: the mild, dry winter is the prime season for visiting and gardening, drawing wintering ducks and warblers, manatees crowding into warm springs, and Roseate Spoonbills and Wood Storks wading the Everglades, while the hot, wet, storm-driven summer brings Swallow-tailed Kites, nesting waders, and the daily afternoon thunderheads. From sandy scrub and pine flatwoods to cypress swamps, sawgrass marsh, and the mangrove-and-coral Keys, the state holds the endemic Florida Scrub-Jay, Snail Kites, Limpkins, and a tropical butterfly fauna found nowhere else in the country.