Before he became known as “John of the Mountains” in the high country of California, naturalist John Muir journeyed through a different type of challenging terrain: the swampy lowlands of the U.S. Southeast. But true to form, he reveled in the diverse flora along the way. Traveling south, he anticipated his arrival in Florida, “the special home of the tropical plants I am looking for,” where among those tropical plants he would find “clumps of mangrove.”
Like Muir,…