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Hammock (ecology)

 
Hammock (ecology)

 
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Hammock (ecology)
 
 
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Hammocks are dense stands of hardwood
Hardwood

The term hardwood is used to describe wood from non-monocot flowering plant trees and for those trees themselves. These are usually broad-leaved; in temperate and boreal latitudes they are mostly deciduous, but in tropics and subtropics mostly evergreen....
 trees that grow on natural rises of only a few inches higher than surrounding marshland that is otherwise too wet to support them. Hammocks are distinctive in that they are formed gradually over thousands of years rising in a wet area through the deposits of their own decomposing organic material.






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Hammock1
Hammocks are dense stands of hardwood
Hardwood

The term hardwood is used to describe wood from non-monocot flowering plant trees and for those trees themselves. These are usually broad-leaved; in temperate and boreal latitudes they are mostly deciduous, but in tropics and subtropics mostly evergreen....
 trees that grow on natural rises of only a few inches higher than surrounding marshland that is otherwise too wet to support them. Hammocks are distinctive in that they are formed gradually over thousands of years rising in a wet area through the deposits of their own decomposing organic material. As a result they typically have a large and diverse density of various forms of plant and animal life. They appear as teardrop-shaped islands shaped by the flow of water in the middle of the slough. Many tropical species such as mahogany
Mahogany

The name mahogany is used when referring to numerous varieties of dark-colored wood, originally the wood of the species Swietenia mahagoni, known as West Indian or Cuban mahogany....
 (Swietenia mahogoni), gumbo limbo (Bursera simaruba), and cocoplum (Chrysobalanus icaco) grow alongside the more familiar temperate species of live oak
Live oak

Live oak or evergreen oak is a general term for a number of unrelated oaks in several different sections of the genus Quercus that happen to share the characteristic of evergreen foliage....
 (Quercus virginiana), red maple
Red Maple

Acer rubrum , is one of the most common and widespread deciduous trees of Eastern United States North America. It ranges from the Lake of the Woods on the border between Ontario and Minnesota, east to Newfoundland and Labrador, south to near Miami, Florida, Florida, and southwest to east Texas....
 (Acer rubum), and hackberry
Hackberry

Hackberry is a genus of about 60-70 species of deciduous trees widespread in warm temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, in southern Europe, southern and eastern Asia, and southern and central North America, and south to central Africa and South America....
 (Celtis laevigata).

Because of their slight elevation, hammocks rarely flood. Acids from decaying plants dissolve the limestone around each tree island, creating a natural moat that protects the hammock plants from fire. Shaded from the sun by the tall trees, fern
Fern

A fern is any one of a group of about 20,000 species of plants classified in the phylum or division Pteridophyta, also known as Filicophyta....
s and airplants thrive in the moisture-laden air inside the hammock.

Hammocks are one of the habitats
Habitat (ecology)

A habitat is an ecological or Natural_environment area that is inhabited by a particular animal or plant species. It is the natural environment in which an organism lives, or the physical environment that surrounds a species population....
 found in the Florida Everglades.