408 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



December 



THE PALMETTOS OF FLORIDA 



The Palmettos Furnish the Finest Honey in Florida and in Favorable Seasons 



Yield Abundantly. Honey From this Source is Seldom 



Reported Outside of That State 



THE palmettos arc the mosl con 

 - feature of the flora of the 

 south half of Florida. The cabbage 

 palmetto is a stately tree, while the 

 saw or scrub palmetto grows more 

 like the underbrush in northern for- 

 ests. To the man accustomed to 

 dense forests, the open, park-like 

 growth of the palmettos hardly seems 

 like woodland. The ilustration gives 

 a good idea of the typical Florida 

 landscape. 



This group of plants is not import- 

 ant in America, outside of the State 

 of Florida. A small area in lower 

 Texas, about the mouth of the Rio 

 Grande river, is covered by a species 

 of palmetto closely resembling the 

 cabbage palmetto, but it is thought to 

 be a different species. An occasional 

 tree is also found along the seacoast 

 as far north as Charleston, S. C. 

 They are to be found also as street 

 trees in various southern cities 

 along the gulf coast and in South 

 Texas. The small saw palmetto (Se- 

 rcnoa serrulata) also extends its range 

 into Georgia and the Carolinas, in 

 open pine woodlands. 



In Florida both forms are suffi- 

 ciently abundant to furnish nectar in 

 quantity worthy the attention of the 

 commercial beekeeper. However, in 

 too many localities there is little else 

 available, so that the season between 

 flows is too long to make beekeeping 

 worth while. To take advantage of 

 the palmetto flows and at the same 

 time get good crops through the rest 

 of the year, the late O. O. Poppleton 

 praticed migratory beekeeping. His 

 apiaries were moved several times 

 during the year, so as to be near dif- 

 ferent sources in the period of bloom. 

 The great drawback to beekeeping in 

 Florida is the lack of a sufficient 

 variety of honey plants in one loca- 

 tion t.. support the bees profitably 

 throughout the year. there are a 

 few localities, of course, where this 

 '1' ii s not apply. 



The Cabbage Palmetto 



The cabbage palmetto (Sabal j',il- 

 gtts its name front the cab- 

 bage-like formation in the bud at the 

 top oi the growing trunk. The tree 

 grows twenty-five to thirty-live feet 

 in height and lias large fan-shaped 

 everal Eeet long. It grows 

 along tin \t lant ii i oast to the north 

 line ill Florida, but in the interior is 

 not found in abundance more than 

 about two-thirds of the way. 



I In tier blooms during July and 

 August, the latter dati applying to 

 northern parts of the State. The 

 blossoms are very delicate and have 

 been likened by Prof. Baldwin to a 

 giant ostrich plume. According to 

 i tit, the flowerets are sen- 

 sitive to weather conditions. Too 

 much moisture blights them, while 



Photos by Florida Photographic Concern 



the opposite extreme blasts the deli- 

 cate bloom. As a consequence, it 

 does not yield abundantly more than 

 about one year in three, although at 

 times it yields very pr< ifuselj 



"On the St. Lucie river, Air. Hill 

 extracted, barreled and shipped 3,500 

 pounds of palmetto honey from 65 

 colonies in two weeks." — Page 489, 

 American Bee Journal, 1899. 



While palmetto honey is regarded 

 as of very high quality, the honey 

 from the cabbage tree is rather thin 

 and requires some care in getting it 



properly ripened, as the following 

 quotations will show: 



"Cabbage palmetto honey, sealed or 

 unsealed, will foam as though fer- 

 mentation was in progress; that 

 taken from the combs unsealed will 

 ferment enough to deprive it of all 

 homy flavor, but the sealed only 

 foams. Thin and acid and amber in 

 color, it will flow bubbling from the 

 cells behind the knife, and it is not a 

 rare thing to see gas bubbles under 

 the cappings of the sealed cells. 

 Whether the colonies are strong or 



Bloom of the cabbage palmetto. 



