FREE INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE 



'77 



VEGETATION OF SOUTH FLORIDA 



Lake Okeechobee. Some attempts have been made to cultivate some of them, 

 but owing to the lack of drainage the crops have been destroyed during the 

 wet season and most of the projects undertaken have been abandoned. 



The largest typic prairie is one situated north of the Caloosahatchee River, 

 west of the Everglades along the west shore of Lake Okeechobee and west of 

 Peace Creek. It is bisected in an east and west direction by Fisheating Creek. 

 The prairie itself touches the Caloosahatchee River near Citrus Center, which 

 is situated in its midst, and where the writer has seen it (Plate VII, Fig. i). 



Physiognomically, it resembles a prairie-grass formation, where the 

 principal species are sod formers, so that the typic appearance of such prairies 

 is an extended surface covered with turf. The prairie surface, however, is 

 marked in some places, as near Citrus Center, by palmetto hammocks usually 

 of circumscribed area (Plate VII, Fig. i). Where this prairie touches on the 

 Everglades, it blends insensibly with saw-grass vegetation, as is seen on ap- 

 proaching Lake Hicpochee. Where the pine woods touch this prairie, the pine 

 trees in scattered phalanx advance on to the prairie surface, which may be 

 compared then to a pine savanna. Another large prairie occupies the country 

 along the western edge of the Everglades and the Okaloacoochee Slough. 

 Brown's Store is situated in the southern part of this semicircular prairie. 



Along the east coast of Florida, below Miami, the pineland is characterized 

 by narrow prairies, the names of which from north to south are Peter Prairie, 

 Cauldwell Prairie, Gosmann Prairie, Sterritt Prairie (Map and Text Figure i), 

 Long Prairie and Big Hammock Prairie. The long direction of these prairies 

 is approximately at right angles to the eastern edge of the Everglades and the 

 Atlantic coast. They represent probably ancient drainage, or spillways, of 

 the Everglades, and their soil is wet, saturated, or submerged with water by 

 torrential rains. Physiognomically, such prairies (Plate X, Fig. 2) resemble 

 the Everglades, and Small* considers them identical with the vast saw-grass 

 marsh to the west, but on account of their geographic location and for other 

 points of difference, I have included them with the prairies. In the first place, 

 the soil of these transverse prairies is a white, calcareous marl, and if it consists 

 largely of shells, it is known as shell marl, while that of the Upper Everglades 

 is a black muck rich in vegetal matter. Another difference is that through 



* Small believes these distinctions do not exist. He points out that the same plants and the 

 same soil arc common to the prairies and to the distant parts of the Everglades, and that with the 

 muck soil of the Everglades, there are areas of sand and of marl too. My authority for the above 

 distinctions was J. C. Baile of Miami, an old settler, who had cultivated the soils under discussion. 



