270 The Plant WdRLD. 



20 or more meters and a diameter of 60 to 100 cm. Verbena(:eae, 

 represented by Ciiharexyion, a small tree. Bignoniaceae, \^ith 

 the c'alabashy a species of Crescentia. Kubiaceae, \ ith tvo or 

 three arborescent species of Guettarda. The list might be in- 

 creased much more. Perhaps the most important tree in manv 

 hammocks has been left until the last, Quei'ctis vifginiana, the 

 Live-oak. With only a few exceptions all these trees are ever- 

 green. To a large extent the\ possess shiny, often rather thick 

 leaves, the prevailing shape being elliptical. 



Many of these trees have low hanging branches and some, 

 e.g. Ficus aurea, called locally on that accoimt "wild banyan,'' 

 send down roots from their branches ^^ hich enter the ground 

 and root there and form, as it were, secondary trunks. The 

 trees \\ith very smooth bark, especially those whose outer 

 bark scales off or weathers away as powder, remain mostly free 

 fiom epiphytes on their branches, but the others are sometimes 

 so covered with mosses, ferns, orchids, bromeliads, etc., that their 

 own foliage is quite hidden. In such a hammock the ground is 

 covered with a profusion of ferns and slender shrubs, as well as 

 a thick growth of small and large herbacecus plants. Some 

 of the latter are vines that run up over any support they can 

 find. Among the climbing plants are two or three species of 

 Vanilla. A ver\ disagieable woody climber, which has already 

 been mentioned, is Pisonia aculeata. The writer has seen speci- 

 mens of this in a hammock near Homestead attaining at the 

 base a thickness of over 15 cm. and a length over all of 30 

 meters or even more. With its festoons of two centimeter thick 

 vines, covered with claw-like thorns, it makes progress through 

 a hammock in which it is abundant anything but rapid or 

 pleasant. 



One of the most striking features is the startling abrupt- 

 ness of the transition from the pine woods to the hammock. 

 Frequently the trees of the latter are of almost of as great size 

 near the margin as at the center. This is not the case, however, 

 in hammocks that are increasing in size. There is but a fringe, 

 often not over three or four meters wide, of smaller shrubs and 

 when this is traversed one is in the dense hammock. This sud- 

 den transition from a semixerophytic to a decidely humid 



