She lines the upper part of the burrow with silk to prevent cave-ins and builds a sheet web at the burrow entrance. The young spiders emerge from the safety of the burrow to eat prey caught in the web. The federally endangered scrub wedge-leaf button snakeroot has a long taproot that can absorb water. Snakeroot seedlings grow under a layer of sand grains, which keeps them from drying out. Some plants that live in scrub don't depend on soil moisture or nutrients at all.
Ball moss is an air plant commonly seen in scrub.
It absorbs the moisture it needs from the air and gets its nutrients from rainwater, dust, and perhaps from insects and spiders that live in the base of the plants. Sand is the soil of Florida scrub. Sometimes it's sugary white, sometimes yellow. Living in sand can be tough. Compared to particles in other soil types, sand grains are large and hold virtually no nutrients or water.