Fire in Mind: The Sandhill at Wekiwa Springs State Park

Abstract

As you enter Wekiwa Springs State Park, keeping to your left along the main park road, you can’t help but notice a landscape that looks quite different from much of the surrounding region.  Rolling hills with hundreds of widely-spaced longleaf pine trees and a continuous blanket of tall, golden wiregrass are punctuated by elevated mounds of brilliant white sand.  This is the Wekiwa Sandhill, a roughly 1800-acre remnant of an ecosystem that once covered much of the southeastern United States.