TORREYA 



NhV\' VI, UK 



Vol. 25 No. 3 



May- June, 1925 



A BOTANKAI.LY REMARKABLK LOCALITY IN THP: 

 TALLAHASSEE RED HILLS OF MIDDLE FLORIDA 



Roland M. Harper 



At the time of the publication of my Geography and Vegeta- 

 tion of Northern Florida, late in 1914,* automobiles were rather 

 a scarce luxury, and exploring by means of horse and buggy was 

 but little better than walking, and my observations in the region 

 designated as the Talkihassee red hills were practically confined 

 to what I could see in walking out from Tallahassee and back 

 the same day, a radius of ten or twelve miles. f Consequently 

 I had never seen Lake Miccosukee, one of the four large shallow 

 lakes of the region, which is about twenty miles northeast of 

 Tallahassee. 



In the work cited (page 277) I mentioned the remarkable 

 dearth of rare plants in this region, a region which has no 

 counterpart anywhere else in the world, and ought presumably 

 therefore to have at least a few endemic plants. That state- 

 ment now requires modification. 



Early in January, 1924, I returned to Tallahassee after one of 

 my periodic absences in other states, and found the post of 

 assistant professor of botany at the Florida State College for 

 Women occupied by Dr. Herman Kurz, who possessed an 

 automobile and a fondness for exploring the surrounding country 

 with it. I soon went on trips with him to various places which 

 had previously been out of my reach ; and on Monday afternoon, 

 February i8th,J we headed for Lake Miccosukee. Dr. Kurz 



* Ann. Rep. Fla. Geol. Survey, 6: 167-437. 



t Miss Laura Gano, who studied the vegetation of this neighborhood be- 

 tween 1908 and 1910, and published an account of it in the Botanical Gazette 

 several years later (63: 337-372. 1917), was probably even more restricted 

 in her explorations, and did not do justice to any of the large lakes. 



t Not Sunday as stated in a Science Service news item in Science for Oct. 10, 

 1924 (and copied in the Literary Digest for Nov. 15). That item seems to 

 have been written by a friend of Dr. Kurz's, who was in Florida at the time 

 of the discovery here described, and had some inside information as well as 

 a little misinformation. (This correction is made for the benefit of the 

 "fundamentalists" and others who might think there was something repre- 

 hensible about discovering new species on Sunday.) 



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