Florida Air-Plant. nj 



FLORIDA AIR-PLANT. 



I REMEMBER oiice to have taken a trip southward to Florida, the land 

 of flowers. Passing up that magnificent river, the St. John's, or, as the 

 Seminoles more beautifully called it, Wee-la-ka, or River of Lakes, on the 

 steamer " Darlington," I observed at various points a curious pineapple- 

 looking plant, growing on the large live-oaks near the river. I at first 

 thought they must have been j^laced there by the hand of man. So unlike 

 did they appear to me to any parasite that I knew of, that I made inquiries 

 of all I met about them. The invariable answer I got was, " Stranger, them's 

 air-plants." I some time after that met a gentleman, who, for short, I will 

 call Doctor, who gave me the desired information in answer to my ques- 

 tion. I will give you as near as I can from recollection what the doctor 

 said about them. 



" Well, sir," the doctor said, " a great many people, and knowing ones 

 too, call the Florida air-plant a parasite. It is not : it is truly an air-plant ; 

 subsists on what it can draw from the air and from the heavy dews. You 

 see its coarse, fibrous, and rather sparse roots are not fitted to draw nourish- 

 ment, but serve the purpose of holding the plant firmly to the tree : this 

 service done, the plant takes care of itself I have cut off all these 

 roots, and bound the plant strongly to a limb, and it grew as well as if 

 never mutilated. The air-plant belongs to the order BromeliacecB, genus 

 Tillandsia, named in honor of Elias Tillands of Abo. 



"The air-plant is a curious object to look at. Its large whitish-green- 

 looking serrated leaves look so much like that of the pineapple-plant, that 

 if I were to take a large one from the tree, and jDut it on the ground near 

 a bed of pineapple-plants, you could hardly tell the difference. Of these 

 air-plants we have many varieties, from the little one three inches high to 

 the gigantic one six feet high : all of them vary, some in leaf, some in flower. 

 This large variety sends up during the summer a long spike crowded with 

 numerous greenish-white flowers, which in a short time fall off". They 

 almost invariably form seed. The spike is from four to eight feet high, 

 and, while in bloom, is somewhat conspicuous. 



"This large air-plant has at least one useful quality aside from its beauty. 



