Sawgrass Marsh
South Florida Water Management District
Sawgrass Marsh
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The most extensive natural community in the management area is
sawgrass marsh. The dominant species sawgrass, which reaches heights
of 10 feet high or more, thrived in the low-nutrient and fluctuating
water conditions of the historic Everglades. The black peat of
the Everglades valued for agriculture, especially sugar cane,
formed over thousands of years from decaying sawgrass and charcoal
from frequent light ground fires. Today water levels in the marsh
are regulated by water control structures as well as by rainfall
and vary from an average of 2 feet deep at the peak of the wet
season in October to below ground level at the end of the dry
season in May. Sawgrass is important to ground nesting birds such
as the American and least bitterns, which build elevated mound
nests out of dead vegetation and use the thick growth of sawgrass
for cover.
Fires every 1 to 5 years are typical and result from lightning
in the late spring when the ground surface is dry, although sawgrass
will carry a fire over water. When the peat dries out in extreme
droughts, muck fires may consume the soil and lower the ground
surface converting the sawgrass marsh to a slough.
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