Ravine Gardens State Park in Palatka, Florida was a make-work project from the Great Depression. It has loads of azaleas in the woods and a surprisingly deep ravine by Florida standards. For us, it's almost mountainous. I only had my little waterproof camera and the overcast noon light wasn't terribly good, so the photos aren't great. Palatka is in northeastern Florida, on the St. Johns River south of Jacksonville. The Palatka area was a center of plantation development during the British colonial period.

There's quite a few Syagrus romanzoffiana like this one around the ravine, with a few larger ones. I suspect that freezes kill the larger ones, but the species seems to have gone genuinely feral.

This is the tallest Butia capitata I've ever seen. It badly needs to be rescued from air potatoes (Ipomoea batatas), a non-native vine that can bring down forest trees and smother everything in sight. It doesn't look like it's able to smother the palm's leaves, though.

There's several more photos at Flickr.

What a lovely green butia, all the ones around here have a bluish colour, so that photo for me is very rare and exotic indeed. Thanks for posting it.

Peachy