i64 IN LOWER FLORIDA WILDS 



Finally, there are the adventive plants, the 

 wanderers, of which we have, as yet, comparatively 

 few species; but later, when the country is older 

 and more generally cultivated, there will surely 

 be an army of them. The railroad beds are regular 

 propagation gardens for foreign plants, but not 

 always of a helpful kind, for trains bring in seeds 

 which, for the most part, belong to injurious or 

 objectional species. Others come on clothing, in 

 automobiles or steamers, the latter bringing most 

 of our exotic plant tramps. Some of these are the 

 vilest weeds; a few have no decided characters for 

 good or evil and one or two are beneficial. The 

 sand burs (Cenchrus), beggar's ticks (Bidens), and 

 the Boerhaavia, with oval crimped leaves and airy 

 panicles of minute purple flowers, are not only 

 undesirable weeds but they all bear the meanest 

 kind of burs. Our northern fleabane {Erigeron 

 canadensis) is beginning to creep in, so are the 

 ragweed (Ambrosia), the common purslane (Por- 

 tulacca), and a couple of Chenopodiiuns. The 

 pepper grass {Lepidium virginicum) is getting to be 

 common along the roadsides and it is a not un- 

 welcome immigrant with its pleasant, peppery- 

 tasting pods. The rapidity with which some of 



