NEW Yvopr 
eR 
BOTANICA L. 
GARDEN 
INTRODUCTION. 
In the Proceedings of the Florida Horticultural Society for 
1912 there was published a paper by the writer entitled ‘ Orna- 
mental Plants of Dade County, Florida,” giving some account 
of the native and exotic plants of the region which it covered. 
On account of the fact that no separates of this were printed an 
illustrated edition was published later which met with consid- 
erable favor from plant growers and lovers in general. The 
suggestion has frequently been made to the author that he write 
something more extended and the following pages are the result. 
Florida, especially the southern part of it, is really so new that 
we know but little as to what we can or can not do in the matter 
of growing ornamental plants, or making and decorating homes 
within its borders. The writer has had over thirteen years of 
experience in cultivating plants in Dade County and four in 
Manatee County and yet he feels that he is not competent to 
teach. Many things that he once supposed he had learned he 
has later been compelled to unlearn, and every day new problems 
are coming up which must be solved, problems for which the 
books on gardening give no help whatever. This little work is 
written, then, more as a set of suggestions than of instructions. 
I said in my paper on Dade County plants that it was a sort of 
first aid, and the same remark may be applied to this. 
We can scarcely form the faintest conception of the enormous 
number of useful and ornamental trees and plants from the 
warmer parts of the world which will grow within the limits of 
this state. The veteran botanist and explorer, Richard Spruce, 
who spent fifteen years in the equatorial regions of South America 
in search for new plants (1849-1864) in a letter to George Ben- 
tham says:—‘I have lately been calculating the number of 
€Y3 species that yet remain to be discovered in the great Amazonian 
== forest, from the cataracts of the Orinoco to the mountains of 
© Matto Grosso; taking the fact that by moving away a degree of 
latitude or longitude I found about half the plants different as a 
t:; basis, and considering what very narrow strips we have up to 
oa ix 
