conserving 18 THE TROPICAL Garden Enchanted by Ferns on la isla del encanto By Jennifer Possley photos by james lange and jennifer possley One of the many perks of being a botanist in subtropical South Florida is that we reside in the sweet spot between temperate and tropical zones, and much of our flora has biogeographical roots in the West Indies. If you learn to identify the native species in Miami, then you are also learning to identify many West Indian species, or at least their close relatives. This is one reason why we look forward to using our experience with Miami’s ferns to promote fern conservation throughout our region. And so it came to pass that in early 2016, Fairchild Field Biologist Jimmy Lange and I found ourselves in western Puerto Rico for 11 days, at the invitation of U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) biologists. This was the South Florida Conservation Team’s second visit to the area in recent years, and we were once again dedicating half of our trip to Puerto Rico’s endemic, federally endangered ferns (the rest of our time was spent on the endemic flora of the Sierra Bermeja region, which was profiled in Dr. Joyce Maschinski’s summer 2015 article in The Tropical Garden).
FairchildTropicalBotanicGardenDEMO
To see the actual publication please follow the link above