Invasive brazilian pepper ferns making native Caribbean maiden hairs endangered

Field biologist Jennifer Possley holds the Caribbean maiden fern, a rare fern in danger of disappearing at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden nursery in Coral Gables, Fla., on Friday, June 5, 2015. Horticulturist Mike Freedman grew the fern from a spore Possley collected. They hope to grow enough ferns at the garden to provide insurance for the population should something happen. (Jessica Bal/Miami Herald/TNS)

Stephanie Soto

There is an ongoing fern crisis in Miami-Dade County, but more than that there is also a native plant crisis, and a natural areas crisis.

The need to have spacious green lawns, huge houses and a Wal-Mart at every corner are destroying natural areas. Even the need to have charming ornamental plants from exotic countries plays a role in the destruction.

And somewhere in the southern reaches of Miami-Dade County, the only fern of its kind known to grow wild in the continental U.S. survives under a thicket of Brazilian pepper.

Hernan Martinez, naturalist at the Office of University Sustainability, explains that invasives like Brazilian pepper have chemicals that deter the growth of other plants and since they love Florida’s climate so much, they grow quite fast and very dense which blocks out sunlight, not allowing smaller ground plants to photosynthesize.

This creates “monocultures” which means that the areas surrounding these trees have limited biodiversity.

“We are creating a biological bottleneck”, Martinez said.

Botanists have long worried that the Caribbean maiden fern, discovered in 2006 near Florida City, could be just one hurricane, plant poacher or misfired shot of herbicide away from disappearing forever.

So two years ago a team led by Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden launched a rescue mission, ultimately more drudging than gripping, to collect and propagate spores no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence.

Despite the success, the maiden hair could be the poster plant for a fern crisis playing out across Miami-Dade.

With 124 native ferns, Florida has more species than anywhere else in the U.S. outside Hawaii or Puerto Rico, Possley said. Of those, 48 grow in Miami-Dade County. More than half, 26, are imperiled or in danger of going extinct. Fourteen have already disappeared.

If the surviving ferns grew in large, protected preserves like Everglades National Park or the Big Cypress National Preserve, Possley said she would worry less.

But seven are found only in a patchwork of small preserves managed by Miami-Dade’s Environmentally Endangered Lands program, the last fragments of hardwood hammocks and pine rockland now surrounded by highways, commercial districts and busy neighborhoods.

The Caribbean maiden hair is highly affected by habitat destruction and the non-native, invasive Brazilian pepper tree.

Brazilian pepper was brought from Brazil in the 19th century as an ornamental plant. In Brazil, the tree is very manageable and grows as a shrub. However, in Florida, the trees can grow ridiculously tall, creating dense forests. It is such a problem that it is illegal to sell or plant Brazilian pepper. So what makes this plant so harmful to our native plants?

South Florida and certain parts of the Caribbean are home to the endangered ecosystem, Pine Rocklands.

There are only one to three percent left in the whole world. The University’s nature preserve has one acre of Pine Rockland which is home to a federally listed endangered plant species, the Crenulate lead-plant. Martinez and the nature preserve interns and volunteers manage the Pine Rockland by removing species that should not grow there and planting plants that should.

Recently, the University of Miami has come under fire for selling 48 acres of Pine Rockland to Wal-Mart. If the small percentage of Pine Rocklands left were to be completely destroyed, we would not only lose a unique ecosystem, but all the species that depend on it.

The Nature Preserve, Everglades National Park, and Big Cypress National Preserve protect natural ecosystems and educate the public about the environment.

Students interested in learning more about the FIU Nature Preserve can visit gogreen.fiu.edu.

Additional reporting from Jenny Staletovich from the Tribune News Service

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