68 MULBERRY FAMILY 



Our southern black-jack oak, Q. Catesbaei, is a common 

 small tree of dry places, but its range does not extend 

 to the extreme southern part of Florida. It has deciduous, 

 deeply lobed leaves, six to nine inches long, on very short 

 leaf-stalks. The lobes are very acute, and spread from 

 a broad base. The thick, furrowed bark of old trees ap- 

 pears to be marked off in blocks. The acorns are large, 

 nearly an inch long, and the cup, which is an inch or 

 more broad, is oddly lined at the top by the upper scales, 

 which are bent inward. 



MULBERRY FAMILY {Moraceae) 



Tree. Leaves alternate, evergreen, entire. Flowers minute, 

 inside a small receptacle. Sap milky. 



Sttlaj^tgling Fig (Genus Ficus) 



The strangling fig of southern Florida, Ficiis aurea, a 

 tree of the same genus as the cultivated rubber trees and 

 figs, has a remarkable life-history. Beginning in a pre- 

 carious way, from a seed dropped by a bird on the trunk of 

 some tree, it sends down to the ground, and around the 

 tree, roots which branch, enlarge, and coalesce until the 

 fig becomes a cylinder around its host, which is slowly but 

 inevitably killed. The cylindrical fig trunk then grows in- 

 ward, eventually becoming solid, and the fig stands as 

 a forest tree in the place of its host, which is frequently 

 the cabbage palm in the southern part of the Florida 

 peninsula. With little evidence of its early crime, the 

 strangling fig continues its aggressiveness by sending down 

 aerial roots, which enter the ground and become stout 

 props, and even trunks, so that the tree is extended in the 

 manner of the noted banyan, which belongs to the same 

 genus. 



