habit of sending upward from its roots woody protrusions that 

 stick out of the earth and the water. These are customarily called 

 "knees." They are extremely light in weight and almost pithy, 

 and are covered with bark that can be peeled off them after 

 boiling. They then make extremely fine living-room ornaments, 

 either as lamps or just standing about after being oiled or 

 slightly polished. This so-called "cypress" — actually another in 

 the long list of misnomers, since it is in no way related to the 

 true and original Cypress of the Mediterranean, o/ even to our 

 true cypresses (Cupressus) — grows fine timber, and the best of 

 its stands were logged out from all this area during the past 

 two centuries. Nevertheless it is almost ubiquitous and is slowly 

 coming back, so that some very fine specimens are to be met 

 with in protected areas such as this. 



There is a profusion of other trees that stand about in this 

 swamp, some of them coming as quite a surprise — like certain 

 pines such as the Scrub and the Slash, which would normally 

 die promptly if one tried to grow them in water or saturated 

 soil. Then the festooning of these same trees with Spanish Moss 

 and even with small, spiky bromeliads — epiphytes looking like 

 small pineapple plants — somehow seems quite irregular. 



TEN BILLION GRAY BEARDS 



Spanish Moss (Tillandsia) is undoubtedly the chief characteristic 

 of this whole province, as well as of South Florida, including the 



bottoms and bayous, considerable parts of the Western Timber- 

 lands, and the extreme north of the Eastern Chaparral. The 

 mere volume of it is quite inestimable, and a not inconsiderable 

 industry is now founded on collecting, drying, and packaging it. 

 It is used for stuffing such things as cushions and as packing 

 material, and for this it is almost unsurpassed. But you do have 

 to be rather careful about it when untreated, for it often harbors 

 untold numbers of a certain kind of mite (a relative of the ticks), 

 which not only abounds but has remarkably resistant qualities 

 and amazing powers of reproduction. Untreated, it should never 

 be used for bedding for animals. 



Spanish Moss spreads and proliferates simply by being broken 

 (which is not nearly so easy to do as you might suppose because 

 it has a fine central strand of about the consistency of a horse- 

 hair) and then blown from its point of origin to the first snag 

 it encounters. It can be blown considerable distances above the 

 ground; on the ground it rolls about in neat spindles. Its central 

 strand is an extremely tough black fiber, so strong that even a 

 modest twist of these fibers can support the weight of a man. 

 One experimenter, at the time of this writing, thinks he has 

 found a way of extracting these long, thin fibers; if he has, he 

 may find himself with a new industry on his hands, for they not 

 only match but surpass nylon and many other chemical fibers in 

 tensile strength. You can do all sorts of things with Spanish 

 Moss. Fresh and mixed with any clay or claylike mud, it serves 

 as an excellent binder for fashioning pottery objects which can 

 then be fired directly. Dead and dried, it can be used as tinder 



The Rice Rat (Oryzomy palustris) is a long-tailed, rat-shaped member of the vole family com- 

 mon tlirous.hont the South. It soDietinws szimniis in enormous numbers. 



