The first 2024 meeting of the Eugenia Chapter was held January 18 at the Environmental Learning Center. Blayne Schacht, VP of the Gopher Tortoise Alliance, was our guest speaker with her enthusiastic talk entitled Digging Deeper: Uncovering the Gopher Tortoise.
Many of us enjoy seeing these long-lived land turtles on our nature hikes, usually in high, dry sandy habitats. The burrows they construct supply refuge sites for 350 other wildlife species.
Gopher tortoises eat a variety of native plant species, many familiar to us. We all had a good laugh when Blayne said one of their favorite foods was Bidens alba, Spanish Needles! No, gopher tortoises don’t eat our dainty native butterfly orchid (Encyclia tampensis). A great specimen of a butterfly orchid on a live oak log provided lively bidding activity at our post speaker auction.
Eugenia Chapter - Florida Native Plant Society 