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CATALOG OF INDIGENOUS AND NATURALIZED 
PLANTS. 
NATIVE PALMS. 
Florida is quite rich in palms for a region lying wholly outside 
the tropics, for no less than sixteen species have been found 
growing wild within its limits. A part of these, Inodes, Sabal 
adansont, Rhapidophyllum hystrix and Serenoa serrulata are 
probably derived from an ancient warm temperate flora that 
was driven south during the Glacial Epoch, while the other 
species, no doubt, are derived directly from the American 
Tropics. The common coconut (Cocos nucifera), now believed 
to be a native of Tropical America and not of the Old World as 
was formerly supposed, has become completely naturalized on the 
keys and in the lower part of the state. 
Oreodoxa regia. First among our native palms and, for. that 
matter, one of the first in the world, is the royal palm. It 
occurs in Florida abundantly at the Royal Palm Hammock at 
some distance inland from Cape Romano, on the southwest 
coast of the state; on Harney River and Rogers River just north 
of Cape Sable and here and there to some distance to the east- 
ward of the cape not very far away from the sea. A large 
number are found at Paradise Key in the southeast part of Dade 
County, this being an island in the Everglades. Until recently 
a few specimens grew in brackish hammock just north of my 
home near Little River. They were in a forest of giant Avicen- 
nias, Annonas, Conocarpus and mangroves, the latter the largest 
and finest I have ever seen. Some of these were a hundred feet 
high and six feet in diameter. In this strange forest there was 
a dense growth of wild calabash (Crescentia latifolia), Pavonia 
racemosa, ordinarily a shrub but here attaining the dimensions 
of a tree, and two species of giant Acrostichums, the fronds of 
which reached a height of a dozen feet. All this splendid growth 
was destroyed by the hand of brutal, greedy man in the hope 
of making money from tannic acid in the bark of the mangroves. 
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