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Chinsegut Wildlife & Environmental Area - Chinsegut WEA |
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Written by Sandra Friend
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Page 2 of 4
 While researching my book Exploring Florida’s Botanical Wonders, I stumbled across mention of this pine forest as a rare example of virgin longleaf pine in Central Florida and vowed I’d get here to take a look. I was expecting a dark, dense forest, but the Big Pine Tract is rather open, undergoing sandhill restoration as the understory is managed to cull out the thickets that cropped up from too many years without a prescribed burn. The pines, however, were what the Robins wanted future generations to see, and you’ll be craning your neck upwards to take it all in. Many show signs of catfacing from the turpentine industry, but these are true giants, some growing with unusual curved trunks and spreading crowns.
The Longleaf Loop (1.25 miles) is the outer loop of the trail system, which mainly consists of forest roads with hiker signs at intervals. Walking counterclockwise, you encounter the Tortoise Loop, an inner 0.8-mile loop, and later come to a T where the main trail turns left and a large sinkhole is hiding in the woods behind it. Signage is good and that’s important, since there are many forest roads criss-crossing the main loop. The Prairie to Pines connector trail (2 miles each way) shoots off to the right soon after you return to a denser pine forest; you can follow it a short ways to connect to the Hammock Trail, which follows the ecotone between sandhills and hardwood hammock. A quarter-mile (each way) spur trail called the Burns Prairie Spur leads to the edge of a large sometimes-wet prairie. The main loop sticks to the pine forest, although it is infrequently shady, and offers colorful aster and phlox in the understory.
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