Bryce Canyon Ravens

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Check out that Project Runway-ready sequined shirt and tie, and the tail piece. I don't know what you call the tail piece but its definitely fashion forward.

Green Springs

Delicate Green Waters

The jewel of Green Springs, a 36 acre park in Enterprise, Florida, is its large and deep sulphur spring. Get close to the spring and you can smell the rotten egg-aroma. In the past it has been known variously as Green Sulphur Spring and Green Spring, without an s. For ages it has struck people as exotic and strange. A guidebook author once called its waters "green as the greenest paint," but other sensed something ethereal. More than one visitor marveled at the "delicate green" view.

Once thought to be "bottomless," Green Springs actually has lateral vents and a widening shaft that descends 76 feet to a silt-covered limestone floor. Algae and sulphur affect the spring's color, but dry spells (like our current 6 weeks with zero rain) can darken the water and even halt the discharge. When the spring is running, its waters join a small creek that drains other springs in the area, eventually flowing into Lake Monroe on the St. Johns River. The retaining wall that is hard to see at present dates from the 1940s, when owners of a swimming concession replaced the natural outlet to create a shallow area for children.

The cast of characters who have lived and visited here is a long one: Florida natives, Seminole Wars soldiers, and a colorful developer and hustler. Cornelius Taylor promoted his spring in the 1840s, offering bottled water and promises of good health. Decades later, the area still drew visitors from far and near—and local legedns persisted. One farmer claimed that Green Springs had popped up overnight, after dynamiters drained another spring to the north. Others told of a wagon falling into the spring, then emerging from a vent in the ocean.

Weird, Wild, Luxuriant Nature

The truth is, mystery has always been part of the Green Springs experience. Traveling to Enterprise in the 1860s, one visitor wondered if she had left America and entered some foreign realm. Outside her hotel lay a land of "weird, wild, luxuriant nature."

Trail Junction

The Spring-to-Spring Trail and the Rail Trail, part of Florida's network of hiking, biking and walking trails, meet under the thick canopy of Green Springs.

Orange Fever and Green Springs

Throughout the park there are orange trees, here and there, that have somehow survived. They are relics. Since the 1840s, citrus trees have always grown on these lakeside lands. A New York Times correspondent found bearing trees at Old Enterprise in 1843 and learned that they had been producing for years. Somewhat later, just after the Civil War, another traveler reported seeing "lovely orange groves" near the spring. In the 1880s wealthy snowbird and landowner Frederick deBary built drainage ditches (including several that still exist in Green Springs Park) for his orange-growing venture. Well into the 20th century, people still planted citrus trees here.

Dating the park's surviving orange trees is difficult because Florida had killer freezes in the 19th and 20th centuries. Two infamous events in 1894 and 1895 wiped out many area groves. Easier to say is how these lands contributed to Florida's best-known product—a crop that caught the imagination of tourists, investors, and settlers. Green Springs played a small part in "orange fever."

Today, what remains of old growth oranges in most of Florida is diseased and dying, afflicted by the Asian import disease, Huanglongbing bacteria (Citrus Greening).

Looking up into the thick hammock canopy of towering Live Oaks and Sabal Palms of Green Springs it is amazing to think that this still exists as development creeps up on the park from every direction from the fast-growing bedroom city of Deltona. Listen hard and you can hear the din of traffic in the distance racing in and out toward Orlando.

The DeBary Connection

Green Springs had many owners after Cornelius Taylor first claimed these lands in 1842. Certinly the most exotic were the deBarys, New York wine merchants who wintered near Enterprise starting in the 1870s (see their mansion at Florida's Cultural Treasures). European-born Frederick deBary and his son Adolphe not only built a showy vacation house at the heart of their vast hunting estate (where we now live) they also acquired Green Springs and its well-known shell mound.

Most deBary lands lay west of here, in what is now the City of DeBary. family members and guests ranged over the country, hunting quail, fishing, and exploring on horseback and in wagons. For lovers of the outdoors, Old Enterprise would have been a natural destination.

Not that the deBarys were great preservers of their scenic proprty. A visitor in 1885 found them clearing and draining the land for orange groves. And the visitor report that two-thirds of the shell mound had been carted off for fertilizer and walks. "Man erected it, " he said, "and man is digging it up."

One of the many streams that are flowing through the park. There did not appear to be much flow from the main spring so this is coming from adjacent smaller vents or from the City of Deltona, as I previously said, it has not rained in 6 weeks and everything is miserably dry.

Imagine: Settlers and Sightseers

More than 6,000 years ago, native Floridians occupied the lands that make up Green Springs Park. Along with some of North America's oldest pottery, these hunting and fishing people left a large shell mound stretching from Lake Monroe to what is now Braddock Road, at the north end of the park. Today, little remains of the great mound. Traces of the midden can still be seen at ground level, but its top is long gone, carted off for fertilizer and road building.

The disappearance of this landmark would have surprised earlier visitors, including Seminole Wars soldiers stationed at Fort Kingbury, and 1830s long stockade on the lake's north shore. Its location made sense because key trails converge here, and the shell mound offered a lookout.

High ground and mineral springs also caught the eye of Cornelius Taylor, a tough, restless veteran and timber agent who obtained land grants, led a colonizing party in 1842, and built an inn on the shell mound. Called Enterprise, his small settlement drew tourists as well as "invalids" hoping for healing in Taylor's springs.

When Cornelius Taylor moved away in 1847, "Old Enterprise" faded, but not the lure of special lands he had opened to travelers. After the Civil War, even more steamboat tourists flocked to interior Florida and Jacob Brock's new Enterprise, a half mile west of here. One of their favorite outings (from the 1870s into the 20th century) continued to be visiting Green Spring's mysterious grounds.

Things to Avoid

First, getting lost. There are few signs in the park. I know there is development all around and lake on one side so I figured I would sooner-or-later come out to something that looked familiar, so I trekked straight through the forest. Others might get confused or decide to take a break in the lush forest undergrowth. That would be the other thing to avoid. . . poisonous plants.

Above, I'm pretty sure these is a thicket of Brazilian Pepper. It is not as large as most Brazilian Pepper but it is under a thick canopy so that may explain why this Schinus terebinthefolius has not grown taller. I'm sure someone will correct me but I'm guessing what it is. Some people find this plants toxins to be quite uncomfortable. It is in the Family Anacardiaceae which includes (below) poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac. All of these plants may cause a rash or other problems if one is allergic. I am not, and so I used my hand below for scale.

Just walking through this ground cover of poison ivy and poison oak might be enough to send some running to the ER.

There are only 28 parking spaces in the park so crowds are generally not a problem though on one visit last summer I encountered a gang of unruly kids jumping in the springs which is expressly prohibited. Not only are the spring waters contaminated with bacteria, like nearby Gemini Springs, there is also no lifeguard or other supervision on site.

Lake Monroe Boat Ramp and Park

I'm calling the image above "Happy Birds." It was luck that I caught them all soaring toward the sun.

Across Enterprise/Osteen Road from the spring is Lake Monroe on the St. Johns River. There is a nice little park with a boat ramp if sunshine is more to your liking. I come here to collect the floating invasive plants (water lettuce, hyacinth, hydrilla) you see in the image below for my koi ponds. The plants get stuck in the docks and make for easy picking.

The day after I made these images I went back for more plants and they were all gone. The wind had shifted and blown them all across the lake toward Sanford, Florida.

The lake appears endless, but in terms of lake size in Florida Lake Monroe is only a mid-sized lake at some 15 square miles.

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There are three prominent waterfalls at Rainbow Springs in Dunnellon, Florida. Unfortunately I don't think any of them can be considered "natural." They're built into an escarpment of limestone and coquina topped with tailings from phosphate (fertilizer) mines nearby. From my investigation of these falls it appears the water is pumped from the headspring area of Rainbow Springs uphill into holding pools where it is then allowed to "fall." I honestly cannot say that I've ever seen a real Florida waterfall, but if there were to be natural waterfalls in Florida, this is how I'd want them to look.

Despite how they were created. They are lovely. The falls are surrounded by lush gardens of lady palms (top right; Rhapis excelsa) and other exotic, tropical plants under a native canopy of live oak and sabal palms.

Lady Palms

These palms appear in other parts of Florida but I hate to report that they are in no way native. They are also known as "Broadleaf Lady Palms,""Bamboo Palms, " or "The Lady Palm" but whatever you call them they likely originate in Taiwan and China though there are no known populations of this species surviving in the wild. Their low light and humidity tolerances make them a favorite in malls and offices. Their cold tolerance (to 15° F; -9° C) made them immensely popular for planting in Central Florida during early colonization by Europeans because of our then periodic freezing episodes (before climate change) in winter.

Because the plant reproduces by way of rhizomes, forming multi-stemmed clumps that reach enormous widths, they are often seen in places like Rainbow Springs where they were planted decades prior for ornamental purposes.

One of Florida’s largest springs, the headsprings of the Rainbow River originates in this beautiful 1,472- acre park. Rich in natural beauty and cultural history, it is also a popular spot for swimmers, kayakers, tubers and campers.

The largest of the waterfalls at Rainbow Springs is Rainbow Falls, above and below. The gardens and waterfalls are cultural assets that remain from the days when the headsprings were a private attraction. They have been renovated and replanted while preserving their historical signifcance. In early spring the entire headsprings area bursts into pinks, purples and whites with its famous azalea blooms. Nature trails meander into the park’s natural areas.

Above, Phillip with Rainbow Falls

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Rainbow Springs History

The area surrounding Rainbow Springs has been inhabited by human cultures for at least 10,000 years. People we now call the Timucua lived here at the time of European contact. The city of Ocala is named after a nearby Timucuan village and chief called Ocale.

Pioneers first settled this area around the headsprings in 1839. By 1883, about 75 people lived in this agricultural community, which had a railroad station, sawmill, hotel, stores and a post office.

In the 1920s, Blue Springs and Blue Run were favorite spots for tourists and locals. As the attraction grew, the river was dredged for glass bottom boat tours; and in 1937 the waterfalls were built on piles of phosphate tailings. A zoo, rodeo, gift shops and a monorail with leaf-shaped gondolas were added. In the mid-1970s, when larger theme parks lured the tourists away, Rainbow Springs was closed. In the mid-1990s, it reopened as a state park.

In 1972, the U.S. Department of the Interior designated Rainbow River as a National Natural Landmark. It is also a Florida Aquatic Preserve and an Outstanding Florida Waterway. Each of these political designations in some way protects both the headsprings and the length of the 5.7 mile-long Rainbow River.

The Rainbow Springs Aquatic Preserve encompasses the entire length of the Rainbow River. The river begins at Rainbow Springs and empties into the Withlacoochee River, 5.7 miles to the south. Rainbow Springs is Florida's 4th largest spring with 72° F (22° C) waters year-round. The waters are home to 23 species of 15 genera and 7 families of fishes.

There are countless springs along the 5.7 mile long Rainbow River. Above, Bubbling Spring.

Above and Below, more springs along the Rainbow River.

National Natural Landmarks Program

The National Natural Landmarks (NNL) Program perhaps goes furthest in its protections of the Rainbow River by recognizing and encouraging the conservation of sites like Rainbow Springs that contain outstanding biological and geological resources, regardless of landownership type. It is the only natural areas program of national scope that recognizes the best examples of biological and geological features in both public and private ownership. NNLs are owned by a variety of land stewards, and participation in the program is voluntary.

National Natural Landmarks are selected for their outstanding condition, illustrative value, rarity, diversity, and value to science and education. Sites are designated by the Secretary of the Interior, with landowner concurrence, and to-date, nearly 600 landmarks have received the NNL designation.

Rainbow Springs is a wonderful mixture of Central Florida’s natural and cultural heritage. It is a popular destination to swim, snorkel, tube, canoe, picnic or stroll the gardens. The day-use headsprings area, tube launch area and the campground differ in the activities they allow, so be sure to ask in advance.

Seminole Falls

Seminole Falls is more of a gradually cascading waterfall (below).

Below, the pools that hold the three waterfall's waters are atop a 30-50 foot hill above the Rainbow River.

The pools were cleverly constructed to completely disguise their origin and the origin of the waters therein.

Below, the top of the hill and the final holding pond for Rainbow Falls water.

It appeared the water was bubbling up from underneath the massive lily pictured here in the top pool. There likely are some very large pumps hidden somewhere in that hill.

The Rainbow and Withlacoochee Rivers support abundant wildlife, including otters, alligators, many species of turtles and every variety of water bird—waders, divers and dabblers. Osprey, hawks and swallowtail kites soar along the river corridor while smaller birds and animals hide in the lush vegetation. Many animal species, including the endangered gopher tortoise, Florida pine snake, indigo snake, Sherman’s fox squirrel and the Florida mouse inhabit the uplands surrounding the springs and rivers.

We trekked the entire length of the Rainbow River down into the Withlacoochee Swamp on the east side of the river at Blue Run of Dunnellon Park located at 19680 E Pennsylvania Avenue (CR-484), Dunnellon, FL 34431

This is a popular kayaking launch location, not ideal for swimming as it is getting closer to the murkier waters of the Withlacoochee River, though still technically the Rainbow River for another few thousand feet.

We found the flow to be very swift on a recent afternoon and there to be an abundance of snakes, turtles and other wildlife in the Blue Run Park.

Sexing a Florida Cooter

How to Tell the Sex of A Cooter Turtle

One of the questions I get asked most often is how I determine the sex of my turtles. Its really pretty easy, and mostly irrelevant.

If your turtle is not shy (unlike this one) you can look at its front claws. Long claws usually indicate a the turtle is a male. The other easy way to sex a cooter turtle is to look at the plastron (belly) but be careful not to drop the turtle or to scare it too much when doing this. Turtle aren't designed to be flipped over. Notice how the plastron above is concave. This indicates that this shy turtle is likely a male. The concave plastron helps the turtle keep his balance when mounting a female.

Water turtles should always have access to land. Never put them in a bucket or a pool that they cannot easily climb out of. Females will lay eggs even if they have never been with a male and they need dry ground to do it.

When you pick up your turtle it might urinate on you. This is one of the turtle's defense mechanisms. Resist the urge to drop the turtle. You don't want to damage its protective shell.

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Game of Thrones Dragons

Coming to A City Near You

As part of a promotion for the release of the fifth season DVD of "Game of Thrones," HBO is staging elaborate promotional events in major cities across the USA.

The Black Sail's Workout

First, we have to say, what the f--k? What is going on with Black Sails? First they take away all the love interest-sex scenes with pirates. We know it is supposed to be real drama. . . but who wants to watch all that gritty battle plotting and planning? Really? But worse, they kill the favorite character (in episode XXVII Captain Charles Vane is killed, aka Zach McGowan, so we'll have to look for him on THE 100 on the CW, Thursdays at 9:00, but we won't be seeing any of those boundary-breaking sex scenes that he's so famous for on Shameless and Black Sails on the CW). Finally, you've got Tom Hopper, the biggest arms in Hollywood, and he never takes off his shirt. Talk about a waste of raw talent. Shouldn't pirates need to cool off sometime?

Ok, we admit you got our attention @tom.hopperhops with the world's biggest biceps, but c'mon, not one shirtless scene in all of Season 3? What's up with that? What happened to the love interest (aka gratuitous nudity, Zach McGowan, etc.) part of Black Sails?

And. . .Luke Arnold. Peg leg? Really? You've lost us here somewhere. Ever hear of "natural assets?"

And kids, don't try this at home. In 2016 America Gopher tortoises are a protected, endangered species and you'll be in big trouble if you try to work out this way.

Tom Hopper, put that tortoise down now, and we'll try to forgive you.

See also: Captain Jacked

Zach McGowan's Workout

The South China Tiger is Functionally Extinct. So Why Does This Banker Guy Have 19 of Them?

Relax. He's a good guy. Read the article.

Nocoroco Ruins

The centerpiece of Florida's Tomoka State Park in Ormond Beach is the huge Frederick Dana Marsh sculpture of "Chief Tomokie," located atop the ancient ruins of the Native American settlement known as Nocoroco.

The sculpture is Marsh's artistic interpretation of the legend of Tomokie, whose arrogance in drinking from a sacred spring was paid for with his life and those of all his band. According to information at the site, references to the legend date back more than one hundred years.

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Completed sometime between 1931 and 1955, the 50-foot tall sculpture depicts the Chief "slain by Oleeta in defense of the golden cup"

From every angle the sculpture, atop and around a coquina base, takes on different colors and feel with the surrounding live oak and sabal palm landscape.

Below, I stand mimicking the pose of Chief Tomokie and giving some idea of the scale of the sculpture. I am about 6-feet tall.

There is little remaining of the midden that marked the settlement of Nocoroco. There is a coquina amphitheater that is now overgrown surrounding the sculpture but it was built by settlers, not the natives that inhabited this land.

The park was mostly deserted on a recent weekend afternoon aside from some panhandlers who appeared from behind the sculpture. After they were dispatched we saw few humans during our hike the length of the park.

Marsh, who largely retired from commercial art before age 50 settled in Ormond Beach when he married the artist Mabel Van Alstyne in 1931. There he built a Streamline Moderne beachside home known as the "Battleship House" (since demolished) which was extensively decorated with murals and relief sculptures.

More of Marsh's sculptures can be found outside the Peabody Auditorium in Daytona Beach where he sculpted "The Four Muses" on the auditorium's exterior.

In addition the the Marsh sculpture there are 1,800 acres (7.3 square kilometers) of parkland located along the Tomoka and Halifax Rivers three miles north of Ormond Beach.

Among other activities in the park are canoe and kayaking. Both can be rented from a camp store in the center of the park.

The Tomoka River and the Halifax River meet at the north end of the park forming a natural peninsula. There are 12 miles of shoreline covering maritime hammock and estuarine salt marsh ecosystems.

NOCOROCO HISTORY

In the early 1600s, Spanish explorers found Indians living here in a village called Nocoroco. Although nothing remains of the village, shell middens, mounds of oyster and snail shells from decades of Native American meals, reach 40 feet tall along the river banks.

Approximately seven thousand years ago, during the Archaic Period, indigenous people found plentiful fish and shellfish at this site in the shelter of a barrier island to the east. The site was inhabited approximately twelve hundred years ago by the Timucuans, whose descendants were discovered there by Europeans. Alvaro Mexia visited Nocoroco in 1605, just as European acculturation had begun. Mexia's expedition explored down the east coast of Florida at the behest of the Spanish governor. This late St. Johns period site represents one of the last Timucuan strongholds in northeastern Florida. All that remains today of these native peoples are the shell middens, which help modern archaeologists document their lives.

Below: The remains of the coquina amphitheater under a massive canopy of live oaks.

The British occupation began in 1763 when Great Britain received Florida from Spain in a trade. The site of the village of Nocoroco was part of a British land-grant called Mt. Oswald, held by Richard Oswald. His plantation grew indigo and rice. After its return to the Spanish in 1783, the area was likely cultivated until many plantations were destroyed near the beginning of the Second Seminole War in 1835.

Today, these waters are popular for canoeing, boating, and fishing. The park protects a variety of wildlife habitats and endangered species, such as the West Indian manatee. Tomoka is a bird-watcher's paradise, with over 160 species sighted, especially during the spring and fall migrations. Visitors can stroll a one-half mile nature trail through a hardwood hammock that was once an indigo field for an 18th century British landowner. A boat ramp gives boaters and canoeists access to the river. The Park Store offers snacks, camping supplies, and canoe rentals.

HAMMOCK

The park is noted for its live oak hammock with arching limbs covered in Spanish moss, resurrection fern and green-fly orchids. Indian pipe, spring coralroot and Florida coontie grown under the hammock canopy, while wild coffee and tropical sage can be found on the shell middens.

SALT MARSH

Salt marshes adjacent to the rivers flourish with plant life, including black needlerush, spartina and glasswort. These marshes, flooded daily by Atlantic ocean tides, provide habitat, food and breeding grounds for oysters, snails, fiddler crabs and fish. Wading birds and hawks forage the marshes for their meals. Over 160 bird species have been documented at Tomoka.

During the summer, manatees take refuge with their young in the Tomoka River. Bottlenose dolphins occasionally surface, while the American alligator is a familiar resident. One often can see raccoons, bobcats, white-tailed deer and otters that come out late in the afternoons.

What Happened to Florida's El Niño Rains?

An unexpectedly dry Florida experienced less than an inch of rain since the first week of February 2016 (7 weeks). An equally unexpectedly dry Southwest has put a twist on this spring’s prospects for drought evolution and flood risk, according to dual outlooks recently issued by NOAA. Rain has begun to fall across the Florida peninsula today, finally, and we are grateful.

Above: Rocking chairs at the Park Store overlooking the Tomoka River.

The Unpredictable El Niño

of 2015-16

Central Florida Misses Out

on the Maya Express

Normally during a strong El Niño, winters tend to be wetter than average from California across the southern Rockies to the Gulf Coast. One of the strongest El Niños on record has been ongoing this winter. Every El Niño has its quirks, but this one has gone rogue in several ways, most notably in U.S. precipitation. Instead of slathering the southern tier of the U.S. with moisture, this El Niño has aimed its firehose in two distinct paths. One extends from central California north to Washington, and the other stretches from Texas and the Gulf Coast north and east into the Midwest and Southeast (plus south Florida). At times, these swaths have featured atmospheric rivers often referred to as the Pineapple Express (flowing from the central tropical Pacific to the West Coast) and the Maya Express (streaming from the Gulf of Mexico into the eastern U.S.).

Weather Forecasting

At the NOAA/NWS Climate Prediction Center, climate scientists analyzed departures from average in this year's 500-mb wind (about four miles above sea level) for the Dec-Jan-Feb period. What is pretty clear is that the Pacific jet is shifted north of its normal position. The typical wintertime Aleutian low is weaker than it is normally during an El Niño event. The El Niño wave train is there; it is just not exactly where it is located typically. But no single year perfectly matches a ‘typical’ pattern. These sort of shifts are not unexpected to forecasters, which is why our forecasts are probabilistic (subject to of involving chance variation). A strong El Niño doesn't negate the fact there is uncertainty and it is intrinsic to the climate system.

What 1992 Can Tell Us About Today

The unusual effects of this year's El Niño on USA's precipitation don’t resemble the other two “super” events in recent times (1982-83 and 1997-98). However, there is something of an analog. In a prototypical El Niño, the most unusually warm water and most concentrated convection (showers and thunderstorms) are in the far eastern tropical Pacific, which tends to bring the subtropical jet stream directly into the California coast.

This winter, the most anomalous warm water and convection has been in the central Pacific, close to the Date Line. The associated subtropical jet has occasionally punched into the Southwest but more often headed toward northern California, Oregon, and Washington. This was also the case in April 1992, toward the tail end of the strong El Niño event of 1991-92. Then, as now, the focus of El Niño’s oceanic warming was near the Date Line.

Current Precipitation Forecast

for USA

Current long-range forecasts (out 3-4 weeks) call for wet weather across all of Florida. We can hope that the forecast verifies.

Massive live oaks and incomparable river views are the hallmark of Tomoka State Park (above and below).

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Trash or Treasure?

In Florida you could not pay anyone to pick up bottles and cans, there is no refund at all in Florida. In New York its a completely different story. New York City is trying to stop scavengers from recycling the government's recyclables. Maybe we could ship some of our endemic roadside litter to New York City? Better yet we could send them some of our politicians who regularly fight a bottle return fee and tell New York to keep them (the politicians, that is).

Levithan: Russian Town Shurgs Off a Vodka-heavy Film Deipction

The head of this desolate Russian outpost on the Barents Seas wants to make a few things absolutely clear; Not all 1,000 residents are alcoholics; not everyone is depressed; and nobody has committed suicide, at least not recently.

The Unnatural Kingdom

If technology helps us save the wilderness, will the wilderness still be wild?

What Scares You Most?

Most likely its something silly. Snakes, heights, public speaking. The paths that human fear can take are often ridiculous and pointless detours. . .

Ted Cruz, Is He The Devil?

He deliberately sets up conservatives to fail by goading them into empty gestures and self-defeating stunts like shutting down government, which make it harder to persuade more Americans to embrace conservative policies. They can’t even be described accurately as Pyrrhic victories. They’re just abject failures. As for his recent defense of his wife appearance? She's a Wall Street Banker. That's the better characterization for him to try and defend.

In mathematics, the Fibonacci numbers or Fibonacci sequence are the numbers in the following integer sequence arrived at by adding the two prior numbers:

The Golden Angle

The seeds of a sunflower, the spines of a cactus, and the bracts of a pine cone all grow in whirling spiral patterns. Remarkable for their complexity and beauty, they also show consistent mathematical patterns that scientists have been striving to understand.

A surprising number of plants have spiral patterns in which each leaf, seed, or other structure follows the next at a particular angle called the golden angle. The golden angle is about 137.5º. Two radii of a circle C form the golden angle if they divide the circle into two areas A and B so that A/B = B/C.

Golden Ratio

The golden angle is closely related to the golden ratio, which the ancient Greeks studied extensively and some have believed to have divine, aesthetic or mystical properties.

Visible Sprials in Lattices:

Parastichies

Plants with spiral patterns related to the golden angle also display another curious mathematical property. The seeds of a flower head form interlocking spirals in both clockwise and counterclockwise directions. The number of clockwise spirals differs from the number of counterclockwise spirals, and these two numbers are called the plant's parastichy numbers (pronounced pi-RAS-tik-ee or PEHR-us-tik-ee).

These numbers have a remarkable consistency. They are almost always two consecutive Fibonacci numbers, which are another one of nature's mathematical favorites. The Fibonacci numbers form the sequence 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 . . . , in which each number is the sum of the previous two.

The Fibonacci numbers tend to crop up wherever the golden ratio appears, because the ratio between two consecutive Fibonacci numbers happens to be close to the golden ratio. The larger the two Fibonacci numbers, the closer their ratio to the golden ratio. But this relationship doesn't fully explain why parastichy numbers end up being consecutive Fibonacci numbers.

Scientists have puzzled over this pattern of plant growth for hundreds of years. Why would plants prefer the golden angle to any other? And how can plants possibly "know" anything about Fibonacci numbers?

Initially, researchers thought these patterns might provide an evolutionary advantage by somehow promoting plants' survival. But more recently, they have come to believe that the answer lies in the biochemistry of plants as they develop new leaves, flowers, or other structures. Scientists have not entirely solved the mystery, but a basic understanding of the process seems to be emerging. And the answers are sending botanists back to their electron microscopes to re-examine plants they thought they had already understood.

Mathematicians made the first contribution to the puzzle. In 1830, two brothers, Auguste and Louis Bravais, worked out a mathematical proof that spiral lattices generated by the golden angle have parastichy numbers that are consecutive Fibonacci numbers. But their proof still left the question of why the plants prefer the golden angle and Fibonacci numbers in the first place.

The first suggestion that the biochemistry of plant development might provide the key came in 1868. German botanist Wilhelm Hofmeister was studying the growing tips of plants, which contain cells that haven't yet acquired a particular function in the plant. These unformed cells are called stem cells in plants and, derivatively, in animals as well. The stem cells form tiny bumps called primordia, which then turn into flowers, stems, or other plant structures.

The primordia form in a small region at the tip of a stem. Hofmeister proposed that the precise spot in which they form within that region is the spot that is furthest from older primordia. The primordia then move outward and downward along the stem as the tip continues to grow.

Images from electron microscopes have confirmed Hofmeister's theory. Furthermore, in 2000, Didier Reinhardt of the University of Fribourg worked out the biochemistry within a plant that creates this behavior. As a primordium forms, it absorbs a plant hormone called auxin that promotes growth. The most auxin is left in the area furthest from other primordia, so the primordium moves in that direction.

But how does this explain the spiral patterns, golden angle, and Fibonacci numbers? Two physicists, Stéphane Douady and Yves Couder from the Laboratory for Statistical Physics in Paris, performed a compelling experiment in 1992 that tied these ideas together. They dropped magnetized drops of ferrofluid into a dish that was magnetized at its edge and filled with silicone oil. The droplets were simultaneously attracted to the edge of the dish and repelled from one another.

When the team dropped the oil in slowly, the droplets moved directly away from each other. But when they increased the speed, two older droplets would repel the new droplet simultaneously. So instead of simply marching to one side or the other, the droplet would move in a third direction—at the golden angle from the line connecting the drop's landing point with the previous droplet. The resulting pattern formed spirals.

Douady and Couder's result gave a beautiful analogy for plant growth, but Scott Hotton of Harvard University still wondered why the golden angle would emerge from this. He reduced Douady and Couder's experiment to a simple mathematical model, which showed that the forces Hofmeister described—outward, downward, and away from other primordia—produced golden angle spirals.

But Douady and Couder's work, along with Hotton's, had a surprising implication. Golden angle spirals weren't the only patterns that could emerge from Hofmeister's forces. The flowers could also produce their primordia at angles of approximately 99.5º. In that case, the numbers of spirals in each direction would not be Fibonacci numbers, but the closely related Lucas numbers, which begin with 1, 3, 4, 7 . . . , and continue with the sum of each two consecutive numbers forming the next number. Researchers have identified a few plants that grow in this pattern.

The researchers also found some even more peculiar possibilities. Instead of producing primordia at the same angle each time, plants could produce them at angles that vary but repeat. For instance, Hotton found that the angle could be 131, then 88, then 88 again, then 131, then 89, then 87, then 131, then 315, and then go back to 131 and start over.

Do any plants show this peculiar growth pattern? Botanists are still working to find out. Some preliminary results suggest that such patterns exist, but no one has yet found any conclusive evidence.

We're Here

Who needs Europe? The view from the 5th floor of the Ritz-Carlton Amelia Island this afternoon. Stunning. Will post more photos on instagram (instagram.com/majikphil) and facebook (facebook.com/phillipsnaturalworld) of this luxurious North Florida resort.

We've Read:

Leicester City Football Club

May Be Close To The

Upset Victory of the Century

By the time Leicester hosted Norwich City on a cold Saturday afternoon in late February, the team had lost just three matches, a remarkable run, and was on top of the English Premier League. By now, tickets to Leicester’s home games had become almost as hard to get as seats at the men’s final at Wimbledon. There is talk that this isn’t a fluke. There is talk that Leicester City could actually win the league and shatter the de facto cartel of very rich teams that have long controlled the Premier League. Also: Cristiano Ronaldo, Mario Balotelli and Dusdan Tadic: Who is football's real Mr. Muscle in the shirtless stakes?

With Romance Novels Booming, Beefcake Sells, but It Doesn't Pay

This corner of the book world is red hot and among the most innovative, with e-books and apps, and it needs a steady stream of fresh-faced cover models, but they won't get rich anytime soon posing for book covers.

Simmering for Decades,

Anger About Trade Boils Over in

2016 USA Elections

Anger about unbalanced trade has helped to fuel the rise of Donald J. Trump, the Republican front-runner, and the success of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in his bid for the Democratic nomination. The manifest anger also has pushed their principal rivals, Republican Senator Ted Cruz and the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton, to toughen their own trade rhetoric.

Bloodbath Alert:

Donald Trump Helps the GOP

Destroy Itself

Republican Presidential Candidates all back away from "the pledge"

to support whomever is the nominee increasing chances for a 3rd party

run for the presidency.

Nowhere Else in the World!

Nowhere else in the world can you find rock pinnacles with fantastic shapes like the ones found in Bryce Canyon National Park. Located in the High Plateaus region of the Colorado Plateau in Utah, Bryce Canyon’s elevation, erosion, climate and rock type are all elements that, when combined, form fantastical shapes called Hoodoos covering nearly 56 square miles of forever protected wilderness.

On our recent visit we were greeted by an abrupt snow storm at Bryce Canyon. The mosaic of white snow and reddish-orange hoodoos created a sensory marvel in this dazzling place. To say it was cold would have been a gross understatement. It was frigid, so cold that one's breath no longer turned to steam but dropped directly to the ground as ice crystals on each exhale, which made it all the more hauntingly beautiful.

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Below: Snow on Thor's Hammer.

Hoodoos

Hoodoos are pinnacles or spires carved by erosion of the Claron limestone, sandstone, and mudstones (more on these formations below). Websters is more direct, calling hoodoos "a natural column of rock often in a fantastic form." Fantastic indeed.

Ancient History

Early Native Americans left little to tell us of their use of the plateaus. We know that people have been in the Colorado Plateau region for about 12,000 years, but only random fragments of worked stone tell of their presence near Bryce Canyon. Artifacts tell a more detailed story of use at lower elevations beyond the park’s boundary.

Both Anasazi and Fremont influences are found near the park. The people of each culture left bits of a puzzle to be pieced together by present and future archaeologists. Paiutes lived in the region when Euro-Americans arrived in southern Utah. Paiutes provided an alternative explanation for the colorful hoodoos as “Legend People” who were turned to stone after they displeased the spirit Coyote.

The ancient ones must have been very large, as the immensity of the hoodoos dwarves full-grown ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa). The Canyon, named after the Mormon pioneer Ebenezer Bryce, is located in the easter edge of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. Ebenezer Bryce once called it a "hell of a place to lose a cow."

Water, not Wind Erosion

The chaotic destructive force of water, not wind, is responsible for the fantastic shapes in Bryce Canyon. Bryce Canyon Hoodoos formed over thousands of years by the same processes that form the features of surrounding parks.

Water, ice and gravity are the forces at work in Bryce Canyon National Park. These three forces coupled with the differential erosion of the Claron Formation produces a different morphology than that of any other area in the world.

The rocks exposed in Bryce Canyon are about 100 million years younger than those in nearby Zion National Park, and the rocks exposed in Zion are younger than those in the Grand Canyon to the south.

There are, however, shared rock units between all three, creating a supersequence of formations that geologists call the Grand Staircase. The Grand Staircase Escalante-National Monument encompasses nearly 2,000,000 acres (nearly 3,000 square miles) between Zion, Bryce, Arches and the Grand Canyon making this one of the most protected and spectacular geologic regions in the world.

Together the formations of the Grand Staircase record nearly 2000 million years (2 billion years) of the Earth's history. Bryce Canyon's formations are the youngest known units in the Grand Staircase. Younger rock units, if they ever existed, have been removed by erosion.

10-15 million years ago the Paunsaugunt Plateau was caught and lifted by the Colorado Plateau. Breaks, called joints, formed in the plateau during the uplift. Joints allowed water to flow into the rock and, as water flowed through, erosion widened them into rivulets and gullies. Over time, deep slot canyons formed in the sides of the plateau.

High Desert

Bryce Canyon receives an average rainfall of 10 inches a year in the valley and approximately 19 inches a year on the plateau. The majority of the precipitation falls in mid to late summer, as monsoons, usually in the afternoon. These thunderstorms can be fierce, dropping an inch or two of rain in under an hour and can often be accompanied by hail.

Because the soil at Bryce Canyon is very dry, only the top inch of soil absorbs rainfall before it starts to run off causing a treacherous flash flood. During a flash flood, rapidly moving water can carry rocks, tree limbs, and other debris which crashes into the canyon walls and congest passageways. Flash floods are a serious risk for the many explorers drawn to Bryce Canyon Country’s scenic slot canyons each year. Fortunately, flash floods can usually be avoided with common sense safety practices and an understanding of the conditions that cause them.

Snow

The Paunsaugunt Plateau receives approximately 100 inches of snowfall a year, which means that everyday a small amount of snow melts and runs into the joints and freezes at night. When water freezes it expands to form an ice wedge in the joint, widening the space. The ice wedge grows as more snow melts and freezes until finally, it breaks the rock.

Fragments of rock, from tiny pebbles to boulders as large as Volkswagens, fall from hoodoos and the sides of the Paunsaugunt Plateau by frost wedging and gravity. The smaller pieces are washed away by monsoons and snow melt while Boulders explode into cobble sized pieces on the canyon floor.

Claron Formation

Limestone, siltstone, dolomite and mudstone make up the four different rock types that form the Claron Formation. Each rock type erodes at different rates which is what causes the undulating shapes of the hoodoos.

Limestone, siltstone and dolomite are very hard and form the protective caprock on most of the spires. These harder rocks are eroded predominantly by frost.

Mudstone is the softest rock in a hoodoo and is easily identified by the way it forms the narrowest portion of the pinnacles. As mudstone moistens it erodes easily and runs down the sides of the rock forming mud stucco as a protective coating. Every time it rains the layer of mud stucco is renewed. If wind does not erode the stucco layer fast enough it will renew before wind erosion affects the rock. For this reason, wind has little to no effect on hoodoo formation or destruction.

Ancient Sedimentation

The Cretaceous Period began some 144 million years ago and lasted until about 63 million years ago. The rock formations you see exposed at Bryce Canyon began to develop during this time. For 60 million years a great seaway extended northwestward into this area, depositing sediments of varying thickness and composition as it repeatedly invaded, retreated, and then re-invaded the region. Retreating to the southeast, it left sediments thousands of feet thick. Their remnants form the oldest, lowest, gray-brown rocks at Bryce Canyon.

In the Tertiary Period, between 66 and 40 million years ago, highlands to the west eroded into shallow, broad basins. Iron-rich, limy sediments were deposited in the beds of a series of lakes and streams. These became the red rocks of the Claron Formation from which the hoodoos are carved and for which the Pink Cliffs are named.

Natural Bridge

Though the name tends to be misleading, Natural Bridge is one of several natural arches in Bryce Canyon and creates a beautiful scene at this viewpoint. This arch, sculpted from some of the reddest rock of the Claron Formation (rich in iron oxide minerals), poses a stark contrast to the dark green of the Ponderosa forest that peeks through the arch from the canyon below.

Geology of Natural Bridges and Arches

Bridges form through the erosion of rock by streams or rivers. This window or arch formed from a combination of processes. Frost wedging, the expanding of cracks in rock as water turns to ice, weakened the rock. Dissolution, the chemical dissolving of rock by rainwater, chewed away at the top and sides of this wall of rock. Finally gravity pulled loose the weakened pockets of rock at the center creating the hole you see. Thus, Bryce Canyon's 'bridges', including Natural Bridge, are spectacular examples of arches that, like the hoodoos, are constantly at risk of destruction as the forces of erosion continue to wear the rock away.

Winter Ice Hiking

After a big snowfall most of the Bryce Canyon's day-hiking trails require snowshoes. However, after a few days of melt, and with continued use, the trails become so well packed and icy that snowshoes are often more of a liability.

For much of the winter the most popular trails are so icy that steep sections cannot be safely traversed without some sort of additional traction device for your hiking shoes or boots. While mountaineering crampons work fine, they are heavier and much more expensive than nylon and metal traction devices that clamp onto any shoe. The Bryce Canyon Natural History Association's bookstore at the Visitor Center sells such devices for the discounted price of $25.

While we stayed mostly to the main road there was plenty of slipping and sliding on ice. It was very cold, but I took my hands out their gloves long enough to play with a little snowman.

Its all about perspective. In the image above he doesn't look so small. But below you can see it was a momentary impulse. My freezing ears, nose and fingers convinced me the photo op wasn't really worth it.

Park Friends

For the most part we had Bryce Canyon all to ourselves though there was the occasional tourist who would stop and stare, along with us. Over the course of a couple of days we few tourists all got to know one another and became fast "park friends" or at least "neighbors."

The sunset at Bryce Canyon, even on a snowy afternoon, was gorgeous, but I imagined that the sunrise was going to instigate a more dramatic effect, as the morning light would enter the canyon from its open end.

Inspiration Point

On our way out we took the time to stop and check the view at Inspiration Point one more time. The view at Inspiration Point consists of three levels that provide varied spectacular perspectives of the main amphitheater. From here, one looks toward the Silent City (near Sunset Point) with its many rows of seemingly frozen hoodoos set against the backdrop of Boat Mesa. All who look out from this point are bound to be inspired.

What was great about visiting in winter was that it was mostly quiet. All one heard was the sound of the wind, the snow, the rustling of the ponderosa pines, and occasionally the call of one of the parks many ravens (see Bryce Canyon Ravens)

I love this solar array that powers the bookstore and gift shop. You'd never see something like this in Florida, we are "The Sunshine State," but our leaders are head-in-the-ground, climate-change denying Republicans (at the moment). I could so see this array in my backyard powering all my electric needs.

Lodging at Bryce Canyon

There are 2 Best Western Hotels at the entrance to Bryce Canyon. Both are 4-star resorts with massive rooms. See my full review of these facilities at this link: Bryce Canyon

Above: The view from our "room." It was a king suite that was as big as a house. Absolutely more than I ever expected. And that view! Spectacular.

Below: You won't see any bison in Bryce Canyon National Park but there are plenty to be seen on farms along the road between Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park.

We've Read, Watched, Followed:

Don't Let Anyone Tell

You That You're Not the

Center of the Universe!

The Big Bang didn't happen at a place; it happened at a time. When Albert Einstein married space and time in his theory of relativity back in 1905, he taught us that our eyes are time machines. Nothing can go faster than the speed of light, the cosmic speed limit, and so all information comes to us, to the present, from the past. And so Einstein's relativity teaches that the center of the universe is everywhere and nowhere. It is the present, surrounded by concentric shells of the past. History racing at you at 186,282 miles per second, the speed of light, the speed of all information.

Why are Leicester so Hard to Beat?

Claudio Ranieri's side moved a step closer to an unlikely Premier League title with Sunday's victory over Southampton and, again, their defence played a huge part in their success.

The Foxes won 1-0 for the fifth time in their last six matches and are now seven points clear of second-placed Tottenham with six games to go.

Zika Vaccine Could Solve One Problem While Stoking Another

Growing concerns about Zika-autoimmune disease link are casting a shadow over vaccine development.

Florida is Ground Zero for Zika in USA

Epidemiologists warns that Zika remains viable in blood for a week meaning that tourists are walking the virus into Florida and mosquitoes are then transporting it far and wide in Florida's warm and moist environment, which as any Floridian can tell you is ideal for mosquitoes.

Welcome to the "Anthropocene"—a new epoch in Earth's 4.5 billion year history. Thanks to the colossal changes humans have made since the mid-20th century, Earth has now entered a distinct age from the Holocene epoch, which started 11,700 years ago as the ice age thawed. That's according to an argument made by a team of scientists from the Anthropocene Working Group. Scientists say an epoch ends following an event—like the asteroid that demolished the dinosaurs and ended the late Cretaceous Epoch 66million years ago—that altered the underlying rock and sedimentary layers so significantly that its remnants can be observed across the globe. In a paper published this week titled, "The Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene," the researches presented evidence for why they think mankind's marks over the recent past ushered in a new geological time period.

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The Anthropocene has emerged as a popular scientific term used by scientists, the scientifically engaged public and the media to designate the period of Earth's history during which humans have a decisive influence on the state, dynamics and future of the Earth system. It is wildly agreed that the Earth is currently in this state.

Care should be taken to distinguish the concept of an "Anthropocene" from the previously used term "Anthropogene" which generally refers to the Quarternary (the second period of the Cenozoic era, which began about 2 million years ago).

The Antropocene is being considered as a potential geological epoch, i.e. at the same hierarchical level as the Pleistocene and Holocene epochs, with the implication that it is within the Quarternary Period, but that the Holocene has terminated. To be so-accepted "Anthropocene" needs to be scientifically justified (i.e. the geological signal currently being produced in strata now forming must be sufficiently large, clear and distinctive) and (b) useful as a formal term to the scientific community. In terms of (b), the currently informal term "Anthropocene" has already proven to be very useful to the global change research community and thus will continue to be used, but it remains to be determined whether formalization within the Geological Time Scale would make it more useful or broaden its usefulness to other scientific communities, such as the geological community.

The beginning of the "Anthropocene" is most generally considered to be c. 1800 CE (formerly AD), or about 216 years ago, around the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in Europe. Other potential candidates for time boundaries have been suggested, at both earlier dates (within of even before the Holocene) or later (at the start of the nuclear age). A formal "Anthropocene" might be defined either with reference to a particular point with a stratal section, that is a Global Stratigraphic Section and Point (GSSP), colloquially known as a "golden spike;" or by a designated time boundary (a Global Standard Stratigraphic Age).

8 Indicators of the Anthropocene

1. Modern Agriculture

In the last century, fertilizers used in crop production doubled the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus in the soil. Signals of these chemicals found within lake strata are now at their highest levels in the past 100,000 years.

2. Aluminum

Rarely found in its native form before the 1800s, global production of aluminum has increased by 98% since the 1950s.

3. Concrete

Pervasive since World War II, concrete is now the world's primary building material. The amount produced in the last 20 years is enough to cover each square foot of the planet with three ounces of concrete.

4. Plastic

The amount of plastic produced each year weighs roughly as much as all humans on Earth combined. Some is recycled, but most gets discarded to landfills, roadsides, or ends up in the ocean. Plastics, along with aluminum and concrete, decay very slowly and will leave behind identifiable fossils, called "technofossils" in the geological record.

5. Nuclear Fallout

Fallout from thermonuclear weapons detonated in the mid-20th century generated clear signals of carbon-14 and plutonium-239 across Earth that will be detectable in sediments and ice for at least 100,000 years.

6. Landfills

Materials disposed in landfills and used in construction and mining have introduced the greatest number of new minerals to the environment since the Great Oxygenation Event 2.3 billion years ago.

7. Urban Structures

Humans have transformed more than half of Earth's land surface with buildings, roads, mines, farms and landfills, among other uses.

8. Dams

In the past 60 years, large dams have been constructed worldwide at a rate of one per day. Each will last for 50 to 200 years, interrupting the flow of sediments to the ocean and disrupting the formation of rock layers.

We've Read and Watched:

Player of the Week
Wes Morgan
Goal picks the English Premier League (EPL) player of the week after the last two Gameweek fixtures. This time it's Leicester captain and defensive rock Wes Morgan.

We're Not In Scotland Anymore!
Outlander Season 2 Review
First, we don't like to think too much. Please, please. . . make the story linear. Second. No one wants to see anymore than they have to of Tobias Menzies and everyone wants to see a lot more of Sam Heughan (like in Season 1). That said, after a rocky start they did seem to get back to the chronological telling of the story, which is what we all want.

How to Train Like the Mountain From 'Game of Thrones'

8 meals a day, eggs and oatmeal. . . meat, grains, vegetables, avocados and peanut butter. . . pretty much anything else you can imagine. . .

Banshee

Fans hate the Time Jumps and Flashbacks

What were they thinking?

Magnussen has Unfinished Olympic Business

James Magnussen is still driven by the memory of his heartbreaking loss in the 100 meters freestyle final at the London Olympics and the Australian cannot wait to "set things straight" in Rio later this year. Also: A Totally Scientific Ranking of 24 Male Athletes Turned Underwear Models.

If Disney World is supposed to be the happiest place on Earth then Silver Springs, a wonder of the 19th century world, is surely the saddest. The springs and river have a lot of lyngbya cyanobacteria infiltration (see below) from the impact and runoff from millions of homes, septic tanks, and farms that have grown up around Ocala largely unchecked by a government bent on the outdated concept of economic growth at any cost. The result is darker, less amazing water. Ironically, none of this would have happened if Disney had not chosen Florida for his mega-theme parks.

The population of Marion County, where Silver Springs is located, has grown by 33% since 1990 to over 350,000 people, all needing water to survive.

The Silver Spring park is worn. It kind of resembles a place that has gone into retirement. The mall near the glass bottom boat launch is mostly empty, the gardens have been allowed to grow over with native plants (mostly poison ivy) and the "attractions" are all in ruins. Two of the original art deco glass bottom boats still ply the waters around the main spring but there are no lines, few tourists, and the few people who were hiking the park on a recent Saturday were reminiscing about how it was in the past, not impressed with its current condition.

Growth for Growth's Sake

I found it to be a sad statement of what successive Republican regimes in Tallahassee have made priority, economic growth, with no regard for the natural environment and its carrying-capacity for more growth. They are allowing the things that made Florida special to be systematically destroyed.

The water, and the idea that an average of 516 million gallons per day are bubbling up from the springs here is still amazing, but it is diminished from even the relatively recent past.

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Springs' Importance to Florida

Florida's springs are among the State's most valued natural and scenic resources, and Silver Springs is the largest (in average flow) and by far the most famous. Springs are an important part of Florida's history, dating back to the days of early Spanish explorers including Ponce de León, who came in 1513 seeking "the Fountain of Youth" (see my photos of de León's mythical Fountain of Youth).

Springs' Past Use

Archeological evidence indicates that Indian villages were located near springs; native Floridians used the springs for their water supply and fished in the streams formed by the springs. Many of Florida's springs are tourist attractions and most are located in the northern half of the State.

Springs are the surface evidence of a vast underground water resource, the Floridian aquifer system, which has been strained to the breaking point by 20,000,000 residents and countless daily visitors to Florida. The Floridian aquifer supplies most of Florida's drinking water. The large quantities of water discharged from Florida springs indicate the large capacity of the underground aquifer system to store and transmit water.

Cypress knees are a hazard when hiking. Here I have my boot on one that caught my foot and almost took me down. All along the Silver River there are plenty of cypress knees which are thought to help stabilize their parent plants and perhaps transport oxygen to the large trees.

Florida's springs provide the base flow for many of the streams and rivers that are used for boating, fishing, swimming, scuba diving, and snorkeling in the state. The nearly constant temperature of spring water creates an ideal habitat for many plants and animals.

900 Known Springs Exist in Florida

The more than 900 known springs in Florida discharge about 12,300 cubic feet per second or nearly 8 billion gallons of fresh water per day. This equals what the state was using for all purposes in 1990 when the human population was only 13,000,000. With a Florida population approaching 21,000,000, water use is assumed to be nearly double what it was in 1990 or about 16 billion gallons per day. Floridians are estimated to use about 103 gallons of water per day, each (x 21 million = 2 billion, 163 million gallons per day). Add in a million tourists, golf courses, lawn watering, fountains, swimming pools, etcetera and you quickly see where Florida's water is going. And, it is therefore not surprising that Florida's springs are suffering.

Swarms of water bugs (and every other imaginable insect) were around the spring on a recent Saturday afternoon.

Factors Controlling Spring Flow

The amount of water that flows from springs depends on many factors, including the size of the caverns within the rocks, the water pressure in the aquifer the size of the spring basin, and the amount of rainfall. Human activities greatly influence the volume of water that discharges from a spring—ground-water withdrawals in an area can reduce the pressure in an aquifer, causing water levels in the aquifer sysem to drop and ultimately decrease the flow from the spring.

A healthy crop of Poison Ivy was found throughout the park where gardens once were tended.
The water features were all dry and in disrepair.

Springs are Classified by Magnitude

Springs are ranked according to the volume of water flowing from the ground. Discharge from Florida's springs can range from less than 1 pint per minute (8th magnitude) to more than 64.6 million gallons per day (1st magnitude).

Florida has more first-magnitude springs than any other state in the Nation. The sum of the average flow from Florida's 33 first-magnitude springs is estimated to be 9,400 cubic feet per second (6 billion 75 million gallons per day) or about 76 percent of the average flow of all the known springs in Florida.

Several first-magnitude springs are internationally known (Silver Springs, Rainbow Springs, Wakulla Springs, and Weeki Wachee). About 70 springs are second-magnitude collectively discharging about 2,600 cubic feet per second (1 billion 680 million gallons per day) or about 21 percent of the total discharge from all known Florida springs. More than 190 springs are third-magnitude or less; these collectively discharge more than 300 cubic feet per second (194 million gallons per day), or about 3 percent of the total discharge from all Florida springs.

Chief Osceola (1804-1838)
On October 23, 1834, the Seminole Indians met in council at Silver Springs to discuss demands of the United States for their removal to the West. Osceola, then an obscure sub-chief, swayed the council with his oratory and set the Indians against removal. This was the real beginning of the Great Seminole War of 1835-42, in which as head war-chief, Osceola became an important Indian military genius and strategist of American history. He was captured through deception and died at Fort Moultrie, Charleston, January 30, 1838.

Which Spring is Florida's Largest?

It all depends on how you measure largest. Highest discharge ever? Average discharge? Cumulative discharge from springs in a group? Wikipedia has a long list of the Major Springs in Florida along with their flow rates and locations.

Spring Creek Springs and Crystal River Springs are the two largest springs in Florida. Discharge measured from Spring Creek Springs (a group of eight known vents) in 1974 was about 2,000 cubic feet per second or 1 billion, 293 million gallons per day. The average discharge from Crystal River Springs is 878 cubic feet per second or 567 million gallons per day from 30 individual spring vents. Both of these springs are located near the coast. The discharge of springs near the coast is commonly affected by tides.

Silver Springs is the largest inland spring in the State (based on average discharged). Measured discharge from Silver Springs ranges from 517 to 1,290 cubic feet per second (334 to 834 million gallons per day), with an average discharge of 799 cubic feet per second or 516 million gallons per day based on records from 1933 to 1993. The highest recorded discharge from any inland Florida spring is 1,910 cubic feet per second or 1 billion 234 million gallons per day, measured at Wakulla Springs. Wakulla's maxium discharge is about 50% greatner than the maximum measured discharge from Silver Springs (1,290 cubic feet per second, 834 million gallons per day). Wakulla Springs also has the greatest range in discharge of all Florida springs, from 25 cubic feet per second to 1,910 cubic feet per second (16 million to 1 billion 234 million gallons per day); however the average discharge at Wakulla (391 cubic feet per second, 253 million gallons per day) is less than half that of Silver Springs' average of 799 cubic feet per second or 516 million gallons per day. See my photos of Wakulla Springs.

Water Quality of Springs

The quality of water discharged by springs can vary greatly because of factors such as the quality of the water that recharges the aquifer and the type of rocks with which the ground water is in contact. The rate of flow and the length of the flowpath through the aquifer affects the amount of time the water is in contact with the rock, and thus, the amount of minerals that the water can dissolve. The quality of the water also can be affected by the mixing of freshwater with pockets of ancient seawater in the aquifer or with modern seawater along the coast.

Water from Florida springs is usually remarkably clear. Water from some springs, however, may be tea-colored, indicating the presence of tannic acid. If surface water (runoff from roads, gas stations, homes, farms) enters the aquifer near a spring, the water can move quickly through the aquifer and discharge at the spring vent. The discharge of highly colored water from springs can indicate that water is flowing quickly through large channels within the aquifer without being filtered through limestone.

Lyngbya,

A New Problem for

Silver Springs

A new problem facing Florida's springs is the invasion of cyanobacteria (above), specifically Lyngbya. Lyngbya is not a plant, a fungus, a bacteria, or a true algae. It is a primitive lifeform called a cyanobacteria (a blue-green algae capable of photosynthesis even in low light conditions). It forms dense mats in springs and rivers near springs particularly from the Ocala National Forest westward indicating the presence of unnatural fertilizers and fecal runoff in spring and river water.

Lyngbya forms long filamentous hair-like strands that mat together in thick layers, sometimes 5 feet thick. It can rise 10-15 feet from a river's bottom tot eh water's surface. It is slimy to touch because of the mucus-like coating it produces. Large floating mats of lyngbya rise to the surface because of the gases released by the bacteria that live inside the mats that deplete oxygen from the water body.

Thick mats of Lyngbya can clog spring vents and reduce flow, drowd out benefical native grasses, and block sunlight to plants growing on the bottom. It is also potentially toxic to manatees who it because native grasses are depleted.

In humans Lyngbya can cause skin irritations, eye infections and other health related issues.

A wildly twisted Sabal Palm surviving from the days when there were extensive gardens at Silver Springs

The once proud entrance to Silver Springs framed by massive, ancient, bald cypress trees

For frequently asked questions about Florida springs check out the Florida's Springs FAQ page which answers commonly asked questions about springs in Florida.

A couple of headlines from the Gainesville Sun and the Ocala StarBanner. Spraying watered down animal excrement on fields near springs. . . c'mon, does anyone really think that's a good idea?

No lines for glass bottom boat tours on a recent Saturday afternoon.

Who has Jurisdiction

over Silver Springs?

The St. Johns River Water Management District is responsible for protecting Silver Springs, however, the District's budget has been severely cut in recent years by successive Republican regimes in Tallahassee who do not see the value of Florida's natural resources. See Republican Gov. Rick Scott orders more budget cuts at Water Management Districts.

Other Factors Affecting Florida's Springs: Drought

Spring flow is closely tied to rainfall, and record low rainfall over the past decade in many areas of florida caused many springs to experience reductions in flow from historic levels. At the same time, many springs also experienced changes in their ecology, such as increased algal growth, declines in native submersed aquatic vegetation, increases in nonnative or exotic vegetation, and lower fish abundance.

Recreation concentrated in springs and their downstream spring runs has caused physical damage as visitors impact springs by damaging vegetation in and around the springs and by discarding trash carelessly. Swimming, snorkeling and tubing in spring runs can cause water to be cloudy, or turbid, which prevents sunlight from reaching underwater grasses. Here at the main boil of Silver Springs there was no shortage of trash floating in the shallows.

Water quality has also declined as the residential and commercial use of fertilizers and wastewater from treatment plants and septic tanks has increased in the state's springsheds with explosive human population growth.

Ruins of the Wilderness Trail Ride

While there were many different rides and attractions at Silver Springs over the years this is one I remember most fondly. The Wilderness Trail Ride was a Jeep ride where guests were taken through a 35-acre section of forest surrounding the park to see many of the native species and animals and see more Silver Springs history (such as Rhesus Monkeys and Tarzan's house from the original Tarzan movies filmed here in the 1930s).

All that remains today is a decaying dock and overgrown boardwalk that abruptly ends in multiple directions. For more information on past attractions at Silver Springs see: Silver Springs Attractions, but know they are all gone today.

Yield to Glass Bottom Boats

Florida Today

Litter, Trash, Garbage

Just outside Silver Springs where Six Gun Territory once to beckoned for Wild West shows there are now strip malls, major highways, and garbage everywhere. This is not a sight unique to Silver Spring. This is Florida today. Overrun and under-appreciated by careless residents and visitors. The image below was made at a gas station directly across from the park. At least this trash was near a receptacle. Much trash was blowing around in streets and parking lots. Would it really be so hard to carry this home and deposit it in a bin?

The garbage and litter I find most annoying are plastic water and sports drink bottles. There is not one space in Florida that you couldn't stop and collect a trash bag full of these bottles. It is an epidemic. I count 4 plastic water or sports drink bottles in my image below.

We've Read and Watched:

Don't Forget to Shower!
Aggressive, infectious bacteria species found in Sydney, Australia Harbor

An aggressive species of marine bacteria responsible for many more deaths than sharks worldwide each year has been found in Sydney Harbor, with experts predicting outbreaks in spots along the city's waterfront as water temperatures rise with global warming. Vibrio bacteria, which includes the species that causes cholera, can cause serious illness in humans and animals, including gastrointestinal sickness through consumption of contaminated seafood and flesh-eating infections in swimmers. Don't forget to shower!

'Deadpool' isn't the Only Solution.

But 'Batman v Superman' is the Problem

The fight between Batman and Superman is fundamentally illogical. (Uh, he's super, man). Maybe it's that the fights are treated with onerous seriousness by real scientists, journalists, cable-news bigmouths and sitting senators. (You, Patrick Leahy? Again?) Maybe it's that Shostakovich fugue on the soundtrack. . . or maybe it's the persecution and martyring and pietà-cradling and resurrection done to, and by, a certain Man of Steel. . .

'Gangster Islam'

Jihadi mentor mingled crime with religion. Khalid Zerkani dubbed the "Santa Claus of Jihad." Belgian authorities called him the "archetype of a seditious mentor." Why is he still alive? Related: The Islamic State of Molenbeek.

What's Happening with Sea-level Rise?

When it comes to climate change, the science is in and the debate is over. Except in Florida, of course. See also: Florida Republican Gov. Rick Scott bans the term 'climate change' to all state agencies.

Blur Man Group

The artists behind Discovery's 'Naked and Afraid'

Fanning Springs, once a magnificent first magnitude fountain of clear, blue, fresh water emerging from the ground at a rate of about 110 cubic feet per second (in 1930) is today a second magnitude spring with a flow estimated to be between 10 and 100 cubic feet per second.

The spring pool is about 207 feet by 144 feet, and the main funnel-shaped vent is about 20 feet deep. Several other small seeps create sand boils and trickle into the spring pool from limestone outcroppings on one end.

The spring is located inside Fanning Springs State Park on the Suwannee River in Levy County, Florida.

The Most Impacted Spring in Florida?

Fanning Springs may also be the most impacted—by development—of all of Florida's once-first magnitude springs. The spring's flow has been disrupted by enormous withdrawals of water from the Floridian Aquifer while the water itself has become highly contaminated with nitrates from fertilizers and septic tanks.

Fanning Spring was historically a first magnitude spring, but is now considered a second magnitude. Flow reductions are the result of increased groundwater pumping due to highly populated areas throughout the state, such a Jacksonville, which alter the potentiometric surface of the aquifer and therefore alter the springshed boundaries as well. Aquifer drawdown is also due to agricultural and other industrial processes within the springshed which permanently remove a certain percentage of the water consumed from the groundwater supply.

Also the spring's popularity as a recreational area combined with its shallow spring pool, its short run to the Suwannee River (450 feet), and nutrient runoff from the surrounding landscape, have caused most of the natural vegetation to disappear and nutrient levels are the second highest of any springs (4.8 milligrams per liter) in the state.

There are two springs at the park, Fanning and Little Fanning. The park is a popular site for recreation and offers swimming, volleyball, hiking, and camping. The swimming area includes a dive platform over the main boil, which averages around 18 feet deep, while the rest of the swimming area is inches to 6 feet deep.

Large Agricultural Springshed

The springshed (land area that drains water to a particular spring) of Fanning Springs is comprised of 450 square miles of northwestern Levy County and southwestern Gilchrist County. 75% of the land use in these two counties composed of pine plantations, improved pasture, hardwood conifer forests, wetland-mixed forests, temperate hardwood forests, and forest regeneration areas.

Nitrates = Lyngbya

Nitrate (NO3) levels have been rising exponentially at Fanning Springs since the 1970’s. Fanning Springs, in fact, has the second largest NO3 loading of any spring. These high nitrate levels not only cause algal blooms, but they start to stress the species present and to cause extinctions.

The high nitrate concentration (4.8 mg/L) is almost 100 times the background level (0.05 mg/L) and rising. Annually, 1200 tons of nitrate are applied as fertilizer to the agricultural areas of the springshed in Gilchrist county which result in an annual loading of around 2.46 mg/L or 50% of that found discharging from the spring. The result is heavy concentration of cyanobacteria Lyngbya seen clinging to the steps and railing of an entrance

to the swimming area.

The high levels of nitrate at Fanning Springs are the result of several inputs. The dominant land use inside the Fanning Springs springshed, which spans parts of Gilchrist and Levy County, is agriculture. Based on fertilizer sale records it is clear that agriculture is responsible for a significant concentration of nitrates entering the groundwater, which eventually discharges at the spring. Other sources of nitrate include the urbanized areas inside the springshed that use septic tanks that provide minimal treatment before discharging high concentrations of nitrogen into the groundwater.

Springs' Importance Forgotten

Springs are valuable natural and scenic resources that have played an important role in North Florida‘s history. Native Indians located their villages near springs and many springs were used by 19th century Floridians as a source of drinking water as well as a place to take a cool swim in the summer. Some spring runs were modified to funnel the water through channels to power mills. Early in the 1900’s, resorts were developed around sulfur springs due to the perceived medicinal effects of bathing in these springs. Today, springs in the region continue to attract visitors who enjoy their beauty and recreational opportunities.

Florida's Shame

Thanks to the Springs Initiative, created in 2001, our knowledge of the Suwanee River system has expanded greatly. Hundreds of new springs have been discovered, some within the banks of the river and others further inland. Fanning Springs was one the largest springs flowing directly into the Suwanee River until relatively recently. Florida, however, has invested a paltry $15 million over a decade, of its $80 billion annual budget, to protecting and restoring springs.

How do Springs Function?

Springs are the surface evidence of a vast underground water resource, the Floridan aquifer system, which supplies most of the State's drinking water. The amount of water that flows from springs depends on many factors, including the size of the caverns within the rocks around the springs, the water pressure in the aquifer the size of the spring basin, and the amount of rainfall. Human activities also influence the volume of water that discharges from a spring—ground-water withdrawals in an area like Fanning Springs, reduce the pressure in an aquifer, causing water levels in the aquifer system to drop and ultimately decreasing the flow from the spring.

A massive, thick sequence of carbonate rock underlies the entire Suwanee River Water Management District (which has authority over springs within its political boundaries) and constitutes the Floridan aquifer system. The majority of the rock is limestone, which is calcium carbonate. The remaining rock is dolomite, which is calcium-magnesium carbonate.

Dolomite is basically harder than limestone but has similar hydrogeologic properties. Unconsolidated material (sand or clay) usually overlies the Floridan aquifer system. However, once the carbonate rock is encountered in the subsurface, it is rare to find sand or clay (except in sinkhole fill). The carbonates of the Tertiary period are up to 2,500 feet thick in the SRWMD and are saturated with water. The potable portion of this aquifer generally ranges between 250 and 1,200 feet below land surface.

As rainwater enters or "recharges" the aquifer, pressure is placed on the water already present. This pressure moves water through the cracks and tunnels within the aquifer, and this water flows out naturally to the surface at places called springs.

The Floridan aquifer system extends throughout peninsular Florida and the southern portions of Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. It generally underlies all of the Southeastern Coastal Plain and partially extends under the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.

At the zenith of the last ice age (approximately 13,000 years ago), sea level was nearly 300 feet below its present altitude. It was from that time to the present that this regional aquifer system filled with fresh water. As rain water recharges the aquifer system, the carbon dioxide in the rain water creates carbonic acid. This weak acid in the rain water dissolves the limestone and creates cavities and caverns in the aquifer. This results in a type of land form known as karst. A karst region typically lacks well developed surface drainage and has many sinkholes and springs. Also, a high percentage of rainfall will recharge directly into the aquifer in a karst region.

The Suwanee River, looking SW.
I was shocked by the amount of floating garbage in the river.

The Floridan aquifer system is the water source for all of the springs in North Central Florida, as well as the major source of drinking water in North Central Florida.

Phillip, hiking in the swamps along the Suwanee River trying to get some better shots of the garbage and debris along the river's banks.

Flow Level Importance

Flow level is important in Fanning Springs due to its recognition as a thermal refuge for manatees. Given that manatees require a certain water depth in order to be able to reach a spring (at least 5 ft), it is often impossible today for manatees to seek refuge here.

Other issues affecting the springs are structural, including a floating boat dock and a seawall which limit the spring’s ability to support manatees, and other flora and fauna that a natural slope would allow, such as turtles and wetland plants.

The lack of submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) has occurred relatively recently. Before the spring became a state park in 1997 it still had a lot of SAV in the spring and spring run. Since it has been made a park, thousands of visitors a year come to swim and wade in its shallow spring pool. This disturbs the bottom soil and makes SAV growth nearly impossible. The spring run is subject to occasional dredging in order to support boat travel to the floating boat dock that separates the boats from the swimming area. This dredging is responsible for the lack of SAV growth in the spring run.

The spring run is about 100 feet wide and flows only 450 feet before it discharges into the Suwannee River. A boardwalk extends through an old-growth floodplain swamp, passing a enormous cypress tree, to the east bank of the Suwannee. Little Fanning Spring is hidden in the woods about 500 feet south of Fanning Spring and also runs a short distance to the Suwannee.

Due to its high-volume discharge, Fanning Spring rarely reverses its direction of flow, as do many other Suwannee River springs, but in recent drought years, “brown-outs” have become more common when the tannin (tea-colored) river backs up into the run and covers the spring.

When rivers flood, the pressure created by rising floodwaters causes many springs within the Suwannee River Basin to reverse flow and bring river water into the aquifer. This reverse flow is an important part of groundwater recharge and the health of the caves associated with the springs.

Pond Scum (Lyngbya)

The floating boom at the end of the swimming area holds back a massive mat of Lyngbya which is commonly referred to in Florida as "pond scum." Seeing that much Lyngbya in a swimming area, in spring is a pretty good indication that you might not want to swim in that water.

Lyngbya is not a plant, a fungus, a bacteria, or a true algae. It is a primitive form of life called a Cyanobacteria, a blue-green algae cappale of photosynthesis even in low light conditions. It will quickly cover a pond rising 15 or more feet from the bottom and forming thick, slimy mats.

Resurrection Fern

Resurrection fern (Pleopeltis polypodioides (L.) Andrews & Windham) covers the trees. On the Gulf side of Florida there were enough showers to bring this plant back to life. We're still waiting on the Atlantic side for some real rain.

The picnic area at Fanning Springs State Park up the hill from the spring.

Suwanee River Sunset

Current Flow Information for Fanning Springs

Danger

Jumping Sturgeon

What? Yeah. During warmer months when you hear a splash in the Suwanee River it may be a Gulf Sturgeon (Acipenser oxyrinchus destol) hurtling itself in magnificent leaps out of the water. Sturgeons are primitive, bottom-dwelling fish. They come into rivers to spawn in the spring and summer months and remain in fresh water while young. Older juveniles and adults are commonly found in rivers, estuaries, and marine environments.

The sturgeon's skin is embedded with bony plates instead of scales. As it weighs up to 300 pounds and reaches a length of 9 feet, one should beware if a sturgeon comes crashing into your small boat. The great fish has a life span of at least 80 years and will starve itself while spawning in the Suwanee. The fish may lose 100 pounds of its massive weight before returning to the Gulf of Mexico.

Personally, from seeing the awful pollution in the Suwanee River, I don't think I'd eat there either.

We've Been There, Done That:

Yeah. Enough Said.

@philzcatz

Royal Caribbean's Brilliance of the Seas Sails under Florida's Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay

@majikphil

@plasticjesus

Sand Key Lighthouse

Proof of Global Warming if you Ever Needed It. In 1827 there were trees and houses and. . .well, an island. Today it is under a few feet of water.

@majikphil

Canaveral National Seashore's Apollo and Playlinda Beaches are
incomparable. Unspoiled, easily accessible, uncrowded, and not
mentioned at all on Condé Nast's list.

Condé Nast recently released their list for the 10 Best Beaches in Florida. While we don't necessarily agree with the rankings this year they are all great beaches. Who better to critique the list and make some other suggestions than Florida natives? We are, and we have. We've added our own commentary to their top ten, and then made a few suggestions that they overlooked.

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See all the unedited photos at

Unsafe abortion: global and regional estimates of incidence of unsafe abortion and associated mortaility

Phillip on twitter @philzcatz

The List

I went to college in Pensacola and did my Master's thesis on anthropogenic
impacts on Santa Rosa Island. This beach is home to me.

10. Pensacola Beach, and all of Santa Rosa Island from Fort Pickens in the west to Navarre in the east is surely the most spectacular and relatively unspoiled 40 miles of beach in Florida. The beaches are stunning and largely uncrowded except for near hotels and during special events (Memorial Day, July 4, Labor Day). This seemingly endless expanse of snow-white sand and dolphin-rich waters is often cited as the crown jewel of the Gulf Islands National Seashore, an exquisite patchwork of barrier islands stretching 160 miles across the Gulf of Mexico, from Mississippi to the Florida Panhandle. We whole-heartedly agree with this choice though we think it should be rated higher than #10.

Panama City Beach, Photo: Getty Images

9. Panama City Beach, now that it is no longer the spring break capital of the world, this 17-mile stretch of powdery, white sands and emerald waters is splendid. But just an hour to the east, St. George Island is almost completely deserted and is even more dazzling. If you go to St. George instead, make sure to check out the nearby St. Vincent National Wildlife Refuge and Tate's Hell State Forest. Also not to be missed is one of Florida's largest and finest 1st magnitude springs located relatively close to St. George's Island, Wakulla Springs State Park. Wakulla is one of the wonders of the natural world and a must-see on any Florida vacation.

St. George Island State Park
deserted, magnificent white sand, solitude, perfection

View from the 6th floor of the Ritz-Carlton, Amelia Island
more of my photos of this resort on instagram @majikphil

8. Amelia Island. Old Florida is still alive and well on this barrier island northeast of Jacksonville. Pull up an Adirondack chair, swap the mojito for an old-fashioned ice cream cone, and watch the kids build sand castles and cavort across uncongested beaches. Stay at the Ritz-Carlton for an exceptional vacation experience while on Amelia Island.

Bahia Honda State Park, Photo: Florida State Parks

7. Bahia Honda. The closer we get to the top of Condé Nast's list the odder the choices become. Bahia Honda, while stunning, is pretty inaccessible. It is a long drive from Miami, its beaches are dangerous (strong currents) and the coral "beach" can be something akin to walking on sharp rocks. Like the other keys (islands) it sits between the confluence of the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Bahia Honda (Honda Bay) is a 524-acre beach park with some of the finest stretches of sand in the Florida Keys, if you can call it "sand." At mile marker 37 of the US1/Overseas Highway, Bahia Honda is an essential stopping point on any road trip between Miami and Key West. However, this is not your typical Florida beach.

Fort Jefferson, Photo: Getty Images

6. Garden Key, Dry Tortugas National Park. This is the strangest choice of all the Condé Nast suggestions. It is hard to get to (60 miles from Key West) and rarely visited. Maybe a nice beach, but unrealistic for the average traveler. Why they love it? They say. . ."reached exclusively by boat or seaplane, the main island of North America's most inaccessible national park houses the c.1846 coastal Fort Jefferson—and some mind-blowing marine life off its beaches. Snorkel among sea horses and sea turtles, or head to the west moat wall in search of moray eels and nurse sharks." What they don't say is that this little excursion will cost you a bundle and take a full day away from your Florida vacation. Is it worth it? Yes, if you like history, forts, and instagram. No if your goal is to experience some of Florida's most spectacular beaches. If you decided to skip this one, check out some of our suggestions for more accessible spots that Condé Nast doesn't mention in their list (see our suggestions below),

Siesta Key, Photo: Expedia

5. Siesta Key Beach, this incredibly wide beach along the Gulf of Mexico flaunts "the world's finest, whitest sand"—more than 99 percent pure quartz. I think Pensacola would argue that their sand is whiter and finer, but. . .whatever. Siesta Key is close to Sarasota and there are plenty of nearby places for lodging, but it is quite expensive.

Caladesi Island State Park North Island, Photo: Florida State Parks

4. Caladesi Island State Park, near Clearwater, is another bizarre choice. This beach is accessible only by ferry from nearby Honeymoon Island State Park, and Clearwater is a hike from Tampa International Airport and even further from Orlando. Regardless, if you want to experience a largely untouched 3.5-mile-long island that feels like a giant sandbar, this is the place. Here, deep blue water meets radiant white sand with mounds of beautiful seashells. However, we think you'd be better off checking out New Smyrna Beach or Ponce Inlet in Volusia County, only 60 miles from Disney and with much easier accessibility.

Blowing Rocks Preserve, Photo: The Nature Conservancy

3. Blowing Rocks Preserve, north of Palm Beach, south of Port St. Lucie sports an ethereal, 100,000-year-old limestone shelf and crystalline waters. This Nature Conservancy-protected beach is located on Jupiter Island. It is a favorite nesting ground for loggerhead sea turtles. Can't argue with number 3, but if you're staying around Disney and heading north you'd be better off to check out Washington Oaks State Park just north of Matanzas Inlet and Marineland. Washington Oaks also sports 100,000-year-old limestone and coquina rocks, but also has extensive shady gardens, wide beaches, and few crowds. Sorry Condé Nast, we find some of your suggestions unrealistic.

Fort Lauderdale Beach, Photo: Fort Lauderdale Beach Best Western

2. Fort Lauderdale Beach. Another odd choice. The sand is too dirty brown and the development too congested for a truly spectacular Florida beach vacation. But Condé Nast calls it "uncluttered stretches of sand, sparkling blue waters, upscale resorts, and mega-yachts." Yeah, we think they need to rethink this choice.

South Beach, @Nolan.Ritter
Ok. We know. If you could be sure Nolan Ritter would be posing on the beach
like this beneath a rainbow it'd be worth the traffic, expense, parking, and hike from
the parking garage. But alas, there are no guarantees. You can see Nolan anytime on
instagram, however, @Nolan.Ritter

1. South Beach. Just a poor choice. Condé Nast loves it because of its Art Deco hotels, A-lister visitors, and best cocktails in the USA. They call it Florida's most famous beach (have they ever heard of Daytona? "The World's Most Famous Beach?"). South Beach, according to the mag is more about the "scene" than the warm waters and golden sands which they say are "instagram worthy." What they fail to mention is that the beach is hard to get to, as in fighting that traffic and trying to find parking. The sand is similar to Fort Lauderdale's, and while the glitterati and illuminati-wannabes may be found along this stretch of beach its no place for a picnic. If you're into $20 cocktails and being seen then definitely this is the place for you, but if you want a real Florida experience, go somewhere else. There is a rather famous nude beach just north of South Beach, Haulover Beach, located at 10800 Collins Ave., Miami Florida. From our experience the parking is easier at Haulover Beach and the sites are, well, maybe not suitable for instagram but certainly worthy of a second look.

We prefer:

Canaveral National Seashore on the Atlantic Coast

Canaveral National Seashore's only drawback, it closes early, 6:00 pm, year round
due to budget cuts in Washington DC (sequestration)

The most unspoiled 25+ miles of beach in Florida. Accessible by car from either Titusville or New Smyrna Beach, this beach has it all. Miles of deserted beaches, thick mangrove forests, even a ghost town on the Indian River Lagoon. Why would anyone go anywhere else? And Volusia County's beaches from Canaveral in the south to Ormond-by-the-Sea in the north are really the most easily accessible and spectacular along the Atlantic Coast of Florida. They are all wide, most have lifeguards, amenities nearby, and affordable lodging. I've traveled all of Florida's 1,350 miles (2,170 km) of coastline and Canaveral is my choice for an afternoon at the beach. After spending a lifetime in Florida and years studying the State's coastlines, my suggestion is as good as any.

Naples on the Gulf Coast

Naples Beach can be annoying (paying to park) and trying to find a parking space, but the
water is beautiful, sand is soft and white, and the crowds are sparse away from parking areas

How did Naples not get a mention? Again, it is more accessible and less crowded, plus it is close to plenty of amenities and lodgings not to mention Big Cypress National Park and Everglades National Park.

St. George's Island on the Northwest Florida Coast

Phillip playing in the sand

On the Northwest Florida Coast, as we said, St. George Island is our choice but if we're just looking for a relaxing beach vacation then there is nowhere on Earth like Pensacola Beach.

St. Augustine to Matanzas Inlet on the Northeast Florida Coast, and Flagler Beach

Washington Oaks State Park, Photo: Florida State Parks

On the Northeast Florida Coast St. Augustine to Matanzas Inlet is unspoiled, uncrowded and has exceptional beaches like Washington Oaks State Park. Continue south toward Ormond Beach and check out the evening sunset scene in Flagler Beach which is the new spot for the real glitterati who just want to have a good time without being mobbed (sorry South Beach).

The newly trendy Flagler Beach
Flagler Beach Pier
On a Saturday afternoon this is where the crowd goes,
there are dozens of beachside cafes and restaurants.

Phillip at Washington Oaks State Park just north of Matanzas Inlet
lugging 3 cameras, boots, not really dressed for the beach
but what a beach it is. Stunning!

Phillip, New Smyrna Beach, being interviewed by a Japanese Film
crew for a documentary on Florida and shark attacks.

Hottest Temperatures Ever, again

March 2016 was by far the planet's warmest March since record keeping began in 1880, and was also the warmest month relative to average of any month in the historical record, said NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). In the NOAA database, March 2016 came in a full 1.22°C (2.20°F) warmer than the 20th-century average for March of 12.7°C (54.9°F), as well as 0.32°C (0.58°F) above the previous record for March, set in 2015. This is a huge margin for breaking a monthly global temperature record, as they are typically broken by just a few hundredths of a degree. The margin was just a shade larger than NOAA's previous record for any month of 1.21°C (2.18°F) above average, set in February 2016. NASA also reported the warmest March in its database, with the departure from average in its analysis slightly less than that for February (1.28°C vs. 1.34°C).

Canaveral National Seashore
unspoiled, uncrowded, all natural
Apollo Beach near New Smyrna Beach

The past six months (as measured by departure from average in both the NOAA and NASA databases) all set records for their respective months as the warmest since 1880. The impressive global warmth in recent months is due to the steady build-up of heat-trapping greenhouse gases due to human activities (global warming), plus a spike due to a large amount of heat being released from waters in the Eastern Pacific due to the powerful 2015-16 El Niño event. This event peaked in December, but the warmest atmospheric readings (relative to average) usually lag the peak oceanic temperatures by a few months. NOAA’s global surface temperature for the year so far (January-March 2016) is an astounding 0.29°C (0.52°F) warmer than the previous record, set in 2015.

Canaveral National Seashore
unspoiled, uncrowded, natural and a little whiter and flatter
the closer you get to the Cape
Playalinda Beach

March 2016 also marked the eleventh consecutive month that the monthly temperature record was been broken and the sixteenth consecutive month (since December 2014) that the monthly global temperature ranked among the three warmest for its respective month in the NOAA database. Both global ocean and global land temperatures were the warmest on record for any March. Global satellite-measured temperatures in March 2016 for the lowest 8 km of the atmosphere were the warmest for any March in the 38-year record, and the third-largest warm departure from average any month, according to the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH). This is the sixth consecutive month the UAH database has registered a record monthly high.

Too many pets and too little time means I have to plan trips to maximize the most number of stops possible each day. Recently I did 2 National Parks, 4 National Monuments, and 1 National Recreation Area in 1 day. While I wouldn't necessarily recommend that much travel in one day I will say it was an exceptional experience, traveling from Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, where I had spent the previous days, south on US Hwy 89 to Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument in Arizona. On the way I stopped and/or drove through Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Skylight Arch, the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, the Glen Canyon Dam, Vermillion Cliffs National Monument and Marble Canyon, The Grand Canyon, and Wupatki National Monument. These are some images of that journey.

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is a National Monument protecting 1,880,461 acres (760,996 ha) or about 2,938 square miles (7,610 square kilometers). Needless to say this massive landscape encompasses the largest land area of all the US National Monuments. The monument is unique to the National Park System in that it is managed by the Bureau of Land Management rather than the National Park Service.

How big is the Grand Staircase?

The national monument is slightly larger than the US State of Delaware

Traveling on US Hwy 89 through these vast landscapes insures that one will not encounter crowds, traffic or congestion as it is far off the beaten tourist track, but singularly spectacular.

I liked the dinosaur sculptures at the Big Water visitor center for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. There is a library, picnic facilities (no trees), a gift shop, rest rooms and information on seeing the sights in the area. Perhaps the most visited site is Skylight Arch, an inverted arch overlooking Hwy 89. You can see the arch from Hwy 89 looking up or you can drive/hike to the top of the cliff and look down through the top of the arch. It is 4-wheel driving only (save the rental car; below). Because it is all dirt roads and mostly unmarked best to use GPS to find your way to the top of the arch using this link: Skylight Arch Drive and Hike.

Why Protect This Landscape?

Above: One of the wonders of this land is the geologic evidence of Earth's past. Here, my hand is under the three-toed track of a Dilophosaurus that tracked through the silt of Glen Canyon 170,000,000 years ago. Then, shallow streams meandered across a marshy plain. Throughout Glen Canyon the red-orange layer of Kayenta sandstone appears—a lost world turned to stone, then river-cut and weathered into view. That's one reason this land must be protected.

Protecting such a vast landscape did not come without great controversy. One can read about that elsewhere (Grand Staircase Controversy). Its the same old story. Rich western ranchers were opposed to the designation of such a vast tract of land as a National Monument because they could no longer use it for free grazing for their massive herds of cattle (welfare lands). A Democrat President using the Antiquities Act declared the land protected (Bill Clinton), and blah, blah, blah. . . the same fight is ongoing today across the West.

National Conservation Lands

Grand Staircase-Eslalante National Monument was made a unit of the Bureau of Land Management's National Landscape Conservation System (NLCS), which protects some of the nation's most remarkable and rugged landscapes. By putting this vast area under control of the NLCS some cattle are grazed on these protected lands (for free or virtually free).

NLCS lands will enable future generations to experience the solitude and splendor of undeveloped landscapes by providing opportunities for exploration, research and discovery.

Glen Canyon National Recreation Area

Another massive park, this area encompasses 1.25 million acres (1,953 square miles; 5,059 square kilometers). The area offers unparalled opportunites for water-based (Lake Powell) and backcountry recreation. The recreation area literally stretches for hundres of miles from Lees Ferry in Arizona to the Orange Cliffs of southern Utah.

Glen Canyon Dam

Carl Hayden Visitor Center

Pressed for time, the must-see on this trip is the Glen Canyon Dam with an air-conditioned overlook inside the Carl Hayden Visitor Center, museum and gift shop adjacent to the Dam. Here one can see how the Colorado River and its many tributaries, including the Dirty Devil, Paria, Escalante, and San Juan rivers, carve through the Colorado Plateau to form a landscape of dynamic and complex desert and water environments.

There are exhibits relating to geology and the human and natural history of Grand Canyon, Ancestral Puebloan ("anasazi") and pioneer artifacts, and a life-size model of a slot canyon.

Glen Canyon National Recreation Area preserves a record of more than 10,000 years of human presence, adaptation, and exploration. This place remains significant for many descendant communities, providing opportunities for people to connect with cultural values and associations that are both ancient and contemporary.

The deep 15-mile-long, narrow gorge blow the dam provides a glimpse of the high canyon walls, ancient rock art, and a vestige of the riparian and beach terrace environments that were seen by John Wesley Powell's Colorado expedition in 1869, providing a stark contrast to the impounded canyons of Lake Powell.

Glen Canyon Dam Bridge

For fun and to stretch, walk across the Hwy 89 bridge suspended hundreds of feet above the gorge and Colorado River below, and feel the bridge sway with each passing car or truck.

Named the Glen Canyon Dam Bridge, it is a steel arch bridge. The bridge was originally built by the US Bureau of Reclamation to facilitate transportation of materials for the Glen Canyon Dam. The bridge is a breath-taking 700 feet (210 m, 70 story building height) above the river and was the highest arch bridge in the world at the time of its completion. How'd they do that?

I liked the artsy effect of the shadows on the narrow pedestrian sidewalk. I am tall so it was a bit claustrophobic trekking across the bridge with its narrow sidewalks and elaborate anti-suicide fencing.

Below, looking southeast across the Colorado River toward Navajo Mountain in Arizona.

Below: An artsy shot of the shadow of the Hwy 89 bridge hanging on the Glen Canyon Dam.

Below, a couple more artsy shots of me, taking photos of exhibits in the museum that detail the statistics of the Glen Canyon Dam and Power Plant. Notice my reflection in the exhibits.

Marble Canyon

and

Vermilion Cliffs National Monument

This remote and unspoiled, 280,000-acre, Monument is a geologic treasure, containing a variety of diverse landscapes from the Paria Plateau, Vermillion Cliffs, Coyote Buttes, and Paria Canyon. Elevations range from 3,100 to 7,100 feet. There was a dusting of snow from recent storms at the higher elevations.

There are views of the Grand Canyon here to the west that do not involve the traffic, sea of humanity, trash and other annoyances of going through the main entrance of Grand Canyon National Park.

At the highest elevation there is an overlook and there were Native Americans selling their wares. . . and it looked like I still had four hours of daylight remaining. No time to tarry. From this point it is a short drive over to the Grand Canyon National Park, and back. Note that there are other places to see the canyon without going through the torture of going in the front gates at Tusayan. I would strongly recommend choosing the much-less traveled North Rim route or viewing a slightly less spectacular vista at Marble Canyon or Vermilion Cliffs National Monument from US 89A which parallels the canyon up to Jacob Lake. The main entry to The Grand Canyon from the south (US 180/64 from Flagstaff to Tusayan) is trashed (strip malls, burger joints, crap hotels, traffic. . .). Not my idea of a National Park experience.

The Biggest Mistakes People Make When Visiting the Grand Canyon

Remember your Park Pass, Food, Water,

Know there will be long lines, angry people. . . best to visit

in the dead of winter or not at all.

The Grand Canyon is Under Seige

Uranium mining, development (that would be crap, crap, and more

crap just like anytown USA), and how about hoards of ill-mannered tourists

Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument

Protection proposed for the areas around the Grand Canyon to

stop mining and development

Tribal Leaders Push for Grand Canyon Protection

Arizona tribal leader's facebook page urging

President Obama to create a new National Monument

to protect thousands of square miles around the

Grand Canyon.

Hillside Letters?

Mountain Monograms?

Hill Figures?

Geoglyphs

On my first trips to the American West I took a series of photos of letters painted on the sides of mountains. The myth about these hillside letters or mountain monographs is that they were built to identify communities from the air for early pilots who air-dropped mail. That myth is just that. Untrue.

In reality these hill figures or geoglyphs, common across the American West are typically created and maintained by schools or towns. There are approximately 500 of these geoglyphs, ranging in size from a few feet to hundreds of feet tall.

The "P" above likely is somehow meant to evoke something to do with Page, Arizona. I would guess it is 300 feet tall? At least? I made the image from a mile distant.

Wupatki National Monument

About an hour and a half south of Marble Canyon on Hwy 89, nestled between the Painted Desert National Park (top right) and ponderosa highlands of northern Arizona, Wupatki is a landscape of legacies. Ancient pueblos (left) dot red-rock outcroppings across miles of prairie. Where food and water seem impossible to find, people built pueblos, raised familes, farmed, traded, and thrived. The wind was howling across this starkly beautiful landscape as I hiked across miles with no other humans in sight.

Wupatki Pueblo

First inhabited around 500 AD, Wupatki, means "Tall House" in the Hopi language. The pueblo is a multistory Sinagua pueblo dwelling consisting of over 100 rooms and a community room and ball court, making it the largest ancient building for nearly 50 miles.

A major population influx of this area began after the eruption of nearby (below) Sunset Crater in the 11th century (between 1049 and 1100), which blanketed the area with volcanic ash. The ash improved agricultural productivity and the soils ability to retain water. By 1182, approximately 85 to 100 people lived at Wupatki Pueblo, but by 1225, the site was permanently abandoned.

Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument

Adjacent to and closely administered by the National Park Service with Wupatki, Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument protects the area where roughly 900 years ago the eruption of the volcano reshaped the surrounding landscape, forever changing the lives of people, plants and animals.

Further distant is 12,637-foot (3,852 m) Humphrey's Peak, the tallest point in Arizona located in the Kachina Peaks Wilderness of the Coconino National Forest about 11 miles north of Flagstaf, Arizona. Humphreys Peak is the highest of a group of presumably extinct volcanic peaks known as the San Francisco Peaks.

By this point, seeing Humphreys peak was a welcome sight as I was getting tired, and ready for dinner. But there were more stops to make getting up to the summit so I could get a handful of snow, a rarity for a native Floridian (below). I was surprised by how cold it was. Who knew? It was freezing cold at the top of the mountain with blustery winds blowing light fluffy snow everywhere.

Hwy 89, one of

America's Best Adventures

Bryce, Utah to Flagstaff, Arizona

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As Europe grapples with how to integrate (or expel) millions of unexpected new economic migrants from impoverished countries to its south and the USA's presidential elections hinge on building a wall to keep out economic migrants, we thought it time to revisit the subject that no one wants to talk about, the Human Population Bomb.

Ehrlichs' The Population Bomb has been both praised and vilified, but there has been no controversy over its significance in calling attention to the demographic element in the human predicament. How its message relates to climate change is a subject no politician in USA wants to talk about, especially in an election year. Even the UN has shied away from discussing the obvious: a smaller human population would result in less consumption and a reduced carbon footprint.

More reading on the subject:

The Population Bomb Revisited

European Union Grapples With Plan to Return Migrants From Greece to Turkey

EU pays Turkey billions to fence them in while Germany begins the long process of deportation.

Poles Apart: Gdansk divided as city grapples with immigration and identity

Germany's Populist Insurgency rivals the rise of Donald Trump in USA

Brexit: The Truth about UK Immigration

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Photo: Matthieu Paley @paleyphoto

In Delhi, a boy combs the bottom of the Yamuna River, one of India's holiest rivers, with his feet, looking for religious items tossed in from a bridge above. The objects, ranging from coins to small metal statues, can then be given to recycling shops for money. Because of the extreme level of pollution, authorities have instructed people not to wash their animals in the river (much less swim in it). The stretch of the Yamuna that flows through Delhi makes up only 2% of its entire length, but accounts for 80% of the river's pollution. An estimated 4,000 million liters per day of raw, untreated sewage (domestic and industrial) are directly disposed in the Yamuna River every day. The smell is described as "unbearable." According to the Central Water Commission, the level of Bilolgical Oxygen demand in the Yamuna is 55 mg/L, as compared to the 2 mg/L that is necessary to break down organic matter. Currently, 50% of the underground water sources in the Indo-Gangetic plains (home to over 500 Million people) are contaminated. The toxic black water flows first into the Ganges, then into the ocean, eventually reaching all of us.

Human Population Growth and Climate Change

The largest single threat to the ecology and biodiversity of the planet in the decades to come will be global climate disruption due to the buildup of human-generated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. People around the world are beginning to address the problem by reducing their carbon footprint through less consumption and better technology. But unsustainable human population growth can overwhelm those efforts, leading us to conclude that we not only need smaller footprints, but fewer feet.

Discussions about adapting to climate change that ignore population explosion (that would be most of them) are pointless. On the the one hand there are myriad initiatives being put in place but on the other there is ongoing exponential world population growth. To what end does that take us? If we only invest in programs that do not take into account the broader social interventions necessary to control consumption, not only is there a missed opportunity but the interventions will likely fail.

Carbon Legacy

The reproductive choices of an individual are rarely incorporated into calculations of his or her personal impact on the environment. The summed emissions of a person's descendants, weighted by their relatedness to him or her, may far exceed the lifetime emissions produced by the original parent.

Statistically, the relationship between population growth and global warming determine that the “carbon legacy” of just one child can produce 20 times more greenhouse gas than a person will save by driving a high-mileage car, recycling, using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs, etc. Each child born in the United States will add about 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average parent. The potential savings from reduced reproduction are huge compared to the savings that can be achieved by changes in lifestyle.

More reading on the subject:

Reproduction and the carbon legacies of individuals

Photo: Matthieu Paley @paleyphoto

Looking for plastic bits to sell, a boy jumps down from one of Delhi's garbage dumps, in Bhalswa. 2.2 million children in Delhi have irreversible lung damage due to the poor quality of the air (World Health Organization, WHO). In 2014, according to the WHO, Delhi is by far the world's most polluted city. 13 of the 20 world's most polluted cities are in India. The constant burning of 4 garbage dumps located within the city accounts for about 18% of Delhi's air pollution (National Environmental Engineering Research Institute). The World Bank estimates that there will be 243% increase in waste generation in Indian cities between 2012 and 2025. All that toxic air, all that garbage will eventually reach all of us.

The Green Climate Fund, perhaps the most high-profile fund helping developing countries adapt to climate change, does not say anything about population on its website. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which manages climate-focused "national adaptation programmes of action" for the least-developed countries, devotes a section of its website to the role gender plays in climate change. Women, it explains, are more vulnerable to its ravage and must be included in adaptation efforts. But family planning and contraception aren't on the official list of adaptation projects.

Photo: Lynsey Addario @lynseyaddario

Aboard the Godetia, a Belgian ship patrolling the Mediterranean, meals for rescued migrants are simple—bread and water, rice and porridge, here and there a piece of candy. It's not exciting, but it is food, and none of the migrants has come aboard carrying his own, which means they lost it, ate it, or never had any when they pushed out from the Libyan coast. For the Belgians, its bewildering. Who would cross this sea without food, without water? It suggests stupidity, or worse a kind of cleverness. We learn it is probably the latter. Human trafficking has evolved to this point: migrants are taught to expect rescue, and encouraged to look pathetic, so that European ships will be obliged to save them. Maritime law demands that sailors aid vessels in distress, and migrants, knowing this, will sometimes dump overboard water, food, and even the little engines that propel their rafts at the first sight of a larger boat. Here is the state of play as warm weather returns to the Mediterranean and more travelers begin crossing. It's infuriating for some of the Belgians, who joke that their ship shold be named "Euro Taxi." They wonder how long it can go on. Still, most of the crew is sympathetic. One evening I climb to the bridge and watch with a sailor while migrants receive dinner. He and I live in the West, neither of us has ever known hunger. How can we ever describe that first awareness of it, the signal sent up from the belly which warns of emptiness, the emptiness which becomes a question, the question that begins to gnaw? The sailor stubs out his cigarette. If it were me, it it were my family's future, I'd be on a boat, too, he says. Words by @neilshea13 Who will feed these millions of migrants riding the "Euro Taxi?" You and I.

Controlling Passions

and the Global Gag Rule

Columbia University history professor Matthew Connelly argues (in Controlling Passions) that the 20th century was filled with wrong-minded approaches to family planning that have created a taboo subject for 21st century politicians and policy makers. Those efforts have ranged from using risky contraceptives on unwitting clients—in 1967 a Ford Foundation report praised a proposal for a new technology involving “an annual application of a contraceptive aerial mist” (from a single airplane over India)—to offering cash incentives to poor people who agreed to be sterilized. Policies like these “made family

planning seem like an imposition, rather than something that served clients’ own interests,” writes Connelly, and the backlash was ferocious. Revolutionary leaders worldwide (including Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in Pakistan) attacked family planning as a symbol of American imperialism, and the Vatican jumped on board, helping organize a global campaign against family-planning efforts, which just happened to line up with the Catholic Church’s official stance on procreation, particularly in developing countries.

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan instituted what has become known as the “global gag rule” (officially the Mexico City Policy), which stopped U.S. dollars from flowing to any international family-planning groups that provided abortions. The rule also stipulated that any organization receiving U.S. funding could not educate patients on abortion or take a stand against unsafe abortion. President Bill Clinton repealed the policy in 1993, George W. Bush reinstated it in 2001, and Barack Obama repealed it again in 2009. If a Republican takes the presidency in 2016, the gag rule will likely come back.

When the gag rule was in effect, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funding to family-planning organizations plummeted. Clinics providing everything from condom distribution to HIV/AIDS treatment to neonatal care cut back their staff and services, and in some cases shuttered their doors entirely. In some cases, the rule backfired: Kelly Jones, a senior researcher at the International Food Policy Research Institute, found that in Ghana during gag rule periods, rural pregnancies increased by 12 percent and the rural abortion rate increased right along with it, going up by 2.3 percent.

Meanwhile, U.S. funding for family planning abroad has flatlined for several years, at about $530 million, although it would take relatively little money to make an enormous difference. For every dollar spent on family planning, USAID’s website boasts, up to $6 is saved on health care, immunization, education and other services. Put another way, every dollar not spent on family planning will cost the U.S. up to $6 more in the long run. “It’s not difficult to understand that contraceptive devices are relatively cheap compared to the cost of building roads and schools and hospitals,” Wilmoth, the head of the U.N. Population Division, says. “So it’s not for lack of money that it isn’t accomplished.”

More reading on the subject:

How to Defuse the Population Bomb

Defusing the Population Bomb

Earth cannot handle an infinitely increasing population.

Education and birth control are crucial.

TV as Birth Control:

Defusing the Population Bomb in Developing Countries

Leaving Half the Population Behind

In 2012, the estimated number of unintended pregnancies was 80 million (63 million in the developing world). World population growth? Also 80 million. In other words, if women all over the world had the ability to prevent the pregnancies they don’t want, the world’s population would stabilize. That would immediately improve both maternal and infant health. However, in most parts of the global south, access to abortion is either extremely limited or prohibited.

Worldwide, it’s estimated that 20 million women have unsafe abortions every year because they lack better options. Over 5 million of them end up needing urgent medical attention, and 47,000 die in the process. In addition, in the developing world pregnancies are often dangerous. Every year, an estimated 358,000 women die during childbirth, and many more suffer debilitating pregnancy-related health problems. In sub-Saharan Africa, the lifetime risk of dying from pregnancy-related problems is 1 in 22. Lower pregnancy rates and you lower those risks—fewer pregnancies means resources don’t have to be spread dangerously thin.

More reading on the subject:

Preventing unsafe abortion

Avoiding a Malthusian Catastrophe

A Malthusian catastrophe (also known as a Malthusian check) is a prediction of a forced return to subsistence-level conditions once population growth has outpaced agricultural production. In 1779, Thomas Malthus wrote:

Famine seems to be the last, the most dreadful resource of nature. The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world.

Time is Short

Globally, recent research indicates that assumptions regarding declining fertility rates used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to develop future emissions scenarios may be overly optimistic. While fertility rates have generally declined over the past few decades, progress has slowed in recent years, especially in developing nations, largely due to cutbacks in family planning assistance and political interference from the United States. And even if fertility rates are reduced to below replacement levels, population levels will continue to climb steeply for some time as people live longer and billions of young people mature and proceed through their reproductive years. Per-capita greenhouse gas emissions may drop, but the population bulge will continue to contribute to a dangerous increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Time is short, but it not too late to stop runaway global warming.Economy-wide reductionof greenhouse gas emissions to a level that brings atmospheric CO2 back from 386 parts per million to 350 or less, scaling back first-world consumption patterns, and long-term population reduction to ecologically sustainable levels might solve the global warming crisis and move us to toward a healthier, more stable, post-fossil fuel, post-growth addicted society.

More reading on the subject:

IPCC Population Projections

UN Report Links Climate Change to Population: encourages spread of contraception, abortion access to developing world

Manatee Springs, is located in Manatee Springs State Park 6 miles west of Chiefland on SR320, off US 19. Manatee Spring is a first magnitude spring flowing directly into the Suwanee River by way of a short run. The park is heavily wooded and features swamps and hardwood wetlands along the Suwanee River, along with many sinkhole ponds including one with a cave 90 feet below ground that connects to a popular diving destination known as the Catfish Hole.

Though it doesn't look like much on the surface, once below the water, Catfish Hole is spectacular and for certified divers there is the possibility of the thrill of diving down and emerging from the main spring boil. The water pressure is immense so this is not for the unskilled.

Over 26,000 feet of cave passageway have been mapped, making Manatee one of the longest systems in North America. An 11,074-foot dive in 1994 established a new world record. The conduits reach a depth of 90 feet and can be entered through 4 entrances in the park: the main spring and 3 sinkholes.

Most visitors stick to the elevated boardwalk and follow the 1,200-foot spring run as it glides through the floodplain forest to the Suwannee River.

The spring is about 25-feet deep, with a tremendous boil and a pool about 75 feet across.

The first written account of Manatee Spring was described by William Bartram on a July day almost 250 years ago. Bartram was an American botanist and naturalist, son of the famed Philadelphia naturalist John Bartram (botanists and naturalists were the rock stars of the 18th century). In 1773, he embarked on a four-year journey through eight southern colonies.

Bartram made drawings and took notes on the flora and fauna and of the Native Americans he encountered. In 1774, he explored the St. Johns River, where he had memorable encounters with aggressive alligators, and also visited a principle Seminole village at Cuscowilla (now Micanopy just south of Gainesville and Paynes Prairie). Bartram is described as the first naturalist to penetrate the dense tropical forests of Florida, and was the first to describe Blue Spring, Gemini Springs, and DeLeon Springs as well. He wrote about these magnificent spots in Travels of William Bartram.

Above: Looking west across the Suwanee River toward the

Bartram's initial account of Manatee Springs follows (in italics). Misspelled words were correctly spelled in 18th century English.

Having borrowed a canoe from some Indians, I visited a very great and most beautiful fountain or spring which boils up from between the hills about 300 yards from the river, throwing up great quantities of white small pieces of shells and white shell rock which, glittering through the limped eliment as they rise to the surface, subside and fall again round about on every side.

The bason of the fountain is nearly round and about 100 yards in circumferance. The banks round about of a moderate steep assent cover'd with broken white shell and the water gradually deepns to the center of the fountain, where it is many fathoms deep. The fountain is full of fish and alegators and at great depth in the water appear as plain as if they were close at hand.

The creek that runs from this immence fountain is above twenty yards wide and runs very swift into the river, carying its sea green transparent waters near 100 yards a cross the river, the depth of the water of the creek 10 of 12 feets—where we see a continual concourse of fish of various kinds such as garr, catfish, mullet, trout, bream of various species, silverfish and pike, and the monstrous amphabious maneta: A skeleton of which I saw on the bank of the spring, which the Indians had lately killed.

The hills that nearly incompassed the spring were about 15 or 20 yards in height next the river but the land falls away considerably from the top of the hills and becomes a lower flat or nearly levell forest of pine, oak, bay, magnolia, and cabbage trees. The soil of the hills a loose greyish sandy mold on shelly and limestone rocks. The water of the spring cool and agreeable to drink. The Indians and traders say this fountain vents the waters of the Great Alatchua Savanah.

Needless to say, Manatee Springs doesn't look like Bartram first described it in July of 1774. The fountain (we now call it a "boil") is less robust than the last time I visited, the water is milky, and lyngba has invaded all areas of the spring run right up to the spring boil obscuring the once crystal clear water.

Lyngbya

Lyngbya is not a plant, a fungus, a bacteria, or a true algae. It is a primitive form of life: cyanobacteria, a blue-green algae capable of photosynthesis even in low light conditions. Lyngbya forms long filamentous hair-like strands that mat together in thick layers along the bottom, and migrate to the sides of the spring. Large floating mats of lyngya rise to the surface because of the gases released by the bacteria that live inside the mats that deplete oxygen from the water.

Many of Florida's west coast springs are contaminated with lyngbya which thrives on nitrate rich waters, the result of massive agricultural applications of fertilizers and farming of cattle (which defecate and their waste runs off into the ground water, fertilizing lyngbya).

There are no shell mounds nor hills remaining. They were likely removed by settlers to build roads into this swampy land adjacent to the deep and swift-flowing Suwanee River.

It didn't help that on the day I visited there was a cookout of some sort ongoing with a large crowd plunging into the springs' now milky-green waters, surely causing turbidity that made the water even more opaque. We made several passes through the springs and I took these photos when most of the revelers had cleared out for dinner (below).

And no, they didn't offer us any dinner.

When one visits one of Florida's 33 First Magnitude Springs they expect something more like what Bartram described. Unfortunately development, 20,000,000 residents in need of water, and agricultural concerns are depleting and polluting the flow from these once world-renowned natural wonders.

This pole marks some of the 20th centuries most significant floods along the Suwanee River. The 1948 flood was about 8-feet above ground level at this point. Some say the 2009 flood was higher. Click on the image for a larger view.

No floods this April-May as rainfall has been light this winter. The Suwanee River did appear to be faster-flowing upstream at Fanning Springs and it was loaded with garbage floating down from wherever.

A First Magnitude Spring

One of the ways that springs are classified is by the volume of water they discharge. The largest springs are called "first magnitude," meaning they discharge at least 65 million gallons per day. Of the 33 first magnitude springs in Florida, Manatee Springs is about average, emitting from 50 to 150 million gallons/day depending on a variety of factors. The water emerging from Manatee Springs varies in age from a few days old to 100 years old. The average age is 8 years old. The water is 72° year round. The water temperature in Florida's springs is an average of the year round (summer and winter, day and night) temperatures. So as you go further north in Florida, spring water is typically cooler.

List of First-Magnitude Springs in Florida

Above, mats of lyngba migrate to the sides of the small boils in the spring run.

Factors Affecting Flow Rates

in West Florida Springs

In the case of Manatee Springs and nearby Fanning Springs it appears that the major factor affecting spring flow rates and the growth of Lyngba is large agricultural areas that pump water indiscriminately for such things as growing grass and that sport massive herds of cows that would be better suited to a more temperate climate. None of that is likely to change, however. There are no large cities in the spring shed of Manatee or Fanning Springs so the withdrawals of water are coming from some other human source. Decreased rainfall in recent years might have contributed to an overall decrease in spring flow but not to the extent noted at, in particular, Fanning Springs.

Despite reduced flows, some garbage floating in the river, and algae growth, I imagine on a winter day or a day when the springs are not overrun with unruly partiers it would still be a lovely place to relax and imagine what Florida springs were like even 50 years ago. Or better yet, pick up a copy of Bartram's book to read what they were like almost 250 years ago.

Below, looking north from Manatee Springs across the Suwanee River toard the Yellow Jacket Conservation Area, which is only accessible by boat or from SE County Road 349, in Old Town Florida (32680).

Above, a River Level gauge transmitting real time data to this link:

Suwanee River Water Level

Christmas Lichen

Being particularly bent on plant ecology I thought this Christmas Lichen (Cryptothecia rubrocincta) was a real find. A species of lichen in the Arthoniacea family of fungi, this species is found in subtropical and tropical locations throughout the southeastern United States. The body of the lichen forms continuous, circular crust-like patches on dead wood, readily recognizable by the prominent red pigment often found in a circular pattern around the body of the lichen.

The red pigment, called chiodectonic acid, is one of several chemicals the lichen produces to help tolerate inhospitable growing conditions.

Poison Ivy and Fire Ants

(Toxicodendron radicans)

. . . and above, my old favorite. . . poison ivy. What would a day hiking in Florida's woods be without poison ivy? I am still mildly allergic to this ubiquitous vine that I encounter so frequently in my hikes across Florida. Poison Ivy and Fire Ants are probably my most hated Florida Natural species. . . and fire ants are anything but natural. Read the history of Fire Ants in Florida at this link: Global Invastion History of the Fire Ant Solenopsis invicta. The authors of the paper conclude that their results illustrate in stark fashion a severe negative consequence of an increasingly massive and interconnected global trade and travel system. As if we didn't already know there were problems with free trade agreements and global travel, huh? Fire ants.

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Photographer: Paul Nicklen @paulnicklen

A sunflower sea star along the Campbell River, British Columbia, Canada (Pycnopodia helianthoides) works stealthily across the ocean floor in search of food. They can grow up to 3 feet in diameter and travel at rip roaring speeds of 3 feet a minute as they seek out sea urchins. Water temperatures off the coast of the US and Canada have warmed by several degrees and tragically, this starfish species was the hardest hit from an aptly named disease called“starfish wasting disease”. I took this image several years ago when this species was everywhere. Now, I never seen them at all. They have all but vanished from this coast.

Photographer: Keith Ladzinski @ladzinski

Olympic National Park: Life in a tide pool is about as competitive as it gets with wall to wall danger. Real-estate comes at a high price and strength in numbers is a good strategy if you want to survive. This pool was roughly 1 meter in diameter at best, wall to wall Giant Green Anemones, mussels, Ochre Sea Stars and surrounded by barnacles and sharp crustaceans. Tough place to get into position to shoot photos but worth the effort, marine life at this level is truly impressive! Photographed on assignment for @natgeo.

Miami Port Large Scale Dredging Decimates Coral Reef

Is anyone really surprised? What did they think would happen? The large-scale dredging of Miami's port to accommodate the newest (larger) generation of freighters has caused widespread damage to the area's fragile and distressed coral reef according to a new report by NOAA. Related: Despite Supposed Protections, Miami Port Project Smothers Coral Reef in Silt, Researchers Race to Save Coral in Miami, Fears in Miami that Port Expansion Will Destroy Reefs.

About 6 months ago I found a huge pile of Peruvian Apple Cactus on the side of the road. Someone had chopped down a tree or hedge of the cacti and thrown it out. Because of our persistent drought and climate change I figured I would pick it up and give it a try on our south facing fence and north facing lakefront and see what happened. It took two truck loads to haul it all to the house but I didn't let any of it die on the side of that road.

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I hadn't paid much attention to the plants. They are cactus trees, afterall. I had planted gourds along the south-facing fence a few weeks ago so every evening after dark I take buckets of water from the ponds to water the gourds. . .trying to keep them alive in the blazing hot and dry of May.

I noticed that the otherwise completely forgettable and overlooked cacti were sprouting buds, which I assume is a good sign that they are doing OK. I had read the literature about curing the stalks before replanting them, etc, etc. I didn't do any of that. I dug holes in the powder-dry sand and stuck the cacti in, trying to make sure I had them right side up. The top sides are kind of rounded whilst the bottoms are more flat.

This week the cacti have exploded into these magnificent blooms. Of course I'm the only person who sees them, as the blooms last for only one night, and only open after dark. They are fragrant and obviously evolved to attracts bats, moths and other nighttime pollinators. As you can see from the images there is plenty of pollen to be had.

Click on any image for a larger view

Queen of the Night

Night-Blooming Cereus

Peruvian Apple Cactus

but always

Cereus repandus or Cereus peruvians

Scientifically these are Cereus repandus (syn. Cereus peruvianus), or the Peruvian Apple Cactus. You'll hear them referred to colloquially as Queen of the Night, Night-blooming Cereus, Tree Cactus, Giant Club Cactus, Hedge Cactus, Cadushi, and Kayush. All are correct depending on who you're talking to.

Dragon Fruit

With an often tree-like appearance, the Peruvian Apple Cactus' cylindrical gray-green to blue stems can reach 10 m (33 feet) and 10-20 cm in diameter. The noturnal flowers remain open for only one night. The fruts, known locally as "pitaya," or "Olala (in Bolivia), or Peruvian Apple, are thornless and vary in skin colour from violet-red to yellow. The edible flesh is white and contains small, edible, crunchy seeds. The flesh sweetens as the fruit opens out fully. If you're a Foodie you'll know them coloquially as "dragon fruit."

Cereus repandus is an unresearched, under-utilized cactus, grown mostly as an ornamental plant.

Native to South America, as its name implies, this plant is also endemic in the ABC Islands and the Dutch Caribbean. How it made its way to Florida is anyone's guess.

Florida Native Cacti

For those who think cacti don't grown in Florida, this is an example of one that grows quite well. Another, prickly pear (below), is native to this part of Florida and would be found on the sand hill (ancient dune) where we live had humans never settled here. Considering how dry it has been the past decade across east central Florida, I'd think xeriscaping with cacti is a good conservation idea just about anywhere across the peninsula.

The prickly pears (Opuntia humifusa) below I also collected from a roadside where someone had tossed them. They are thriving on the southeast facing fence. The flowers are a delicacy for our native gopher tortoises. Late afternoons one will often see the vegetarian tortoises straining to reach the blooms. Unlike the Cereus spp. prickly pear blooms by day.

Before and After

Above, one of the Peruvian Apple Cacti by day doesn't look like much. After dark it explodes with blooms. In the daylight image one can see how sandy and dry it is atop this hill.

Holding the Sun

The Marineland Marina

I was using a solar filter when I made these images using a SLR camera. With an SLR what you see in the viewfinder is what comes out on the image so its easy to capture the sun, but not a good idea to look directly at the sun if you aren't using protective lenses. The SLRs viewfinder and mirror will reflect all that sunlight right back at your eyes.

The Matanzas River

at Washington Oaks State Park

just north of Matanzas Inlet

The Rocks

Exposed coquina rock formations just north of Matanzas Inlet and Marineland (south of St. Augustine) at Washington Oaks State Park.

Jon Snow is Alive!

Jon Snow is Angry!

Jon Snow is Naked!

So the country is being taken over by a demagogue, Europe is facing a refugee crisis, over-population is threatening much of Asia and Africa, oh. . . the Zika Virus is coming north. . .but what's really important is that as we suspected, Jon Snow is alive! Read how the top secret, two-year plan to kill Jon Snow—and then bring him back to life, evolved at:

He's Alive! He's Angry!

and He's Naked!

Game of Thrones:

Inside the Top Secret, Two-Year Plan to Kill Jon Snow—and Bring Him Back to Life

A Review

Jon Snow, Dragons

and Ramsay's Dogs

Game of Thrones, 6:2

A Review

One Stark Returns, Another Moves On

'Oathbreaker'

Game of Thrones 6:3

A Review

We've Read:

Hilliary Clinton Reveals that the Truth May Really Be Out There. If Anyone Knows, surely its 'H'
Hillary may open the X-files, finally.

Earth has been dealt a hot hand, one that it cannot seem to break. At least, not yet.

The planet’s torrid streak of record-warm months ballooned to seven in April, NASA data released over the weekend reveals.

April 2016 was the warmest April on record for the globe, according to data released on Saturday by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. This also marks the seventh consecutive month in a row in NASA's dataset that the earth has recorded its warmest respective month on record.

The average temperature of the planet was 2.0° Fahrenheit (1.11° C) above the long-term average in April, shattering the old record from 2010 by 0.4° (0.24° C).

NASA data now indicates Earth has set record highs in every month since October 2015 and, in each instance, by a substantial margin.

The record-warm months have become so routine, some scientists have become concerned the public is tuning them out.

April 2016 also continues a string of 369 consecutive months at or warmer than average. The last colder-than-average month in NASA's database was July 1985.

The streak of record-warm months extends even longer in NOAA’s analysis. In March, it reached 11 straight. When NOAA publishes its April global temperature analysis later this week, the span is likely to grow to 12—comprising an entire year of record-breaking monthly temperatures.

In March, Earth’s temperature deviated more from normal than any previous month

2016’s average global temperature is so far out in front of any preceding year that climate scientists say there’s basically no way it won’t become the warmest ever recorded.

The most compelling global-warming visualization ever made, explained

The warmth has been particularly pronounced in the Arctic, where temperatures have frequently spiked to more than seven degrees above normal.

Arctic sea ice has responded by dwindling to its lowest extent on record for this time of year, for 48 straight days:

ARCTIC AMPLIFICATION

Even for the fast-melting Arctic, 2016 is in ‘uncharted territory’

In April’s second week, the Greenland Ice Sheet experienced its first major melting event, about a month ahead of the previous earliest dates on record. “We had to check that our models were still working properly,” said Peter Langen, a climate scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute.

Record-breaking Melting

Scientists are stunned by what just happened in Greenland

April in Greenland is typically very cold, though some years buck the trend. In 2012, for example, the surface of the ice sheet started melting early and then experienced the most extensive melting since the start of the satellite record in 1978. Weather events and temperature anomalies this April suggest that 2016 may be off to a similar start.

The map above shows land surface temperatures for April 2016 compared to the 2001–2010 average for the same month. Red areas were hotter than the long-term average; some areas were as much as 20 degrees Celsius (36 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer. Blue areas were below average, and white pixels had normal temperatures. Gray pixels were areas without enough data, most likely due to excessive cloud cover.

This temperature anomaly map is based on data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer(MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Observed by satellites uniformly around the world, land surface temperatures (LSTs) are not the same as air temperatures. Instead, they reflect the heating of the surface by sunlight, and they can sometimes be significantly hotter or cooler than air temperatures.

“The most remarkable aspect here is the incredible departure from 2001-2010 average, especially deep in the ice sheet interior,” said Santiago de la Peña, a research scientist at Ohio State University. “This is accentuated by the fact that the northern regions of the United States and Canada actually experienced cooler than usual temperatures.”

According to de la Peña, a high-pressure weather system sat over the ice sheet through most of April. The system caused temperatures across Greenland to spike, reaching or matching record temperatures in many places. “There have been occasional warming events in the past during spring over Greenland,” he noted, “but they affected only local areas and were not as intense.”

Still, warming events in Greenland are not entirely without precedent. Research by Dorothy Hall, an emeritus scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, has showed that major melt events like those in 2012 and 2002 are not uncommon.

De la Peña thinks such events will become more common in the future as atmospheric warming in the Arctic brings about longer melt seasons. For now, he notes that it is still early to predict how the melt season in 2016 will unfold. “High temperatures are still being recorded in May, suggesting we will have major melt events during the summer.”

Greenland References and Related Reading

Hall, D. et al. (2013, May 28) Variability in the surface temperature and melt extent of the Greenland ice sheet from MODIS. Geophysical Research Letters, 40 (10), 2114–2120.

Mashable Heat wave in Greenland triggers record early start to ice melt season.Accessed May 17, 2016.

National Snow & Ice Data Center Early start to Greenland Ice Sheet melt season. Accessed May 17, 2016.

The Ohio State University Santiago de la Peña. Accessed May 17, 2016.

NASA Earth Observatory Greenland image by Jesse Allen using data from the Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LPDAAC). Caption by Kathryn Hansen.

Damn! That's Hot!
Marineland, Florida, Marina

The planet’s hot streak has been intensified by one of the strongest El Niño events on record, during which heat from the tropical Pacific Ocean vented into the atmosphere.

But El Niño is now weakening, meaning abnormally warm months—compared with the long-term average—may simply become warm months. In other words, the streak of record warm months should end, although it may take until later this year.

We've Read:

Why a staggering number of Americans are not using the Internet like they once did

Nearly one in two Internet users say privacy and security concerns have now stopped them from doing basic things online — such as posting to social networks, expressing opinions in forums or even buying things from websites, according to a new government survey.

Road to Rio

More Swimmers to Watch

Luca Dotto, Italy

che ragazzo d'oro

Douglas Erasmus, South Africa

The Only Way is Up as Doug Does the Job for Rio 2016

Frédérick Bousquet, Florent Manaudou, y Camille Lacourt, France

Natation. Euro 2016 : Lacourt en or, le sourire de Bousquet

When he's not modeling for Chanel (above) Lacourt is busy winning Euro titles on the Road to Rio.

The famous bromance continues on the Road to Rio

NUOTATORI SENZA VELI CONTRO L’OMOFOBIA: FLORENT MANAUDOU E FRÉDÉRICK BOUSQUET [FOTO]

Vlad Morozov, Russia

Vladimir Morozov 48 Flat Leads Russian 4 x 100 Charge; Six Men At 48.6 or Faster

What Does It Take To Win Swimming's Fastest Race?

Gregorio Paltrinieri, Italy

Campione del mondo 1500 stile libero

Gregorio Paltrinieri 14:46:

Fastest 1500 Heat Ever in Textile

Among Men with Clean Slate

More News From the European Swimming Championships in London

Olympic Trivia:

What was the Highest Scoring Dive in Olympic History?

Matthew Mitcham performs a near-perfect 6th dive to receive gold, ending China's dream of a clean sweep of all diving golds. Mitcham produces the highest scoring dive in Olympic history (112.10), a sensational back two and a half somersault with two and a half twists, finishing with an overall 537.95. Mitcham becomes the 1st male Australian diver to win gold since 1924. Diving 10m Platform Men's Final - Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics - Matthew Mitcham (AUS), Zhou Luxin (CHN), Gleb Galperin (RUS) 8/23/2008 12:00:00 AM

And for fun, a little more trivia:

Matthew Mitcham Reveals Battle with Drug Addiction that Almost ended His Career in his book "Twists and Turns."

The book gets 5-star reviews

on Amazon "Twists and Turns"

Perhaps the thorniest plant commonly found in the Florida garden is Pinguin or Florida Wild Pineapple, also known as Bromelia pinguin.

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________________________________

For the second time this particularly hot and dry May these spectacular plants are now in full bloom.

In a normal year they bloom once-a-year around the first of May.

While this is definitely one of our thorniest plants it is not considered a native. The plant has naturalized as far north as the Ocala National Forest in North Central Florida.

I found my first specimens in the swamps east of Deltona and west of Oak Hill near Canaveral National Seashore. From a few plants transplanted I now have thousands. The plant rapidly reproduces from vigorous rhizomes as well as from the "pineapple" fruit it makes from these dazzling blooms.

The thorns on the leaves are retracted so that they catch anything that passes by. These thorns will easily rip through jeans and into leather boots.

I planted my stand of Florida Wild Pineapple to stop kids-with-guns from walking a path through our acreage, much as is done in the islands where these plants are native. The kids were stopping off at this giant oak (below) to climb and shoot at birds and my cats and dogs. I put up a 4-6-foot fence and planted a few dozen of the wild pineapple. There is no longer any chance of anyone coming through where that trail once existed. The plants now easily extend to 4-feet or more and form a dense thicket across about 1/2 acre.

Referred to as "Maya" in the Caribbean, this pineapple-like plant sports large, sword-shaped, sharp, thorny dark-green leaves that have alternate curved spines about 1/5th-inch (5 mm) long on their edges. The shape of the leaves and the spines makes them impossible to traverse without some serious flesh damage.

Other common names are "karatas,""pingouin,""bayonette," and "pinguin." Although it is mostly fleshy, Florida Wild Pineapple is classed as a shrub because it is perennial, of shrub size (to 6 feet tall), and has a woody core at its base and fibrous leaves.

The plants are formed of a large basal rosette and rarely develop a discernible stem. The roots are shallow, relatively fine, all of a similar size, and radiate in all directions. At the start of a plant’s last year, it grows a stout scape inflorescence with many wooly red-orange flowers, pictured here. The new leaves surrounding the inflorescence are also intensely red-orange.

By July all of these blooms will have formed bunches of 3.5-cm-long elliptical yellow berries which ripen quickly. After the fruits have withered, about 1 year after the start of fruiting, the plant dies. Not to worry, however, the plant makes many more offspring via rhizomes during its final years (more on reproduction below).

The native range of Florida Wild Pineapple extends from Mexico through tropical South America and the Caribbean islands. In Puerto Rico nearly all the stands are on or near abandoned farmland, which may indicate a relatively recent introduction. It has been planted and naturalized in Hawaii and Florida and many other tropical areas.

Florida Wild Pineapple is intermediate in shade tolerance. Although it sometimes grows in open areas, the most vigorous stands are found under forest canopies with moderate basal areas. In Puerto Rico, natural stands occur in areas with from 850 to 2000 mm of rainfall and from near sea level to 600 m of elevation.

All types of soils except very poorly drained and saline soils are colonized. Wild Pineapple is sensitive to fire. Although many plants in a colony will recover from a burn, they do so slowly. Usually flowering is synchronized, although an occasional plant flowers out of phase, especially in moist habitat. Our soil is unconsolidated sands that are at least 85% pure quartz with a dense layer of leaf litter on the surface. The pineapple seems to like that nutrient poor environment.

Florida Wild Pineapple reproduces vegetatively and by seeds. The fruits, whose fresh weight averaged 12.26 + 0.35 gs, contain 0 to over 100 seeds, depending on their size. The fruits have a tough, fibrous rind. Most of the fruits are eaten by fine-toothed animals (probably rats, mice, or fruit bats) and it is assumed that the seeds are dispersed by these small mammals.

The black, teardrop-shaped seeds averaged 0.245 + 0.006 g. Seventy-five percent of these seeds germinated between 133 and 175 days after sowing. The plants are very fragilely rooted at first and develop at a moderate rate.

Florida Wild Pineapple plants grow to full size (3 to 6 feet in height and 6 to 9 feet in diameter) in 2 or 3 years. Mature stands can be dense with interlacing crowns and little clear space.

Historically, and to some extent today, Florida Wild Pineapple has been used as a hedge or living fence to inhibit entry into fields and homesteads. These hedges were never more than marginally effective at stopping wildlife—cattle and many species of animals pass relatively easily—but they are effective at stopping human traffic as their thorns are brutal.

The ripe fruit can be eaten raw or cooked and is used to make a tart drink. It is not recommended to eat the fruit raw, or more specifically undiluted. The raw fruit can be extremely acidic and can burn the lip, tongue and throat. It needs to be diluted. The new leaves and flower stalks can be cooked like vegetables as can the flowers (with stinging hairs removed).

My hand above, for scale

Medicinally the juice of the fruit has been employed for many uses from treating intestinal parasites, fevers, oral ulcers and to induce abortions. Older leaves fibers have been used to make cloth, fishing line, nets and string.

After Florida Wild Pineapple plants have reached their full size and before flowering, most healthy individuals produce one or sometimes two stiff horizontal stolons about 0.5 m long. A new plant forms at the terminus. The new plants grow rapidly and reach roughly half the parent plant’s height and diameter and become independent in about a year. Consequently, (with the exception of those planted by humans) new colonies are started as seedlings from dispersed seeds and most plants within colonies arise vegetatively.

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Phillip on Pensacola Beach
my favorite beach in Florida

Summer Begins on Monday

What are you reading?

“Knowing you have something good to read before bed,” the Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov (think Lolita) wrote, “is among the most pleasurable of sensations.” It’s easy to feel similarly about summer. Knowing you’ve got a few fine books tucked away for beach or lawn is akin to bliss. As a nod to the 2016 Rio Olympics our first 7 picks are sports-themed.

7 Best Sports Books Summer 2016

Sure, you could swill beer

and ogle bodies on the sand.

Or you could learn something.

Phillip, swilling something

1. How Cubs Manager Joe Maddon IDs the Clutch Players

I'm Fascinated by Sacrifice Files: Inside the Game We All Love, by Tim Kurkjian

$16.86 at Amazon

"Maddon arranged for a local zookeeper to bring a 25-foot boa constrictor into the clubhouse. 'Some of our guys just left the room as soon as the snake was brought in,' Maddon said. 'Some guys touched the snake, but nowhere near his mouth. And a couple of guys went right up near the head. I thought, Wow, maybe this is the type of guy I'm not going to worry about with two outs in the 9th."

2. The First Sign that Lance Armstrong Was Cheating

Shut Up, Legs!: My Wild Ride On and Off the Bike, by Jens Voigt

$17.76 at Amazon

"In that Tour of Georgia, it took six days of racing and hard, steep uphill finish to Brasstown Bald in Georgia for me to lose 1 minute and 20 seconds to Lance. Two and a half months later in the Tour de France, I was losing 10 to 15 minutes to him a day in the mountains, when I was in peak condition. . . I trained hard. I was healthy. Was I doing something wrong? Or did something else come into play?"

3. The Fascinating (Really!) History of Bowling, and 20 Other Sports

On the Origins of Sports: The Early History and Original Rules of Everybody's Favorite Games,by Gary Belsky and Neil Fine

$14.26 at Amazon

"Ninepins was typically played outside of bars and taverns, and as a result the otherwise innocent game was closely associated with a pair of disreputable pursuits: drinking and gambling. That association soon caused many localities to declare the game illegal. Shockingly, this did not stop the American people from either drinking or gambling, and they soon arrived at an ingeniously simple way to skirt the law: adding a 10th pin! By the end of the 19th century, more than 200 10-in alleys were open for business in New York City alone."

4. The Most Valuable Body Part in Professional Sports

The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports, by Jeff Passan

$16.19 at Amazon

"The $1.5 billion [that] Major League Baseball spends annually on pitchers' salaries is five times more than the combined cost of every starting quarterback in the NFL. It exceeds the top 200 NBA salaries put together. And yet the most over-analyzed sport in the world, with an industry of bright minds studying its intricacies loses half a billion dollars a year to injuries. [Over half of that goes to pitchers' injuries.] More than 50% of pitchers end up on the disabled list every season, on average for two-plus months, and one quarter of major league pitchers today wear a zipper scar from Tommy John surgery along their elbows."

5. What Elite Athletes Will Do for the Love of Their Sport

Life as Sport: What Top Athletes Can Teach You About How to Win in Life, by Jonathan Fader, Ph.D.

$15.77 at Amazon

"In the annual Race Across America, cyclists test the limits of human endurance in a 3,000-mile trek across the USA. After days of grueling cycling, many of the riders start to lose control of their neck muscles and have to tape their helmets to the back of their seats to stay upright. Exhausted by the effort of pedaling and the lack of sleep, they often hallucinate that they are being chased by mythical creatures. Even in this dazed state, the subconscious mind is still trying to help them complete the goal because their motivation is so deep-seated, internal, and authentic."

6. How You Know You're Training at Your Peak

Today We Die a Little!: The Inimitable Emil Zátopek, the Greatest Olympic Runner of All Time, by Richard Askwith

$18.38 at Amazon

"When the German shepherd realized that Emil and Dana were going running every day, it agitated to go with them. So one day, the three of them would head off on the mountain paths, jogging at first before Emil found somewhere to do more serious training. . . mile after mile, at full speed, culminating in a set of flat-out repetitions around the lake. That evening, the dog's owner was perplexed. 'I don't know what's wrong with this dog,' she said. It showed no inclination to eat or drink, let alone play. It just lay there, exhausted. The next day, Emil came to fetch the dog for another excursion. When it realized who was there, it whimpered and crawled deep into the back of its kennel. It was a reaction with which a growing number of Emil's humans rivals could identify."

7. Why the Italian Men's Soccer Team Sucks

Soccer Without Borders: Jürgen Klinsmann, Coaching the US Men's National Soccer Team and the Quest for the World Cup, by Erik Kirschbaum

$17.65 at Amazon

"Punctuality isn't a virtue of any special merit in Italy. [German-born] Klinsmann showed up on time for practice and was surprised to find himself the only one there. Many of his teammates didn't start arriving until a quarter hour later; their thinking was: Practice starts when everyone gets there. Punctuality and precision are traits that perhaps explain Germany's success in many areas. Trains run on time, workers are paid on time, soccer players come to practice on time."

12 New Books We're Planning to Read This Summer

1. The Girls: A Novel

by Emma Cline (June 14)

$16.20 at Amazon

Here’s the debut novel that the publishing world can’t stop talking about. It’s a coming-of-age story, set in Northern California in the late 1960s, that involves a thoughtful teenage girl who drifts into a Charles Manson-like cult. This promises to be a perceptive page-turner, a volume to haunt summer’s warm nights.

2. Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer

by Arthur Lubow (June 7)

$25.45 at Amazon

Diane Arbus is one of the most important and unsettling figures in the history of photography, known for her pictures of people on the margins — dwarfs, cross-dressers, giants, sideshow freaks. Mr. Lubow’s biography of this pioneering artist, the subject of an expansive show at the Met Breuer opening on July 12, is the first since Patricia Bosworth’s in 1984, and it looks serious, sensitive and wide-ranging.

3. You'll Grow Out of It

by Jessi Klein (July 12)

$20.05 at Amazon

Earlier in the 2000s, one might have occasionally caught Ms. Klein’s sharply nerdy stand-up comedy in New York. She’s since built a formidable career mostly behind comedy’s scenes, including her current role as the head writer for “Inside Amy Schumer.” Now she’s publishing a book of autobiographical essays, and her brain seems particularly well suited to make the transition from stage to page.

4. Ninety-nine Stories of God

by Joy Williams (July 12)

$15.42 on Amazon

Ms. Williams deservedly expanded her fan base last year with a collection of new and selected stories, “The Visiting Privilege.” This bite-size follow-up is a stunt of sorts, 99 very short pieces — some just a sentence or two — directly or indirectly about the divine. I imagine the subject and Ms. Williams’s sharp wit and the subject matter will make a good match.

5. Homegoing

by Yaa Gyasi (June 7)

$18.36 on Amazon

This ambitious debut novel opens in 18th-century Ghana and follows seven generations of a family that descends from two half sisters who never knew each other: Effia, who marries an English colonial officer and lives in a coastal palace; and Esi, who is captured and sold into slavery. The novel spans more than 250 years and several continents as the sisters and their descendants wrestle with the physical and psychic scars of slavery and colonialism.

6. Underground Airlines

by Ben H. Winters (July 5)

$20.76 on Amazon

In this alternate history, Mr. Winters imagines a horrific modern-day America where the Civil War never happened, and slavery still exists. The persistence of American slavery is a popular alternate-history plotline, along with the Nazis’ winning World War II, but Mr. Winters carves out fresh territory by blending genres, adding elements of detective fiction. His weary and haunted protagonist, a former slave who calls himself Victor, works as a bounty hunter who tracks down escaped slaves for the United States Marshals Service. He’s on the trail of a man named Jackdaw when his mission, and the painful bargain he’s made with his minders and himself, begin to unravel.

7. I am no one; A Novel

by Patrick Flanery (July 5)

$21.01 on Amazon

Summer is a great time for creepiness and paranoia, and so I’m looking forward to “I Am No One.” In this novel, strange things are happening to a New York University professor who has recently returned from abroad. He seems to be under surveillance of the most insidious and unnerving kind. It’s a terrible predicament to be in, but is he hiding something?

8. Modern Lovers

by Emma Straub (May 31)

$17.77 on Amazon

While you’re lazing around on the beach, three college friends and former bandmates, now in the throes of middle age, are spending their summer confronting hard truths about their pasts while dealing with their suddenly sexually active teenagers. Secrets unravel, and revelations are made, not just about them but about a fourth band member who became famous on her own.

9. Heroes of the Frontier

by Dave Eggers (July 26)

$22.53 on Amazon

After fictional forays to Silicon Valley (“The Circle”) and Saudi Arabia (“A Hologram for the King”), Mr. Eggers takes his dark vision of 21st-century American confusion to the wilds of Alaska. In this adventure-novel-meets-moral-inquiry, a Midwestern single mother at the end of her rope cruises the scenic byways in a rickety R.V. with her two children, dodging raging wildfires, tourist traps, personal demons and epically bad weather, ultimately digging deep to find something close to old-fashioned courage.

10. Being a Beast: Adventures Across the Species Divide

by Charles Foster (June 21)

$18.55 on Amazon

Dr. Foster is a British veterinarian, but don’t come to “Being a Beast: Adventures on the Species Divide” expecting James Herriot. In an effort to truly understand animals, Dr. Foster spent weeks burrowing like a badger on a Welsh hillside (earthworms for dinner, anyone?); swimming with river otters (catching fish with your teeth is harder than it looks); and skulking in alleyways with London’s urban foxes, among other escapades. “It’s a sort of literary shamanism,” he writes in this wildly eccentric and chatty book, “and it’s been fantastic fun.”

11. The Innocent Have Nothing To Fear

by Stuart Stevens (June 28)

$18.71 on Amazon

Face it: You’re going to hear about the 2016 presidential race all summer long (more below), unless you spend your vacation in a missile silo. You may as well milk it for laughs, as Mr. Stevens — Republican political strategist, former television writer, all-around nonfiction guy — appears to have done in this novel, his first. The main character is a populist, anti-immigrant Republican presidential candidate. Whatever gave him that idea?

12. Here Comes the Sun

by Nicole Dennis-Benn (July 19)

$20.98 on Amazon

This novel may take place in Jamaica, but do not mistake it for a traditional beach read. It’s for readers who want to know what’s really behind the lacquered smile of the desk clerk at that lovely resort in Montego Bay, and what the pleasant woman at the market is really thinking when she sells tourists her jewelry and trinkets. The answers are often far less pretty than the scenery, but all evidence suggests that this debut deserves its extravagant publicity.

. . . and 1 Must Re-read Sometime this Summer

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

by Carlo Rovelli (2016)

$10.80 on Amazon

I’ve wanted to reread Mr. Rovelli’s surprise best seller ever since Donald Trump clinched the Republican Nomination. I mean talk about brain dead. Maybe reading Rovell's "Lessons" will explain what black hole American's have decended into.

One reviewer said his breezy “tone would give Brian Cox a run for his quarks.” In just 88 pages, he explores mind-bending topics in physics, like gravitational waves, the heat of black holes and quantum gravity. It is the rare book about physics that can be ingested in a single sitting, which I hope to do again sometime this summer.

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Flooded quais and roadways along the Seine River in Paris

Photo: Betrand Buay AFP/Getty Images

Torrential rains have caused major flooding in central and northeastern France this week, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people, some on boats or kayaks, and threatening priceless works of art stored in Paris’s most celebrated museums. In Germany, heavy rains have been responsible for the deaths of nine people.

In Paris, the Seine rose 16 feet above its typical level (almost 5 meters), flooding the lower embankments (quais) and shutting several roads but causing no significant damage. The level is still far from the record of 1910, however, when the river rose 26 feet above its typical level.

Flooded rail line in Souppes-sur-Loing, France

Photo: Kenzo Tribouillard, AFP/Getty Images

French Open, Museums Disrupted

Nonetheless, the city authorities advised people to stay away from the banks of the river and part of Paris’s commuter train system that runs below ground along the Seine was shut as a preventive measure.

The Louvre announced that it would be closed on Friday to move, as a precautionary measure, works of art in areas vulnerable to flooding.

The Musée d’Orsay, in a former train station on the Left Bank near the Seine, closed early to put in place a flood-protection plan that calls for swift evacuation of the museum’s Impressionist masterpieces and other works of art in the event of flooding.

The rainfall also disrupted the French Open, where several tennis matches have been postponed.

The Flooded Chậteau de Chambord

Photo: Ludovic Letot, AFP/Getty Images

Officials in France and Germany were bracing for even more rainfall this week. The Loing River, a tributary of the Seine, has risen to levels not seen since 1910, and the Île-de-France region, which includes Paris, got more rainfall last month than in any May since 1960.

President François Hollande said Thursday that the rainfall and floods were “very serious,” and linked them to global warming.

“When there are climatic phenomena of this seriousness, we must all be aware that we must act globally,” he said. He later added that the government would declare a state of disaster for affected areas, enabling residents and businesses to receive special insurance compensation. About 20,000 homes in France had lost power and an estimated 5,000 people had to be evacuated.

Meteorologists attribute the recent deluge to a dip in the jestsream that has trapped low-pressure air over much of France and Germany, where the air is then warmed by the sun. Warm, moist air has been flowing into the region around a cut-off upper low located near Austria. With the low stranded in place, thunderstorms have been recurring day after day, with severe weather threats extending across much of the continent.

European Storm Forecast Experiment

Estofex.org

June 2, 2016, severe weather threats extend across the continent

The recent thunderstorms have been more intense than usual because the hot air rises to encounter colder air in the upper atmosphere. Generally, the greater the difference between the rising hot air and the colder high air, the bigger the storms.

Forecasters say there could be a few more days of rain before the low-pressure air finally moves on.

Evacuations in small boats in Souppes-sur-Loing, southeast of Paris

Photo: Kenzo Tribouillard, AFP/Getty Images

More than 3,000 people were evacuated from Nemours, about 50 miles south of Paris, after the Loing overflowed, flooding businesses and homes. The surrounding Seine-et-Marne area was on high alert for floods on Thursday, and 12 other administrative departments in the Île-de-France and Centre-Val de Loire regions were on the second-highest level of flood alert.

Traffic around Orléans, about 75 miles south of Paris, was blocked, and on Tuesday, 217 inmates had to be evacuated from a prison near Orléans. The Château de Chambord, a landmark in the Loire Valley, about 30 miles southwest of Orléans, was surrounded by water.

Flood guidance for Thursday, June 2, 2016 fromVIGICRUES

note that the Loing aval flows north into the Seine à Paris

Meanwhile, central France has been hit hard by river flooding, where water levels have toppled century-long records in some places. Flood guidance on June 2 from the French agency VIGICRUES targeted the region from Paris south through the Loire Valley as one of the highest-risk zones.

Paris' 1910 Flood

Paris Floods, January 27, 2010

click on the image for a full-sized view

from New York Times

in part the 1910 article says

“Grim fear has settled upon Paris as it breathlessly watches the Seine rising steadily inch by inch, foot by foot, like a relentless fate."

The newspaper published pictures of endangered landmarks and accounts of those on the outskirts of Paris, whose only sustenance was "bread and foul water."

Record crests from 1910 have already been broken along the Loing, a tributary of the Seine. Thousands of people have been evacuated across the region. On Thursday, some riverbank sections along the Seine in central Paris were already closed as water flowed into the region from the south.

Le Zouave du Pont de L'Alma

already has his feet wet

One of the city’s most renowned benchmarks of high water, used long before computer forecast models to gauge the severity of floods, is the statue of a Zouave soldier at the Pont de l’Alma, built in the 1850s. This is the bridge made infamous by the death of Princess Diana on the adjacent quai in August of 1997.

The statue’s feet were covered on June 2, 2016 as the water height reached 4.45 meters, its highest level since at least 2001. During the city’s flood of record, in 1910, the water level reached the statue’s shoulders (8.62 meters). The Seine is predicted to crest between 5 and 6 meters on Friday, June 3, 2016 according to Le Monde.

Meanwhile in Florida

Florida Welcomes Tropical Weather

Parched north central Florida is hoping for rain, and it may finally get it. All of the reliable computer models used for forecasting tropical systems are now pointing to a tropical disturbance crossing Florida sometime Monday, June 6 to Tuesday, June 7. Some of the forecasts are now calling for 6-12-inches (150-300 mm) of rain from this low wind, high rain system.

NOAA (National Weather Service)

Weather Prediction Center

Forecast for 7-day accumulation of rain up to 6.00 inches

across the currently-driest part of Florida.

Florida has plenty of capacity for heavy rains especially considering it has suffered through many years of drought. Most lakes in north central Florida remain at record low levels and would benefit greatly from 12-inches of rain. We hope this forecast verifies.

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Plus sur Paris Inondations

In Paris, the Seine Rises to Highest Level Since 1982

The banks of the Seine on June 3.

Photo: Pierre Terdjman for The New York Times

Flood Waters Reach the Waist of the Zouave

Inondations: la Seine atteindra son plus haut niveau dans la nuit

Above: Floodwaters lapping at the feet of the Zouave statue in 1936.

Photo: Agence France-Presse—Getty Images

Below: Le Zouave on Thursday, June 2, 2016. The water would eventually reach his waist.

Photo: Bertrand Guay/AFP

Staff at the Louvre scrambled Friday to move artworks to higher floors as Paris experienced its worst flooding in 30 years.

Photo: Markus Schreiber/AP

The Louvre, its glass pyramid covered by a black-and-white image of the museum, was closed as artworks in areas vulnerable to flooding were moved to higher floors.

Washington Oaks State Park

and

The Rocks Beach, at Matanzas Inlet

One of my favorite beaches along Florida's east coast is what the locals call "The Rocks" just north of Matanzas Inlet and south of St. Augustine. It is unique among east coast beaches in that it sports one of the largest exposed coquina outcroppings (rock) along the east coast of Florida and it is situated between Matanzas and Marineland (just south of the inlet), Washington Oaks State Park just north of the inlet, and only a few miles south of the magnificent Anastasia State Park. Also along this stretch of beach is Fort Matanzas National Monument. Together these parks protect thousands of acres of pristine barrier island and dunes.

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Playing around with the sun at Marineland Marina

Washington Oaks has perhaps one of the more carefully document histories of all the state parks along the east coast of Florida, dating all the way back to Spanish rule of Florida which ended in 1763 when Spain traded Florida to the British in exchange for Havana as a result of the Seven Years War. For 20 years after, the British promoted the settlement of East Florida with land grants.

The Washington Oaks area was first granted to John Moultrie in 1770. Moultrie, the Lieutenant Governor of East Florida, mined the heaps of oyster shells left by the Timucuans (Native Americans) to produce lime, and planted an orange grove. There was little time for Moultrie to cultivate his land before the Spanish regained control of Florida in 1783. When the Spanish returned, Moultrie retreated to England, abandoning the property.

The Timucuans and other native tribes were overwhelmed by the military might of Europeans. However the deadliest European invaders were the Old World diseases: Bubonic plague, chicken pox, dysentery, diphtheria, influenza, malaria, measles, scarlet fever, small pox, typhoid, typhus, and yellow fever. These scourges decimated the native population of Florida by the mid-1700s.

History Repeats Itself

Interesting how history repeats itself. Florida oranges are now being destroyed as fast as they can be planted by an invasion of the Huanglonbing bacteria (aka HLB; Citrus Greening) from the east while humans are increasingly worried about the multiple debilitating effects of the Zika Virus which is marching across Florida from the South. Humans seldom learn from history.

On my recent visit my biggest disappointment was that the extensive network of ponds were all mostly devoid of water. I'm hoping they were only under repair.

Bella Vista

Jose Mariano Hernandez, a native of Minorca, bought the property in 1818. He named the 375-acre tract Bella Vista (Spanish for Beautiful View). It was an expansion of his plantation to the south, Mala Compra (Bad Bargain), where the Hernandez family and their slaves lived. The Mala Compra plantation grew corn, cotton, and sugar. At Bella Vista Hernandez grazed cattle and grew oranges.

When the United States acquired Florida in 1821, the Seminole Indians were urged to leave their lands and relocate to the American West. Some Indians moved, but others prepared for war. Hernandez, who had become a U.S. Army general, sent his family and slaves to St. Augustine for their safety.

The formal rose garden was spectacular, as always.

The Seminoles raided plantations along the Matanzas River which borders the property to the west. Mala Compra was burned to the ground and the farms were destroyed. Because it was uninhabited, Bella Vista was unharmed. After the Second Seminole War ended in 1842, Hernandez attempted to reestablish his farms, but the plantation economy never fully recovered and the land was later divided between his children.

The Washington Place

Until 1889 No one Is Known to Have Lived on this Land

Jose Hernandez' daughter Luisa, married George L. Washington, a North Carolina attorney. When luisa died, Washington went to Florida for the settlement of the Hernandez property. Enchanted by Bella Vista, Washington made arrangements with Luisa's sister, Dorotea to build a small beach house here. He built his house on top of the old Timucuan midden (shell mound). Washington used the house as a sportsman's retreat, eventually purchasing the property from Dorotea. During his tenure the land began to be known as "The Washington Place.

Giant White Bird of Paradise grow further north than one would imagine. They are protected from cold snaps by proximity to the Atlantic Ocean a few hundred feet to the east and the Matanzas River, a few hundred feet to the west.

A formal arbor leading from the rose garden to the Matanzas River.

The Matanzas River

Two of Washington's adult sons lived at the Washington Place for years. They established a citrus business, packing and shipping oranges upriver by sailboat to St. Augustine.

George L. Washington died in 1894 and the Washington Place was bequeathed to his son Charles. Charles soon abandoned the property and the house burned in the early 1900s.

In 1923, Charles Washington sold the Washington Place to real estate developers. The Florida Land Boom was underway and the land along the coast to the east of the property was purchased as well. Development of "Hernandez Estates" came to a quick halt, however, when Florida plunged into the Depression in 1926, four years ahead of the rest of the nation.

Over the next few years, the property changed hands several times before behing purchased by Owen D. Young as a wedding gift for his future wife, Louise B. Clark.

During the Great Depression, property in Florida was a bargain if you had the money. Like many other properties, the Washington Place was for sale in 1936 when Owen Young and Louise Clark were visiting Louise's mother in St. Augustine.

Mr. Young, an industrialist and Chairman of the Board of General Electric and RCA, bought the property for Louise as a wedding gift. The day after their wedding on February 20, 1937, the Youngs held an outdoor party at their renamed "Washington Oaks."

For 20 years, the Youngs wintered in paradise at Washington Oaks. Throughout the 194s and 50s they enjoyed swimming, walks, fruit picking and watching the sunsets from the terrace of their "bungalow" built with a view of the Matanzas River.

I like how odd plants grow in the nooks and crannies of old-growth sabal palms. Here a prickly pear cactus has taken root some 20 feet off the ground.

Owen Young died in July, 1962. Soon after his death, Louise Young began to discuss the donation of Washington Oaks to the State of Florida for use as a state park. Mrs. Young's wish was for the gardens to be "maintained in their present form" as a memorial to her beloved husband.

Washington Oaks became state property in 1964. It officially opened as Washington Oaks State Gardens on January 1, 1965. The park is managed by the Florida Park Service, which has been decimated over recent decades by total control of Florida's legislature by Republicans who do not think of conservation as a worthy pursuit for the public good. The Young's would be appalled by the current condition of some of their gardens due to a lack of state support.

A Great White Southern White Butterfly (Ascia monuste) on a boxwood bush. There were dozens of these Great White Southerns sampling the tiny flowers of the boxwood.

This riverside cottage was the winter home of Owen and Louise Young. The Young's primary residence was in Van Homesville, New York. After much consideration, the Youngs decided to build their Washington Oaks home on this raised bank along the Matanzas River rather than the beachside of the Atlantic Ocean. They preferred the protection of the oak hammock forest and the beautiful vistas of the river and marshes at sunset. The Youngs received many guests, including national and state dignitaries, and enjoyed entertaining on the porches shaded by these magnificent trees.

The Young's cottage overlooking the Matanzas River is now a museum. On a recent afternoon it was blazing hot in the museum. Apparently AC wasn't turned on for visitors.

The original front gate of Washington Oaks on old A-1-A. Mr. Young didn't like the traffic going in front of the property so he had the state move A-1-A several hundred feet toward the ocean. The remnants of the old roadway are now parking for the gardens.

The Rocks

The Washington Oaks Addition

Locally known as "The Rocks." This 50-acre beach and dune area was purchased by the State of Florida June 15, 1982, using funds from the Florida Forever special tax and the Save Our Coast land acquisition program, due to the united efforts of the people of Flagler County to save the coast from development. The land was decreed to be used in perpetuity by everyone and it was annexed into Washington Oaks State Park.

The park's beachside acreage is important for its recreation opportunities—sun bathing, bird watching, beachcombing, photography—and for its environmental significance. Each year sea turtles nest on the beaches here. Sea turtle tracks and nests are observed during the months of May through October.

Tide Pools in the Rocks

Is that boardwalk leaning? Or was I?

Red and purple flags were flying noting high hazard of strong currents and high surf, along with dangerous marine life (jellyfish, man-of-wars)

There were a lot of gohper tortoises out foraging. Gopher tortoises are gentle herbivores which are currently protected by Florida and Federal statutes.

Looking south toward Matanzas Inlet several hundred yards distant.

Georgia Aquarium and Marineland

Above and below: Ponds at the Marineland Dolphin Adventure and Georgia Aquarium Conservation Field Station. Wondering what the Georgia Aquarium is doing in coastal Florida? They bought Marineland and are operating both the park and a research station across A-1-A. Read more at their website: Georgia Aquarium Conservation Field Station and see my photos of the other Georgia Aquarium (in Atlanta) at this link: A Cool Saturday Afternoon in Atlanta and The Georgia Aquarium.

Redneck

Redneck, my favorite red-eared slider (Trachemys scripta elegans) turtle is a difficult "pet." He is often gone on walkabout for weeks or months at a time, and there have been entire seasons that I cannot find him. I often spend hours trudging through the wetlands that surround our home looking for Redneck, worrying that something has happened to him. He usually turns up, eventually. When he is around I love talking to him and taking photos of him basking and doing whatever turtles do around our three large ponds (15,000 gallons each; 57,000 liters).

People often ask how I can identify Redneck from the many other turtles in our ponds. Redneck is the most expressive. What can I say? I know him. Also he has a large white area on the right front of his shell that is unmistakable.

ＰＨＩＬＬＩＰＬＯＴＴＰＨＯＴＯＧＲＡＰＨＹ

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