214 IN LOWER FLORIDA WILDS 



along with a great variety of TUlandsias or air 

 pines — "poor relations of the pineapple" as 

 Bradford Torrey aptly called them. The strange 

 effect of so many air plants is often heightened, by 

 a drapery of Spanish moss which hangs in long, 

 weird streamers. With these epiphytes is asso- 

 ciated a Catopsis and along the horizontal or lean- 

 ing stems of the live oaks is a lovely Peperomia, a 

 closely clinging creeper with thick, obovate leaves 

 and rat-tail spikes of greenish flowers. It is one 

 of only four members of the pepper family grow- 

 ing in Lower Florida. 



This part of the forest is a veritable fern garden. 

 Along the trunks of the live oaks the exquisite 

 resurrection fern {Polypodium polypodioides) with 

 its delicately cut fronds forms solid mats, which 

 awaken into growth and beauty with the coming 

 of rain and turn brown and desolate when the 

 weather is dry. Among the palmetto boots is the 

 large serpent fern, so called because its knotted 

 rootstocks resemble the twisted bodies of snakes. 

 There are long tufts of grass ferns on the palm 

 which sometimes droop five or six feet and are 

 then striking objects. Here also is one of the most 

 attractive plants in the forest (Campyloneurum 



