FREE INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE 



VEGETATION OF SOUTH FLORIDA 



and accordingly, only hollows on either side of the railroad right-of-way were 

 studied. Presumably, however, the holes are found in the pineland between 

 Bay Biscayne and the Everglades. A more extended survey of them before 

 the native vegetation is exterminated would well repay the botanist. Such 

 investigation must be done in the next few years, as the region is being rapidly 

 settled. In the time which was available, seventeen banana holes were 

 studied. 



Characteristic Plants of the Banana Hole Associations. Whether to de- 

 nominate the peculiar aggregation of plants which fill the banana holes as an 

 association, or formation, in the ecologic sense has not been decided. If the 

 term formation is used, it might be applied in two ways. Either we might in- 

 clude all of the widely separated banana holes in the hammock formation, as 

 incipient hammocks, or else, we might consider them as so many distinct for- 

 mations. It seems, therefore, that to call them associations would be better 

 and a more exact use of terms than to apply the term formation to them. 

 The vegetation of each banana hole is actually an association of plants, and 

 as there is little similarity among the different banana holes, as to their vege- 

 tation, the term association is less misleading than that of formation. 



Incidentally before describing the seventeen banana holes between 

 Naranja and Princeton, it might be mentioned that a circular banana hole 

 was noted from the moving train in the pine woods below Perrine. This 

 hollow was filled with saw-grass, Cladium effusum (Sw.) Torr., and the central 

 area occupied by the exclusive growth of saw-grass was fringed by a circle of 

 low palmetto trees, Sabal palmetto (Walt.) R. & S. Another banana hole 

 near Perrine was characterized by a central lagoon of water fringed by saw- 

 grass and an outer circumarea of dwarf palmettos blending with the pine forest. 

 This pine forest consists of an even stand of Pinus caribaea Morelet, the slash- 

 pine. The trees stand rather far apart, frequently six to ten meters, thus form- 

 ing an open sunlit forest. The tops are rather small and so do not cast much 

 shade. The trees are so scattered that objects can be seen at a distance of 

 eight hundred to a thousand meters. The saw-palmetto, Serenoa serrulata 

 (Michx.) Hook, with prostrate, or underground, rhizomes, as thick as an arm, 

 with the coontie, Zamia floridana DC., form part of the undergrowth which 

 consists otherwise of scattered small shrubs and herbaceous plants. 



The banana holes studied in the territory between Naranja and Prince- 

 ton are numbered in order proceeding from the south toward the north (Text 



