TRANSACTIONS OF WAGNER 
VEGETATION OF SOUTH FLORIDA 
178 
natural drainage the prairie surface is dry during certain seasons of the year 
and firm enough for the pedestrian to walk dry shod over it. Advantage is 
taken of this dry period by the settlers to raise an extensive acreage of tomatoes. 
One of the prairies at Larkin was characterized by a tough, wiry grass quite 
different in appearance from the Everglade vegetation associated with pickerel- 
weed, Pontederia cordata L. The second and third prairie were filled with saw- 
grass and showed the presence of Sagittaria lancifolia L. The fourth prairie 
was characterized by a clump of willows in its middle portion. Below Benson, 
a fifth prairie was filled with saw-grass, arrow-leaf, Sagittaria lancifolia L., 
and Crinum americanum L. At Rockdale, the same type of vegetation 
was noted in the transverse prairie with a similar one at Modello. A few ad- 
ditional prairie plants are: 
Eleocharis cellulosa Torr. Long Prairie, in flower, Oct. 31, 1906. 
Ibidium (Gyrostachys) tortilis (Sw.) House. West of Cutler, Dade Co., 
in flower, March 23, 1904. 
Limodorum Simpsonii Small. Gosman Prairie, Dade Co., inflower, March 
24, 1904. 
Coastal Prairie.—Along the shores of Biscayne Bay and the Bay of Florida, 
inside of the mangrove swamps, which fringe them part of the way, is a flat 
prairie, so slightly elevated above the sea that it is in part inundated with salt 
water in times of hurricanes and when the tides are exceptionally high. This 
prairie touches the pineland on the west and stretches as far north as Cutler, 
where the pineland approaches salt water (Map and Text Figure 1). The 
writer has crossed this prairie south of Homestead by train four times be- 
tween the mainland and the Florida Keys and he has investigated its flora at 
close range in the neighborhood of Detroit. Physiognomically, it resembles 
the Everglades.* It is a vast saw-grass marsh in wet weather, or plain with 
open lagoons of water and intersected by numerous drainage channels. The 
tension line between the extreme southern pineland and the Great Coastal 
Prairie is not drawn sharply. The two formations sometimes blend imper- 
ceptibly. A few clumps of saw-palmetto, Serenoa serrulata (Michx.) Hook., 
grow out into the prairie and some of the prairie grasses enter the edge of 
* Small believes that the distinction between the Everglades back of the Everglade keys and 
the “Front Prairie” east and south of the Everglade keys is fictitious. He has walked over the 
“Front Prairie” from Cutler south and west to Monroe County with the exception of about 3 miles, 
and did not find a single plant species that he did not find on the other side of the pineland. There 
are large areas not influenced by salt water and where mangroves are not in sight, according to Small. 
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