Who Said That?

"Some of what is out here is edible. Some of it will drop you dead."

They’re so easy to miss in a landscape almost monotonously green.

But for naturalist Roger Hammer, it’s the small, scattered drops of color that stand out among the slash pines and saw palmetto. Wildflowers. The vast Everglades is home to hundreds of them.

Some are spectacular but most are small and subtle. Some are fragrant, others poisonous. With the exception of a few big names — notably, the rare ghost orchid made famous in a best-selling book — many are largely unknown and unnoticed, at least outside a small group of scientists, enthusiasts and, unfortunately, poachers.

“The average person driving by has no idea of what is out here,’’ said Hammer, as he hiked the northeastern corners of the Big Cypress National Preserve in an ongoing quest to find and photograph an exceptionally scarce yellow bloom called the Fakahatchee burmania.

Read more at the Miami Herald.