Pinelands, Hammocks, Everglades, Mangroves. 231 
(= P. cubensis = P. carıbaea) and numerous shrubs, shrubby herbs and 
herbaceous perennials together with a few annuals. Four species of palms 
belonging to the genera Sadal, Serenoa, Coccothrinax and the Sago palm 
Zamia floridana, are prominent representatives of the pineland formation. 
These pine-lands are light and airy with comparatively thin soil. The growth 
of timber is scattered and the plants found in this formation are not duplicated 
in the West Indies. Relatively then the flora of the pineland formation is 
younger than that of the hammocks and may be older, or younger than the 
everglade formation, according to whether this association of species encro- 
ached on elevated plain land, or whether it captured grassland or the everglade 
formation. The evolution of the pine woods may be represented for sake of 
clearness diagramatically, as follows: 
Dry elevated Sea bottom... .... Everglades 
! 
Savanna Swamps 
nr | 
x Prairie 
EN 
Pine wood:s. 
The culmination from either condition has been a pine forest. The ever- 
glades, then historically speaking, may be older than the pine woods, or 
they may be younger, if the pine woods have been developed from a savanna, 
or a prairie. Whatever their position in point of time, they cover an area 
about one hundred miles wide and perhaps one hundred and fifty miles long, 
the elevation being about ı8 feet above sea-level. The everglades consist of 
an extended saw-grass swamp traversed by winding river-channels, and covered 
with scattered hammock-lands. Its flora consists of grasses, sedges and other 
herbaceous plants (Apzros tuberosa, etc.) among which are many aquatic and 
mud inhabiting plants (Peltandra virginica, Saururus cernuus). The vegetation 
of the everglades is of a more northern character than that of the hammock 
lands, more than half the species of which are native to Cuba and the Bahama 
islands, so that often one can stand with one foot in an association of northern 
species and the other in an association of plants restricted to the tropics. 
The Mangrove formation represents an important element in the flora 
of southern Florida. The mangrove swamps are particularly abundant along 
brackish shores and along the sea-islands, the so-called Florida Keys '). Their 
vegetation is confined almost exclusively to the mangrove trees and such 
few tillandsias and orchids as grow upon their branches. Frequently on the 
borders of these swamps occurs a large showy species of Acrostichum with 
leaves often six to eight feet long. The area shut off from the sea by the 
fringe of mangrove becomes dry ground and eventually grassland (in Florida 
a “prairie”). 
ı) PkitLirs, OÖ. P.: How the mangrove Tree adds new Land to Florida. The Journal of 
Geography II: 1—ı14. Jan. 1903. 
