Lignumvitae Key Botanical State Park

Lignumvitae Botanical state park is one of the last remaining natural keys. This park has a strict policy on visitation and only offers restricted access due to its natural preservation efforts. Like others, I recommend to come in the winter months, due to the amount of mosquitos. This island is not sprayed like the residential keys, due to preservation, so you can imagine the number of hungry mosquitos. We came over in late October and it was still pretty buggy.
There’s a neat old house on the island and the ranger will give you the history of the house and the residents who maintained it. There is a long hiking trail but we only made it about 20 minutes in before turning around due to the bugs. And I do have a fairy high threshold for bugs. We did get to see some Golden Orb Weaver spiders, so that was totally worth the trip. It was cool to get the history of the Key. I’m looking forward to come back hike the entire trail in the winter!

My review is based on the Tranquility, Calm and Serenity that being on Lignumvitae can offer. I have been to this island twice and this last time (Jan 2015) we kayaked there. We rented from the Kayak Shack @ Robbie’s Marina, Paul set us up — great guy. We first kayaked over to Indian Key and then headed across to Lignumvitae and then back to Robbie’s — about 5 miles in total. So, Lignumvitae: you arrive on this little island, which was developed with a cute «Caretakers Cottage» many years ago (not sure exactly when). The beauty of this island lies in it’s simplicity, the openness of the large lawn around the cottage, the calm… realizing that you are in the middle of calm, serene paradise. the sounds drift away as the hardwood hammock and mangroves provides some shelter from US1 and passing boats in the distance. Would be a great place to sit down and take a nap (not sure if summer mosquitoes and heat are horrible — but per cooler months it’s lovely). You hear birds, see butterflies, take in the swaying stately coconut palms. This is a space for clearing your heard and calming down. I have never taken the guided tour — I imagine that i’d love it. I did meet Carmen, she and her husband are the caretakers of the island — and she shared a bunch of cool island history with us. She also showed us the nesting Osprey which lives atop the windmill in a very large bird nest. Bless that bird, it noticed when we were about to leave and it showed up, had a look at me and then took several graceful passes above head, as if to say hello. Thanks Mr. or Mrs. Osprey… that was beautiful. Don’t know if you’d be as lucky as I was to see the bird… but you can certainly go and enjoy this serene little island, take in a little history and hopefully meet Carmen or one of the other rangers.

A fee to get into the park. We had read a few reviews but still pressed on and found all the reviews of red seaweed to be true. Call a head and save your self the 3 $ a person fee for access.

Getting here is more than half the fun. You can only do it by water; we kayaked over after a trip to Indian Key. Once here, there’s not much to do other than lie around in a smallish meadow or go on one of the twice-​daily tours. (There’s lots of fascinating flora on the island, but you can’t go investigate it yourself, only with the tour as an escort.)
The tour (which costs a dollar) was worth waiting around for. Our ranger (Martin Dillis) knew a lot of interesting stuff about the trees he showed us– Poisonwoods, Strangler Figs, Mangroves, the famous Lignumvitae itself, and many more. He was very eager and very knowledgable. My biggest complaint is that he made too many terrible and off-​putting jokes, sometimes as a cover for being unable to answer hard questions. (There’s also a historic house, which we spent very little time in; apparently other rangers sometimes focus on it much more than the plants. It sounds boring to me.)
If you’re in the area and on the water, you may as well drop by– out of respect for how hard it is to get there if nothing else. Five stars for the highlights of the island– minus one star for the frustrating parts of the tour, minus a second star for the (understandable) rule forbidding you from going anywhere on the island without the aforementioned tour.

First, a word of warning, do not go here during the summer as you will be swarmed by mosquitoes like you have never seen! This is probably one of the least visited parks as you can only get there by private or charter boat or rent a kayak from Robbie’s Marina and paddle there. The virgin tropical hardwood hammock that thrives on this island was once common on most of Florida’s Upper Keys; most of these forests have been lost to development on other islands. In 1919, William J. Matheson, a wealthy Miami chemist, bought this tiny island and built a caretaker’s home with a windmill for electricity and a cistern for rainwater. Today, his hideaway is the visitor center for this island forest. Ranger-​guided tours are given twice daily, Thursday through Monday.