Greetings, readers. Today, we examine one of the four major elements in nature. Not water, earth, wind, but FIRE. I just love sharing this series, Caring for Mother Nature, by my friend, author and naturalist, Peggy Sias Lantz (click her name to visit her website). Enjoy!
Fire!
by Peggy Lantz
Fire has been one of mankind’s most beneficial elements. In Greek mythology, Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans. We heat with it and cook with it. We sterilize things and make steel with it.
Unfortunately, it also can be dangerous and devastating.
In nature, however, it is absolutely necessary for some plants and for the creatures that live with those plants.
In my effort to restore my piney woods, I realize it will need to be burned or it will not stay a piney woods. It will turn back into the jungle that I have just gotten rid of.
Lightning and fire
Fires are started in nature by lightning strikes, most often in the spring when the grasses are dead from the winter dry season and Florida’s rainy season and mighty thunderstorms start. When the fire burns back the woody plants that would shade out the grasses and the sandy places where pine seeds could germinate, the pine woods grasses respond by sending out new shoots within a few days. The burned wiregrasses, love grasses, and flowering plants recover and bloom. In response, gopher tortoises and insects return to feast on the fresh growth, and birds nest again and feed the flush of insects to their nestlings.
Many plants and animals have become endangered or extinct because of our Smokey the Bear suppression of fire in natural lands. Plants such as the coontie, bonamia, milkweeds, and even pitcher plants in wet places need to burn to maintain the habitat. Wiregrass will not bloom without fire, and sandpine cones will not release their seeds without fire.
Animals needing fire-maintained habitats include the gopher tortoise, the Florida mouse, Sherman’s fox squirrel, the Crested Caracara, the Florida scrub jay, and the burrowing owl—all rare because of the absence of fire to keep the jungle away and the plants and insects they need healthy.
Even the fireflies need openings in the jungle to find each other.
In the absence of lightning-started fires in places where it’s needed, prescribed burning becomes necessary. The efforts to return Oakland Nature Preserve and Wekiva Springs State Park, and other places to their longleaf pine sandhill habitat include purposely set fires, carefully prepared for and watched over by trained personnel.
In a couple of years, my piney woods will need to be burned in order for it to stay the piney woods I’ve nurtured. I don’t want it to turn back into the overgrown tangle it was two years ago. I want it to be like it was a hundred years ago.
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Thanks for reading!
Your writer on the wing,
Charlene
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