MIAMI, March 31 (UPI) -- In a particularly dry season, South Florida is experiencing fierce wildfires inflamed by melaleucas, a non-native species maligned by naturalists.
Melaleuca trees, which can grow to 100 feet tall, help the fires burn very hot.
"Melaleuca is like paper wrapped and wrapped and wrapped to form a tree," said David McCarty, duty officer at the Florida Division of Forestry, the Miami Herald reported.
"You can burn it from top to bottom, and it's still standing there. It can burn again and again and again."
Florida's government has tried for years to get rid of melaleucas -- using heavy equipment to uproot them, treating them with herbicides and introducing insects that eat the melaleucas but don't harm other trees -- said Dr. Paul Pratt, an entomologist at the United States Department for Agriculture Invasive Plant Research Laboratory in Davie, Fla.
Fires spread hundreds of thousands of seeds on the ground, said Pratt -- and the ash is the perfect soil to fertilize the seeds.
