The Plant World 



A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF POPULAR BOTANY 



Official Organ of 

 The Wild Flower Preservation Society 



OF America 



Vol. VII JUNE, 1904 No. 6 



The Beginning of Spring in Florida.— III. 



By H. Nehrling. 



Perhaps I should have placed our glorious native evergreen Magnolia 

 grandiflora at the head of the list of flowering and beautiful plants. It 

 is the grandest and most charming of all our trees. Specimens in my 

 garden, standing alone and receiving some attention, are perfect pictures 

 of beauty, very dense and broad, and branching up from the ground. 

 The exceedingly beautiful large glossy foliage and the noble habit of 

 growth alone should recommend this tree for universal cultivation down 

 below Mason and Dixon's line. They are just now unfolding their 

 beautiful glossy light-green foliage, which in time assumes a much 

 darker color. In some varieties the young foliage shows a rosy-red or a 

 brownish hue. The first flowers usually open with the beginning of 

 spring — immense white chalices, pervading the air with a powerful and 

 peculiarly delicious perfume. The sweet bay {.Magnolia glauca) is also 

 in flower at present, and its white, powerfully-fragrant blossoms are 

 borne in abundance. The growth of this species is rather straggling and 

 quite open. 



The coral honeysuckle, a native species, is found everywhere on the 

 ground. Old stumps are overgrown with it. It has been planted on 

 trees and bushes, on trellises and on tops of small pine trees placed in 

 the ground. Large specimens when in flower present a magnificent sight. 

 I do not like them during the autumn and winter months ; being desti- 

 tute of foliage, or nearly so, they look bare and ugly. I even decided 



