Plant communities in areas of the park with drier soils are a mixture of pine forests, scrubby flatwoods, and dry prairies.

Florida dry prairies are flat, nearly treeless plains with dense cover of grasses, forbs, saw palmetto (Serenoa repens) and other low shrubs .

[2] A karst sinkhole named Deep Hole is located on the northwest bank of the Myakka River in the Wilderness Preserve.

Near the floodplains of spring-fed rivers grow southern coastal plain hydric hammocks, dense forests of evergreen and deciduous hardwood trees.

Six primitive campgrounds are accessible by trail throughout the park: Mossy Hammock, Bee Island, Panther Point, Honore, Oak Grove and Prairie.

This part of the park is dominated by expanses of very low vegetation, fields of palmetto, that make a transition to islands, or hammocks, of tall pine and oak trees.

In 1910, Bertha Palmer, a Chicagoan businesswoman, bought a vast amount of land near the Myakka River for cattle and swine ranching.

During the Great Depression, President Roosevelt signed the New Deal and funded the Civilian Conservation Corps, where Palmer's land was gifted to be developed into a state park.