FREE INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE 



VEGETATION OF SOUTH FLORIDA 



'53 



PLANTS OF THE WEEDY STRIP OF THE LAKE OKEECHOBEE SHORE 



Panicum dichotomiflorum Michx. 

 Chaetochloa magna (Griseb.) Scribn. 

 Cyperus ferax Vahl. 

 Cyperus surinamensis Rottb. 

 Salix longipes Anders. 

 Boehmeria cylindrica (L.) Willd. 

 Acnida cuspidata Bert. 

 Hibiscus grandiflorus Michx. 

 Kosteletzkya altheaeifolia (Chapm.) 

 A. Gray. 



Carica papaya L. 



Jussiaea peruviana L. 



Calonyction (Ipomoea) aculeatum 



(L.) House. 



Verbena polystachya H. B. K. 

 Eupatorium capillifolium (Lam.) 



Small. 



Eupatorium serotinum Michx. 

 Pluchea purpurascens (Sw.) DC. 

 Sonchus oleraceus L. 



CUSTARD-APPLE FORMATION 



This is one of the most remarkable formations in South Florida (Plate X, 

 Fig. i). It consists of an almost pure growth of the custard-apple, Annona 

 glabra L., with an occasional cypress tree sticking its top above the general 

 level of the crowns of the custard-apple trees. As seen from the cupola of the 

 hotel on the south shore of Lake Okeechobee at the entrance to the South 

 New River Canal, the custard-apple forest extends east and west, as far as 

 the eye could reach, and in a southward direction from the border of the lake, 

 a distance of about 4.8 kilometers (3 miles). Over the tops of the trees in that 

 direction the apparently illimitable expanses of the saw-grass in the Everglades 

 beyond stretched to the horizon in the far distance. The width of the forma- 

 tion is in a few places only half a mile and along the south shore of the lake it is 

 separated from the water by a narrow strip of shore line. The location of the 

 extended custard-apple forest, or hammock, is shown on the large map extend- 

 ing on the west from the Three Mile Canal around the southern end of the lake 

 to Pelican Bay and around the shores of Pelican Bay, where the remarkable 

 pond-apple hammock serves as a rookery for various kinds of birds and is the 

 home of the otter, raccoon and blind-mosquitoes. The last do not bite, but 

 make life unbearable by their numbers and their vicious, persistent attacks 

 which are pure bluff.* Behind the mud flats, which surround Torry Island and 

 to some extent on Kreamer Island, are pond-apple (custard-apple) hammocks, 

 the trees of which in dense growth have curiously buttressed and branched 



* Small, John K.: Exploration in the Everglades and on the Florida Keys, Journ. N. Y. Bot. 

 Card., is'- 60-79, Apr., 1914. 



