Here in Florida, the ground never really freezes. That means squirrels are busy nearly all year—darting across sidewalks, leaping from palm to oak, and pausing on fence posts with twitching tails and bright, watchful eyes.
To some, they’re just garden bandits or bird feeder thieves. But these tiny acrobats play a surprisingly enormous role in shaping the very forests we walk through, paddle past, and plant our roots beside.
They are, quite literally, the accidental gardeners of the Sunshine State.
The Great Forgetting
Each fall, squirrels begin their ancient, instinctive ritual: collecting and burying nuts, seeds, and acorns in shallow caches scattered across the landscape. They’re planning ahead for leaner months—but here’s the twist:
They forget where they buried about 74% of them.
That forgetfulness may seem comical, but it’s also deeply consequential. Each forgotten seed has the potential to sprout. And in Florida’s warm, sandy soil—with the right rain, the right sun, and a little luck—a buried acorn may one day become a towering oak.
Florida’s Forest Architects
In northern and central Florida, squirrels are some of the only animals helping propagate:
Live oaks (Quercus virginiana)
Southern red oaks (Quercus falcata)
Hickories (Carya spp.)
Pecan trees (Carya illinoinensis, naturalized here)
Chestnuts and walnuts in select upland zones
Unlike birds, who eat and digest seeds, squirrels tend to bury their finds intact—and shallowly enough for sprouting. They unwittingly help establish oak hammocks, pine-oak sandhills, and mixed hardwood forests, key ecosystems for wildlife like gopher tortoises, barred owls, foxes, and even Florida black bears.
Nature’s Seed Delivery Service
Squirrels are choosy: they often select the largest, healthiest nuts and carry them away from the parent tree. This does three important things:
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Reduces seedling competition
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Spreads trees across new ground
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Promotes forest resilience after storms, fires, or logging
In essence, they’re acting as mobile seed banks—planting future generations without ever meaning to.
From Chaos to Canopy: A Thought
Next time you walk beneath a great oak arching over a Florida trail—or notice a baby sapling popping up in your backyard—it’s worth wondering: Did a squirrel plant this?
Maybe.
And maybe we owe more to these whiskered, bushy-tailed dynamos than we realize.
A Final Nibble of Wonder
In a state known for its showier wildlife—panthers, gators, flamingos—squirrels rarely get their due. But in their scrambling, caching, forgetting, and darting, they are writing an unseen story across the soil:
A story of renewal.
Of accidental forests.
Of seeds buried in faith and found by the future.