Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Deep in the Devil's Millhopper


There is a superficial resemblance between this sub-tropical environment in the Devil's Millhopper in Florida and the jungle in Central America. The similarity is based on the amount of vegetation. The word "jungle" has a complex etymology. Here is a summary from the Wikipedia: Jungle article.
The word jungle originates from the Sanskrit word jangala (Sanskrit: जङ्गल), meaning uncultivated land. Although the Sanskrit word might refer to dry land, it has been suggested that an Anglo-Indian interpretation led to its connotation as a dense "tangled thicket" while others have argued that a cognate word in Hindi did refer to forests. The term is prevalent in many languages of the Indian subcontinent, and the Iranian Plateau, where it is commonly used to refer to the plant growth replacing primeval forest or to the unkempt tropical vegetation that takes over abandoned areas.
Tropical forests are commonly lumped in with the term "jungle." But as I have pointed out in previous posts, tropical forests are usually open and easily traversed due to the canopy blocking nearly all of the sunlight. Here in the Devil's Millhopper, most of the older trees are missing due to the environment and possible human intervention.


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