156 IN LOWER FLORIDA WILDS 



areas and exterminate well-established species. 

 In time of very cold weather the mangroves and 

 other littoral trees are sometimes entirely de- 

 stroyed along extensive reaches of our coasts. I 

 have seen nearly every young plant of the paradise 

 tree in a dense hammock killed by freezing. The 

 same is equally true of certain other kinds of very 

 tender trees. There are records of plants col- 

 lected by the older botanists in Lower Florida not 

 found here now, and it is all but certain they were 

 not exterminated by man. 



In the northern part of Lower Florida the 

 tropical vegetation is almost entirely confined to 

 the seashore and its immediate vicinity. This is 

 caused by the fact that the temperature along the 

 ocean is several degrees warmer than it is a short 

 distance inland. Birds carry tropical seeds from 

 the shore and drop them in the interior but owing 

 to the winter cold they either do not grow or the 

 plants die when very young. In the southern 

 parts of Monroe and Dade counties the inland 

 climate is warmer and at Paradise Key in the 

 Everglades (thirteen miles in from the nearest 

 shore) over fifty species of tropical trees are found. 

 A nearly equal number grow in a hammock close 



