HARPER: CLIMAX VEGETATION 519 
The forests on the narrow sandy islands or “banks’’ which 
fringe the coast of North Carolina are said to consist almost 
entirely of angiospermous evergreens, including a large proportion 
of the same species already mentioned as growing in Florida.* 
Very few islands in the coastal plain north of South Carolina seem 
to have any pines on them. 
The coast region of South Carolina, Georgia, and northeastern 
Florida, between the Santee and St. Johns rivers, is bordered by 
innumerable sandy islands, of diverse sizes and shapes, separated 
from each other and from the mainland by salt marshes and an 
intricate network of tidal channels; and these islands, or rather 
the portions of them not occupied by dunes and marshes, are 
wooded mostly with Quercus virginiana and its usual associates, 
pines being scarce or entirely absent on many of them.7 
Paradise Key or Royal Palm Hammock, at the south end of 
the Everglades of Florida, is an island at high water, and is noted 
for its dense growth of tropical hardwoods, a few of which are not 
known to be arborescent anywhere else in the United States. 
Long Key, about half a mile away, is covered mostly with open 
pine forests, but at its eastern end, next to the channel which 
drains that end of the Everglades, there is a strip of ham- 
mock.f 
Among the Florida Keys proper, which are true islands, sur- 
rounded by salt water, pines are found only on a few of the largest 
ones,§ and the same seems to be true of the Bahamas, from all 
accounts. In both groups the smaller islands, except those small 
and low enough to be washed over by the waves, are as a rule 
covered with dense evergreen hammocks. In these Bahama 
and south Florida localities the soil is Pleistocene limestone 
instead of sand, and the pine is not Pinus palustris but P. caribaea; 
* See Kerr, Tenth Census U. S. 6: 545, 561, 562, 564- 1884; Ashe, Bull. N. C. 
Geol. Surv. 6: 145-147. 1898; Kearney, Contr. U. S. Nat. Herb. 5: 271, 272- 1900. 
For a description of the vegetation of one of these islands on the coast of South 
Carolina see Coker, Torreya 5: 135-145. 1995. 
tSee Britton, Jour. N. Y. Bot. Gard. 5: 130-132. Jl 1904; Small, ibid. 5: 
157-164. Au 1904; 8: 24. F 1907; 10: 49-54. Mr 1909; Harper, Fla. Review 4: 
149,152. Au Igio. 
§ See Curtiss, Gard. & For. 1: 279, 280. 1888; Small, Jour. N. Y. Bot. Gard. 
12:153-157. 1911; also Ann. Rep. Fla. Geol. Surv. 3: 229. I9II. 
