Walking with the wildlife

A patch of former ranchland is open to hikers now that it's part of the Cypress Creek Preserve. Native plants and animals inhabit the fertile forest and pastures.

By BILL COATS

© St. Petersburg Times, published October 22, 2000

LUTZ -- For a half-century, practically nobody but Wayne Jennings and his cows ventured through Jennings' damp, shady forest east of Livingston Avenue. Then lately, paintball warriors and the occasional trespasser.

[Times photos: Mike Pease] Rancher Wayne Jennings, 80, considered selling his land to a developer but preferred to see it became a park.

But now, Jennings' 290-acre property is closed to paintball, and open instead to anybody in the mood for a hike.

The 80-year-old rancher and his wife, Edna, sold the land a month ago into Hillsborough County's Cypress Creek Preserve. As with other preserved properties, it promptly opened to the public.

This means you can see dense stands of magnolias, where stunning pileated woodpeckers feast on the trees' red seeds. You can gawk at towering live oaks, maples and hickories, draped with vines and moss. You can admire cabbage palms, which reach through the top of the canopy, bending gracefully as if petrified in the midst of swaying.

On the ground, you can find the calling cards of wild animals, and nature's green artistry of spoonflower, lizard's tail, rein orchid and wild coffee.

Wayne Jennings, 80, appreciates all this, but with a rancher's knack for understatement.

"It's a nice piece of property back there," he said.

Hillsborough County recently expanded Cypress Creek Preserve with the purchase of about 290 acres of former pastures and damp, shady forest in Lutz.

When a robust rain falls, Cypress Creek slides through these woods in sheets. That's why Jennings calls his former land the "northwest lip of the Cypress Creek basin."

The county's environmental scientists say the sheetflow imparts an important element of diversity beneath the tree canopies. It makes Jennings' forests a patchwork of wet lowlands, where sphagnum moss forms acres of carpet, and drier uplands, where deer lurk among the palmettos and long-leaf pines.

The woods are unnaturally hospitable right now. Patches of ground that were mucky in July have dried. Lots of undergrowth is only ankle-deep, thanks to the cows.

"It's going to be much denser later," said botanist Sheryl Bowman, one of the Hillsborough County scientists who help manage the preserves.

She bemoans the drought, which has toppled some trees and stressed others.

"It's a shame it hasn't been raining," Bowman said. "You'd see all the wildflowers in bloom."

Even more worrisome is the aggressive spread of skunk vine, a wiry plant with dark smelly leaves. It was imported from Asia years ago as a potential raw material for the fiber industry. Then it escaped into an environment where it has no natural enemies.

"It gets to the point where you can smell it driving up I-75," said Bowman. "I've got a fear that a lot of native plants are going to be covered."

On the brighter side, she predicts that fall colors will spread through the property in coming weeks. Some sweet gum leaves already have turned yellow. Maples will follow.

"Persimmon and poison ivy are changing," Bowman said.

The poison ivy can be identified by three leaves on a single stem, and remembered by an old Southern saying, "Leaves of three: let it be."

In Jennings' former pastures, waves of flat-topped goldenrod are blooming yellow, attracting love bugs.

The preserve's wildness is best shown by death.

A dead tree, which would be whisked away from a landscaped lawn, rots for decades in wilderness. Woodpeckers renovate its exterior. Insects burrow inside. The tree eventually falls. It slowly gets a new skin of sphagnum moss. Its interior dissolves into dust. The final, rarely seen, cycle of life is on display.

Except for insects, animals seem shy in the preserve. But the deer leave tracks. The raccoons leave pellets. Yellow-bellied sapsuckers peck rows of holes across a hardwood trunk. Armadillos and gopher tortoises dig burrows beneath roots.

Wayne Jennings remembers finding the tell-tale signs of bears in the early days.

"They'd pull the top out of cabbage palms," he said.

Later, he was likelier to find the signs of "the poachers and the riff-raff and the wild party people," Jennings said.

He considered selling the land to a developer but leveraged that into a deal of nearly $1-million with the county. He hopes the result will bring a more respectful type of visitor.

"We were going to have to convert it one way or another," Jennings said. "But I prefer it in a park."

- Bill Coats can be reached at (813) 226-3469 or coats@sptimes.com.

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