RECENT EXPLORATION IN SOUTHERN FLORIDA^ 



John K. Small 



The New York Botanical Garden 



Previous to 1903, when we began botanical exploration in 

 southern Florida, the country southwest of Cutler and Perrine, 

 then the frontier settlements on the eastern coast of Florida, was 

 almost a terra incognita. A wagon road to the south of Miami, 

 or Fort Dallas, as it was at one time called, connected that place 

 with Cocoanut Grove and Cutler and terminated at Perrine, which 

 was an old but scarcely at all developed settlement in the pine 

 forest, situated about three miles west of Cutler and Bay Biscayne. 

 Near Perrine the surveyor's trail entered the pine forest and 

 extended toward the southwest through the unbroken wilderness 

 until it met the open Everglades at a point called Camp Longview. 

 Later, another trail developed parallel to the proposed railroad 

 route to Cape Sable and met the Everglades between three and 

 four miles south of Camp Longview. 



Notwithstanding the inaccessibility of this region during the 

 early period of exploration, except by the trails just referred to, 

 we found scores of plants, either new to science or typically West 

 Indian and Central American, not before known to occur naturally 

 in the United States, not even on the tropical Florida Keys, and 

 learned that these islands in the Everglades which we have de- 

 signated the Everglade Keys are, so far as their vegetation is 

 concerned, a portion of the West Indies isolated on the Florida 

 peninsula. 



The following table will indicate the geographical extent of our 

 recent operations and the character of the points visited. 



Everglade Keys Brickell (twice) 



Pineland hammocks and ad- Brogdon 



jacent pinelands, Miami Cocoanut Grove 



and southwestward Costello (thrice) 



Addison Cox 



Black Point Creek (twice) Goodburn (twice) 



^Abstract. For a more extended report, see Jour. N. Y. Bot. Gard. 17: 37-45. pi. 

 166-168. 1916. 



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