TRANSACTIONS OF WAGNER 

 140 



VEGETATION OF SOUTH FLORIDA 



ponds away from the coast underlaid by the Columbia and Lafayette geologic 

 formations from Dismal Swamp, Virginia, to Florida and Louisiana.* Taxo- 

 dium distichum usually has an enlarged, conic, buttressed base with the 

 longitudinal ridges usually flat, quite sharp and prominent. Its knees are 

 large and pointed. In Taxodium imbricarium, the enlargement of the base 

 is abrupt and conoidal and its ridges are rounded. The knees of this variety 

 are rounded, or hemispheric, or may be entirely wanting. The leaves are 

 closely appressed, while in T. distichum they are spreading and distichous. 

 Small in his Miami Flora gives Taxodium distichum as the only species of the 

 limestone region of Southeast Florida. As T. imbricarium is a calciphobe 

 species, it is probably not represented, but in southwest Florida, about 9 kms. 

 south of Ft. Myers in a cypress bay, or head (Plate IX, Fig. i), nearly all of 

 the trees had the enlargement characteristic of Taxodium imbricarium in a 

 soil of sand with no evident limestone. Following Sargent, I have represented 

 on my colored phytogeographic map of North America, the southern limit 

 of Taxodium distichum as at Jupiter Inlet on the east coast of Florida, while 

 in reality, according to later observations, it is found growing almost at the 

 extreme southern end of the peninsula on both the east and the west coasts, as 

 indicated on the accompanying map. The last outpost, according to the ob- 

 servations of the writer, is at the edge of a prairie 16 kilometers (10 miles) 

 south of Miami, between Larkin and Kendell (see map), which is about 

 32 kilometers (20 miles) north of the extreme southern limit of the slash- 

 pine, Pinus caribaea Morelet, on the mainland at Detroit. The writer was 

 informed on good authority that the southwest limit of the cypress in Monroe 

 County is fixed by the limits of the survey made by J. S. Frederick in 1902, for 

 his survey ended at a point where it was impossible to penetrate the dense cy- 

 press swamps. On the large blue map of Dade and Lee, also parts of Monroe, 

 De Soto, and Manatee counties, Florida, the end of that survey is marked R. 34 

 E. and T. P. 54 S. Dr. John K. Small has informed me that he has seen a few 

 cypress trees in the neighborhood of Long Key (Everglades), and on the map 

 just mentioned at the head of North and Roberts rivers, a wet prairie with 

 small cypress is given, so that the cypress tree extends much farther south than 

 Sargent believed ; in fact, it extends to the southern end of the peninsula, but 



* Harper, Roland M. : Taxodium distichum and related Species, with Notes on some geological 

 Factors influencing their Distribution. Bull. Torr. Bot. Club., 29: 383-399; Further Observations on 

 Taxodium. Bull. Torr. Bot. Club, 32-105-115. 



