USTTRODUCTION 3 



the famed gardens of mythology. Typical of many similar 

 locations is a marsh not far from Orlando, where from 

 February to May the beautiful j^ellow and purple flowers of 

 butterworts sway on slender stems above rosettes of insect- 

 catching leaves. While the butterworts are blooming, 

 orange and yellow thimbles of milkwort appear, and a 

 magenta orchid begins to bloom in the drier places. Before 

 these are through flowering, a fragrant pink orchid opens 

 delicately colored blossoms, and a tall yellow milkwort 

 lifts its flowering-stems above the lower growth. A sedge 

 spreads conspicuous white bracts, like lilies, above the 

 grasses, and in summer a white orchid sends up its spikes 

 by scores. Among lesser plants the sundews spread a 

 multitude of glistening rosettes, and a rose-colored milk- 

 wort is abundant. In the borders of this marsh the white 

 crow-poison opens tall racemes of little lilylike flowers 

 in April, and in autumn a trilisa blossoms in royal purple. 

 Beyond the marsh, in open pinelands where green fans of 

 saw palmetto grow in spreading groups beneath the distant 

 trees, white papaw flowers, escaping in midwinter like 

 bottled genii from brown buds that have imprisoned them, 

 grow larger and still larger; blue lupines match the sky 

 in color; a dwarf clematis changes its nodding flowers of 

 dull violet into feathery gray pinwheels, and in summer 

 a handsome relative of rhododendrons and azaleas blooms 

 in white. 



Ornamental and useful trees and shrubs that have long 

 been prized in famous gardens of other countries abound 

 in Florida. Our palms, magnolias, bay trees, wild olive, 

 hollies, myrtles, and many others are admirable for orna- 

 mental planting. Yet the abundance of cultivated exotics, 

 from all the warmer regions of the world, sometimes diverts 

 attention from the native flora. The botanist Andre 

 Michaux, who visited Florida late in the eighteenth century, 

 stopping at the "ruins of New Smyrna," and camping by 

 the St. Johns Eiver, as his Journal records, traveled many 



