My "Reconstructing Historical Landscapes" class had a final project,
I chose to write a paper and do a presentation about Invasive Species in Florida.
For this test, I brought cupcakes to class, and had participants guess which species was NOT exotic to our state.
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| Answer: Dandelions! They are an annoying weed, but native. |
Tropical Soda Apples are toxic to livestock, and have awful spines on stems and leaves.
They are successful invaders because of the thousands of seeds they can produce in a season.
Hydrilla can outgrow native species in waterways, infests more than 75,000 acres of water in Fl.
Armadillos are exotic but not particularly invasive, they do not threaten native species.
Feral hogs can destroy acres of farm and wild land in no time, population control most aided by year long hunting season (on private property).
Red Imported Fire Ant, this invader is nasty. There was a big fight to control their spread in the 1960s-70s, however controls have relaxed, basically giving in to the fire ant in Florida.
This was a fun little stunt for my presentation, and even more fun to make!
It was a great class!
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