The Everglades of South Florida: not just glades, trees common.

Everglades is a compound word, consisting of two words; ever and glades.  Here I define both in an attempt to decode the enigmatic beauty of the habitats of the Everglades, by visually and linguistics constructing the everglades from first terms:  
1. Ever (adverb): at any or all times, always.  forever or eternally.  increasingly constant or perpetual.  often used for emphasis (e.g., ever present).  
2.  Glade (noun):  an open areas within an woodland.  a grassy meadow or clearing.  more loosely; a treeless wetland. 

​Taking these definitions to heart, we can visually construct an ecosystem named, "the Everglades", or perpetual and expansive treeless wetland.  Using our imaginations, we may envision something that looks like the picture below:    

A massive wetland meadow in the Everglades. Picture taken looking north from the overlook of Shark River slough, inside Everglades National Park.

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There is only only one problem with this definition:  There are likely millions of trees in Everglades National Park.  Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum (L.) L.C. Rich) trees are common in flooded areas, creating dome-like forest patch tree-islands in perpetually-flooded areas.  A few lone Bald Cypress trees are visible above; the start of a Cypress dome. In more upland, non-wetland, areas of the Everlglades, with elevations of one to a few feet above sea level, exist "Pine Rockland" ecosystems, dominate by the Southern Florida Slash Pine (Pinus elliotii (Engelm.) var. densa (Little & Dorman)) and broad-leaf hardwood forest, commonly referred to as hammocks.  Additionally along coastal areas, mangrove trees (all three species: Red (Rhizophora mangle L.), Black (Avicennia germinans (L.) L.), and White (Laguncularia racemosa (L.) C.F. Gaertn.) can be found.  

I had the opportunity to do a little field work in the Pine Rockland recently, where I helped a fellow graduate student establish some transects spanning the Pine Rockland-Hardwood hammock ecotone.  Below are some photos of the native flora:  ♠ ​