Florida Scrub Habitat Statewide

Florida scrub is a low evergreen shrubland, with or without sand pines overhead, that grows on dry, infertile sandy ridges, many of them ancient shorelines (FNAI Scrub).

The Florida Natural Areas Inventory names the signature plants found in scrubs across the state: three shrubby oaks (myrtle oak, sand live oak and Chapman's oak), Florida rosemary and sand pine. Oak scrub is the most common form; rosemary scrub holds the driest ridge crests, and sand pine scrub sits on the highest ridgelines. The sands are white or yellow, acid and low in nutrients, and FNAI ties many ridges to former Plio-Pleistocene shorelines (FNAI).

Statewide, scrub runs in long narrow ridges roughly parallel to the coasts and is scarce or absent on the limestone of far South Florida. FNAI places the largest continuous block in the Ocala National Forest, about 200,000 acres in Marion County, with more in Lake and Seminole counties, and other sizable areas on the Lake Wales Ridge, the Atlantic Coastal Ridge and the Panhandle coast and barrier islands (FNAI). Outside Florida it reaches only along barrier islands to Alabama and Mississippi and in small patches of southeastern Georgia.

FWC describes a healthy Lake Wales Ridge scrub as a miniature forest whose trees seldom pass 10 feet, broken by open patches of bare sand (FWC Lake Wales Ridge WEA). Those openings matter: FNAI notes that several rare herbs favor sandy openings and that Florida scrub-jays need small openings for caching acorns (FNAI).

Florida scrub shelters rare plants, lizards, skinks, a mouse, dozens of endemic arthropods and the Florida scrub-jay, and USFWS says the Lake Wales Ridge refuge targeted the greatest concentration of local endemics in eastern North America (USFWS Lake Wales Ridge NWR).

FNAI counts 27 rare plant species in Lake Wales Ridge scrubs, 14 of them shared with scrubs on other peninsular ridges, and ten more found only on coastal or other inland ridges (FNAI). Four rare vertebrates live in peninsular Florida scrub: the Florida scrub-jay and Florida scrub lizard, which range widely, the sand skink, found only on the Lake Wales Ridge, and the blue-tailed mole skink of the Lake Wales Ridge and Ocala National Forest. The Florida mouse, short-tailed snake and gopher tortoise also use scrub, and FNAI lists roughly 56 arthropods endemic to peninsular scrubs, among them a red widow spider, five wolf spiders, two tiger beetles and twelve scarab beetles.

The federal refuge on the ridge uses its own count. USFWS says the Lake Wales Ridge holds 23 listed plants, at least four listed animals and more than 40 endemic invertebrates, and that Lake Wales Ridge National Wildlife Refuge, four tracts in Polk and Highlands counties, was the first refuge set up to recover endangered and threatened plants (USFWS). The two plant numbers measure different things: FNAI counts rare plant species, USFWS counts federally listed plants.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lists the Florida scrub-jay as Threatened wherever found, a status in place since June 3, 1987 (USFWS ECOS).

The ECOS profile shows a revised recovery plan dated September 27, 2019, and a 5-year status review dated August 27, 2025, shows the current listing status as Threatened, and names three Florida refuges where the bird occurs: Lake Wales Ridge, Merritt Island and Nathaniel P. Reed Hobe Sound (USFWS ECOS). Some Florida pages, including the Oscar Scherer State Park page, call the bird endangered (Florida State Parks); the federal listing is Threatened. FWC lists it as Federally-designated Threatened under Florida's Endangered and Threatened Species Rule, protected also by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (FWC Florida Scrub-Jay). Last verified: October 15, 2026, on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, FWC and Florida State Parks websites.

FWC calls it the only bird species endemic to Florida. Scrub-jays live in family groups, a breeding pair plus young helpers that are usually their own offspring, breed from March to June, and nest 3 to 10 feet up in shrubby oaks. They do best where oak shrubs average about 1 to 2 meters tall, and FWC reports, citing a 2001 FNAI field guide, that the population declined 90 percent in the past century from habitat destruction, fragmentation and degradation, including fire suppression (FWC).

Florida scrub needs periodic fire to reset tall, dense shrubs and reopen bare sand, but it is not easily ignited and is thought to have burned less often than sandhill or mesic flatwoods, which have grassier groundcover (FNAI).

The intervals come from plant and animal life histories (FNAI). Florida rosemary and peninsular sand pine are killed by fire and must regrow from seed, so burning too often wipes them out; two burns within a decade in Ocala National Forest can prevent or reduce sand pine regrowth. Long fire-free periods are the other Florida risk: scrub-jays have been documented abandoning territories where oaks reached more than 3 meters on the Lake Wales Ridge, and oak scrub too tall to burn under prescribed conditions may be chopped and then burned.

Sand pine stands burn hot when they do burn. FNAI records a 1935 wildfire in Ocala National Forest that ran across 35,000 acres in four hours, and notes that some managers instead fell the pines mechanically and then burn, which avoids crown fires (FNAI). FWC runs an aggressive prescribed fire program on Lake Wales Ridge Wildlife and Environmental Area because years of fire suppression had driven down listed species, including the scrub-jay (FWC).

Florida scrub has been protected mainly through land acquisition by local, state and federal agencies, in a concerted effort that began in the late 1980s, when range-wide surveys showed scrub-jay declines and rare plants scattered unevenly across the ridges (FNAI).

FNAI credits the state land acquisition program with buying scrub on the Lake Wales Ridge, the Atlantic Coastal Ridge and the Panhandle coast, with USFWS and Brevard, Hillsborough and Palm Beach counties buying important tracts too. It reported 21,500 acres of scrub and sandhill acquired on the Lake Wales Ridge in roughly two decades, with nearly as many acres still needing protection (FNAI). That figure dates from the 2010 edition of the guide.

FWC notes that many tracts now in the Lake Wales Ridge Wildlife and Environmental Area were platted housing subdivisions or used for grazing and citrus, and that the ridge's deep sands recharge the Floridan aquifer, the main source of Florida's drinking water (FWC Lake Wales Ridge WEA). The WEA links a chain of public lands from Fisheating Creek in the south to the Green Swamp in the north, and volunteers with the Lake Wales Ridge Rangers help FWC staff monitor and restore habitat.

Florida scrub can be seen on public land at Oscar Scherer State Park in Osprey, Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge in Brevard County and the other sites FNAI lists as exemplary scrub, including Lake June-in-Winter State Park and Archbold Biological Station in Highlands County (FNAI).

Florida State Parks describes Oscar Scherer, on the Gulf Coast side, as a park surrounded by housing developments and major highways that plays an invaluable role in preserving Florida scrub-jay habitat, open 8 a.m. to sunset 365 days a year with a $5 vehicle fee (Florida State Parks, Oscar Scherer).

On the Atlantic coast, USFWS describes Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, established in 1963 for the protection of migratory birds, as 140,000 acres of coastal dunes, saltwater marshes, managed impoundments, scrub, pine flatwoods and hardwood hammocks supporting more than 1,500 species of plants and animals (USFWS Merritt Island NWR). The Lake Wales Ridge refuge is four tracts in Polk and Highlands counties (USFWS Lake Wales Ridge NWR).

FNAI's list of exemplary Florida scrub sites also includes Topsail Hill and St. Joseph Peninsula state parks in the Panhandle, Ocala National Forest, Jonathan Dickinson State Park, Cedar Key Scrub State Preserve and Yamato Scrub (FNAI). FWC notes that scrub-jays are non-migratory and typically defend the same nesting territory year after year (FWC).