85 
ment. As an alternative Boca Chica Key was selected for 
investigation. any desirable specimens were gathered on this 
little-known island, and among them was a West Indian tree 
not before found in the United States. 
Several excursions were made a boat some miles into the 
Everglades where specimens of peat were secured for our eco- 
mic museum. Then the sand- see along Indian Creek were 
visited for the purpose of making certain observations, and for 
securing specimens of the rare Okenia hypogaea mentioned in a 
previous report, and whose growth on the occasion of other visits 
had been obliterated by hurricanes or heavy storms. The p 
was now found in perfect condition of growth, ae a 
ranging from seedlings to full-grown plants were obta . This 
plant belongs to the four-o’clock family and is eee known 
only from southern Mexico. It is a trailing or creeping vine, 
and like the peanut, pushes its flowers into the sand by means of 
the recurving and elongating flower-stalks, and then matures 
its fruits about six inches beneath the surface of the soil. A sur- 
prising discovery was made relating to its flow The c alyx 
is generally bright rose-purple, and the flowers - ‘die seedlings 
are one to one and a half inches in diameter, while those of the 
grown plants are uniformly less than a half inch in diameter. 
There too we secured museum specimens of the apparently edible 
tubers of the prickly pear, Opuntia austrina, a species of cactus 
discovered in that region several years ago 
I returned to the Garden at the end of the first week of Decem- 
with the results of the expedition which may be briefly 
ne as follows: Numerous field observations the accomplish- 
ment of which faa become desirable through the study of collec- 
tions previously made in tropical Florida, a dozen museum speci- 
mens which we had not been able to obtain on previous expedi- 
tions, and a collection of approximately eighteen hundred her- 
barium specimens representing about three-hundred and ninety- 
six field numbers. In the latter named collection are five species 
new to science, one tree new to Florida and at the same time 
new to the tree-flora of the United States, several West Indian 
plants new to the flora of Florida, and about twenty-five species 
new to the flora of the Florida Keys. 
