Sep 07 2024
Congaree National Park can look like a vast swamp when floodwater spreads among enormous bald cypress trees, tupelos, loblolly pines, and towering hardwoods. Water reflects the forest canopy, cypress knees rise above flooded ground, and dark sloughs disappear between the trees. Yet calling Congaree simply a swamp misses what makes this South Carolina national park …
Sep 07 2024
For a few remarkable nights each spring, the darkness beneath Congaree National Park’s towering forest canopy begins to pulse with light. Hundreds and sometimes thousands of tiny flashes appear close to the forest floor, gradually falling into overlapping rhythms until large portions of the woods seem to blink together. These are the synchronous fireflies of …
Jun 07 2024
Congaree National Park protects the largest intact expanse of old-growth bottomland hardwood forest remaining in the southeastern United States. Just southeast of Columbia, South Carolina, this remarkable landscape contains towering loblolly pines, enormous bald cypress and tupelo trees, slow-moving blackwater creeks, oxbow lakes, sloughs, wetlands, upland pine forest, and more than 20,000 acres of federally …
