TRANSACTIONS OF WAGNER 
VEGETATION OF SOUTH FLORIDA 
128 
country between Upcohall and the Everglades. Although several different 
kinds of hammock land may be distinguished, yet the constituent species that 
are associated in these hammocks vary strikingly from place to place along the 
river banks. Although we have limited the number of different formations in 
the discussion which follows to a few selected, or generalized types, yet it 
must be clearly understood that the ecologic composition of these different 
formations is not as simple as the selected generalized name would suggest. 
The transition from one type of formation to an adjoining formation, as one 
ascends the river, is, as the following enumeration shows, almost kaleidoscopic, 
which suggests the applicability of Jaccard’s law on the distribution of species 
in alpine meadows and pastures* to the hammock vegetation one meets in 
ascending the Caloosahatchee River. Palm-tree vistas that reach into the 
interior of the forest are broken by the palmetto hammocks, alternating with 
open prairies, with pineland or oak-saw-palmetto sclerophyllous scrub. A 
sudden bend of the stream will reveal one type of vegetation on the left bank 
and an entirely different association on the right. Since the settlement of the 
country much of the best river-bottom land has been cleared and planted to 
orange trees which in some large plantations were almost entirely submerged 
on June 20, 1912. The succession of hammocks and other formations noted 
on ascending the river from Ft. Myers to Lake Hicpochee is tabulated below. 
The formations on the right bank of the stream are placed in the right hand 
column, those on the left bank on the left hand side of the page. Beginning 
where the river narrows at Upcohall, the formations noted by me are as follows: 
UPCOHALL 
Pineland with scattered palmettos. Hammock. 
Prairie with pine groves and palmetto strips. 
RIVER VIEW 
Hammock facing prairie. Pineland. 
Pineland fronted with thicket. Hammock. 
Saw-Palmetto Scrub. Pine Savanna. 
Hammock. 
* Jaccard, Paul: Distribution de la flore alpine dans le bassin des Dranses. Bull. Soc. Vaud 
des Sc. Nat. XXXVI:—, 1901; Étude comparative de la Distribution florale dans une portion des 
Alpes st du Jura. Bull. Soc. Vaud des Sc. Nat. XXXVII: 547-579. Lois de distribution florale 
dans la zone alpine, Ibid., XXXVII, 1902; Gesetz der Pflanzenverteilung in der alpinen Region. 
Flora 90: 349-377, 1902; Nouvelle recherches sur la distribution florale. Bull. Soc. Vaud des Sc. 
Nat. XLIV: 223-270, 1908; The Distribution of the Flora in the Alpine Zone, New Phytologist, XT: 
37-50, 1912. Jaccard states: “Nous en pouvons conclure que le degré de fréquence d'une espèce dans 
une prairie donnée est essentiellement variable d'un point à un autre.” From the studies presented in 
the papers above, we may conclude that the infinite diversity of the alpine flora, and of the 
associations which constitute it, is so great that probably no two square meters of vegetation in 
the whole chain of the Alps possess exactly the same floristic composition. 
