TRANSACTIONS OF WAGNER 

 1 70 



' VEGETATION OF SOUTH FLORIDA 



or Slough, north of the Big Cypress region in southwest Florida. No ecologic 

 survey has been made of these freshwater marshes, but they merit mention as 

 areas of large size characterized by helophytes. In a letter from I. C. Foster 

 of Ft. Myers, Fla., dated September 30, 1913, is given some interesting informa- 

 tion about the Okaloacoochee Slough. "I have just seen Dr. J. E. Brecht 

 in reference to the Okaloacoochee Slough. He says that there are no trees in 

 the slough proper. There are cypress heads, now and then, bordering on it, 

 but it is just a saw-grass slough. There are only two places in its whole length 

 from Ft. Thompson to the south end of it where you can cross, because it is 

 so soft and boggy. It drains by a series of smaller sloughs, or cypress heads 

 into Chokoloskee Bay on the Gulf. I should think, from the doctor's descrip- 

 tion, it does not resemble the Everglades as much as an ordinary marsh. 

 There is no river draining it into the Gulf, but it is drained as above described." 

 Allapatah Flats. East of Lake Okeechobee, the fringe or strip of the Ever- 

 glades back of the cypress swamps on the lake shore fades away irregularly in 

 the Allapatah Flats, a region largely under water at the end of each rainy 

 season, where are interwinding strips of saw-grass marsh, cypress heads, and 

 more rarely a hammock on a slight rise in the almost dead level of the surface. 



PRAIRIE FORMATIONS 



Ecologically speaking, a prairie in the sense in which it is used in Florida 

 is not the same as a western prairie. The only point that they have in com- 

 mon is that they are flat, treeless, grass-covered areas. The Florida prairies 

 merge with the open pine savannas on the one hand and with the open ham- 

 mock-dotted savannas on the other. The typically wet prairies merge with 

 the Everglades, and other marsh formations, which touch them. As in all 

 ecologic work, the student must recognize that there are no hard and fast 

 lines of distinction, but all conditions of intergradation exist. 



The sedge and wire-grass prairies are most extensive north and west of 

 Lake Okeechobee, often extending for 32 to 48 kilometers (20 or 30 miles), 

 unbroken except by a few scattering pines, but in which occur frequent beds of 

 saw-palmetto. These prairies have a smooth surface, are apparently perfectly 

 level, and during the rainy season are covered many inches deep with water. 

 The soil is usually a white sand with occasional spots of loam. There are 

 prairies of the same kind scattered throughout the woods on the east side of 



