BOOKS AND CURRENT LITERATURE 



Vegetation of Florida. — Two recent papers have treated the 

 vegetation of portions of Florida with a greater degree of detail than any 

 of the previous publications on this extremely interesting state. Harsh- 

 berger 1 has described the region south of Indian River Inlet and Tampa, 

 including the keys and the everglades, and Harper 2 has described the 

 portion of the state north and west of Cedar Keys and St. Augustine, 

 which is the least known portion of Florida from a botanical standpoint. 



Harshberger treats the coastal vegetation and the less known plant 

 life of the everglades and the interior swamp, marsh, and forest regions 

 with equal detail. A large-scale map shows the precise distribution of 

 the types of vegetation and a large number of uncommonly fine illus- 

 trations give proof of the distinctness of these types. The leading up- 

 land vegetations are the forests of Pinus clausa covering the sandy ele- 

 vations along the coast and in the northeastern portion of the area; the 

 forests of Pinus caribaea on oolitic limestone throughout the region; 

 and the flatwoods of Pinus palustris. The region is depicted as one of 

 climatic uniformity in which differences of soil and 'very slight differ- 

 ences of elevation are responsible for the dissimilarities of the vegeta- 

 tion. The porous soil and the rapid evaporation subject plants of the 

 upland to extremely dry conditions, but the author has observed periods 

 of heavy rainfall in which a saturated soil and a saturated atmosphere 

 placed plants under conditions so unlike the customary ones as to lead 

 him to suspect that the xerophily of the plants is due as much to the 

 amplitude of the extremes of moisture as to the commoner conditions of 

 low water supply. Topographic conditions are also responsible for the 

 distribution of vegetation in the everglades, with their 4000 square miles 

 of marshland dominated by Cladium effusum, their ponds, streams, and 

 minor lakes, with a wealth of emersed and aquatic plants, their marginal 

 prairies and pine forests, and the unique belt of Anona glabra which 

 fringes the southern shore of Lake Okeechobee. 



Harper's treatment of northern Florida is based on some twenty 



1 Harshberger, John W., The Vegetation of South Florida. Trans. Wagner 

 Free Inst. Sci. 7:49-190. Pis. 10, with map. 1914. 



2 Harper, Roland M., Geography and Vegetation of Northern Florida. Ann. 

 Rep. Fla. Geol. Surv. 6:163-452. Figs. 41-90. 1914. 



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