A continuation of the Sabal minor adventure on the Forks Area Trail System

[JLeVert]

This is a continuation of the Sabal minor post from a few days ago.  Same trail (Great Wall) in the Forks Area Trail System off-road bike trails in Edgefield County, SC, about 20 minutes north of Augusta, GA.  

In the photographs, beginning with the map, the pictures are in ascending order by elevation.  The trail is the red one on the map and you can see how close it gets to a finger of the Savannah River.  There are fairly steep gullies leading down to the river.  In places, Sabal minor is really thick and then a little further down in what seems to be prime palm habitat, there won't be any.  My speculation is that when cotton was grown here, the palm-empty areas were arable, while the steeper areas never were usable for crops.  

The first picture after the map was taken at 211', but pretty high up above the palms.  It was a warm day and I didn't have time to get down to the bottom.....or time to deal with a little snake bite!  I think that I was about 30'-40' above the palms.  There were lots of seedlings above the main population of S. minor.  Again, maybe they are expanding their territory again since there is no agriculture here now.  This is national forest that is logged occasionally.  They do controlled burns about every three years.

Edited February 17, 2019 by JLeVert
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