Prince Bay Farm & The Carolina Bays

 Prince Bay Farm encompasses Prince Bay and Little Grassy Bay, two of the myriad of Carolina Bays that dot the Eastern seaboard of the US.

  Carolina bays are elliptical depressions concentrated along the Atlantic seaboard within coastal Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, and north central Florida.

Carolina bays vary in size from one to several thousand acres. About 500,000 of them are present in the classic area of the Atlantic Coastal Plain, often in groups, with each bay invariably aligned in a northwest-southeast direction. The bays have many different vegetative structures, based on the depression depth, size, hydrology, and subsurface. Many are marshy; a few of the larger ones are (or were before drainage) lakes; 36 square km (14 square mile) Lake Waccamaw is an undrained one. Some bays are predominantly open water with large scattered pond cypress, while others are composed of thick, shrubby areas (pocosins), with vegetation growing on floating peat mats. Generally the southeastern end has a higher rim composed of white sand. They are named for the bay trees frequently found in them, not because of the frequent ponding of water (Sharitz 2003).

  The bays are especially rich in biodiversity, including some rare and/or endangered species. Species that thrive in the bays' habitats include birds, such as wood storks, herons, egrets, and other migratory waterfowl, mammals such as deer, black bears,raccoons, skunks, and opossums. Other residents include dragonflies, green anoles and green tree frogs.   The bays contain trees such as black gum, bald cypress, pond cypress, sweet bay, loblolly bay, red bay, sweet gum, maple,magnolia, pond pine, and shrubs such as fetterbush, clethra, sumac, button bush, zenobia, and gallberry. Plants common in Carolina bays are water lilies, sedges and various grasses. Several carnivorous plants inhabit Carolina bays, including the Venus flytrap, bladderwort, butterwort, pitcher plant, and sundew.