The State Soil of Florida

On May 22, 1989, Governor Bob Martinez signed State Senate Bill No. 524 into law, making Myakka fine sand the official state soil of Florida.

A typical Myakka soil profile consists of a six-inch surface layer of friable gray fine sand, a twenty-inch subsurface layer of light gray fine sand, a six-inch subsoil of dark reddish brown fine sand organic stained layer, with a brown and yellowish brown fine sand substratum.

The state of Florida has the largest total acreage of Aquods (wet sandy soils with an organic stained subsoil layer) on flatwood landforms in the nation. Myakka is a native soil of Florida and does not occur in any other state. There are more than one and one half million acres of Myakka (pronounced My-yak-ah'—Indian word for Big Waters) soil in Florida. It is the most extensive soil in the state.

It is very fitting that Myakka fine sand, a typical flatwoods soil, was adopted as the state soil to acknowledge the heritage that has made agriculture the State's major industry.

The Myakka series occurs on the flatwoods landform, throughout the peninsula part of Florida. It is also found in flats, depressional, tidal, and floodplain landforms. Its thermic (cooler annual soil temperatures) counterpart, the Leon series, also occurs on the flatwood landforms, but only in north and northwest Florida. Leon at one time was recognized throughout Florida; however, when Soil Taxonomy (the official United States soil classification system) was published, the Leon series was restricted to the thermic zone of Florida (north of a line between St. Augustine and Cedar Key). Soils with similar profiles occurring south of this line were renamed the Myakka series.

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