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FREE INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE 
VEGETATION OF SOUTH FLORIDA 33 
PLANTS OF THE WEEDY STRIP OF THE LAKE OKEECHOBEE SHORE 
Panicum dichotomiflorum Michx. Carica papaya L. 
Chaetochloa magna (Griseb.) Scribn. Jussiaea peruviana L. 
Cyperus ferax Vahl. Calonyction (Ipomoea) aculeatum 
Cyperus surinamensis Rottb. (L.) House. 
Salix longipes Anders. Verbena polystachya H. B. K. 
Boehmeria cylindrica (L.) Willd. Eupatorium capillifolium (Lam.) 
Acnida cuspidata Bert. Small. 
Hibiscus grandiflorus Michx. Eupatorium serotinum Michx. 
Kosteletzkya altheaeifolia (Chapm.) Pluchea purpurascens (Sw.) DC. 
A. Gray. Sonchus oleraceus L. 
CUSTARD-APPLE FORMATION 
This is one of the most remarkable formations in South Florida (Plate X, 
Fig. 1). It consists of an almost pure growth of the custard-apple, Annona 
glabra L., with an occasional cypress tree sticking its top above the general 
level of the crowns of the custard-apple trees. As seen from the cupola of the 
hotel on the south shore of Lake Okeechobee at the entrance to the South 
New River Canal, the custard-apple forest extends east and west, as far as 
the eye could reach, and in a southward direction from the border of the lake, 
a distance of about 4.8 kilometers (3 miles). Over the tops of the trees in that 
direction the apparently illimitable expanses of the saw-grass in the Everglades 
beyond stretched to the horizon in the far distance. The width of the forma- 
tion is in a few places only half a mile and along the south shore of the lake it is 
separated from the water by a narrow strip of shore line. The location of the 
extended custard-apple forest, or hammock, is shown on the large map extend- 
ing on the west from the Three Mile Canal around the southern end of the lake 
to Pelican Bay and around the shores of Pelican Bay, where the remarkable 
pond-apple hammock serves as a rookery for various kinds of birds and is the 
home of the otter, raccoon and blind-mosquitoes. The last do not bite, but 
make life unbearable by their numbers and their vicious, persistent attacks 
which are pure bluff.* Behind the mud flats, which surround Torry Island and 
to some extent on Kreamer Island, are pond-apple (custard-apple) hammocks, 
the trees of which in dense growth have curiously buttressed and branched 
* Small, John K.: Exploration in the Everglades and on the Florida Keys, Journ. N. Y. Bot. 
Gard., 15: 69-79, Apr., 1914. 
