178 PLANTS, SEEDS, AND CURRENTS 



floats for nets. An experiment might be made by breaking off 

 limbs or roots, and after soaking them for a time in salt water plant 

 them in mud. I cannot find that their fruits are any more buoyant 

 than other Annonas. If it were birds that distributed the seeds, 

 why would not the more attractive species be just as widely dis- 

 persed? The seeds may possibly be borne by currents. They say 

 that the fruit is eaten by aquatic lizards, or iguanas of the Bahamas. 

 I wonder if they are carried from island to island. ..." (It may 

 be noted here that according to Fawcett and Rendle in their work 

 on the Jamaican flora the light wood is used for corks, floats, etc., 

 nothing being said of the roots. — H. B. G.) 



The ground covered by this extremely suggestive letter will be 

 traversed in the following discussion respecting Anona palustris. 



The distribution of this plant in the New World extends on the 

 Atlantic side from South Florida and the Bahamas over the Greater 

 and Lesser Antilles to the South American mainland. On the 

 Pacific side it is at home on the coasts of Central America, the Gala- 

 pagos Islands, and on the coast of Ecuador, its southerly extension 

 beyond the Peruvian borders being prevented by the aridity of the 

 climatic conditions, which bring the mangroves and their associated 

 plants to a halt in this region. On the West Coast of Africa it grows 

 on the coasts and estuaries of Senegambia and in the Niger region. 



Its station is at the borders of the mangroves, and it is at home 

 on the muddy banks of estuaries. I found it to be one of the most 

 frequent trees on the banks of the Guayas estuary in Ecuador, where 

 they were overflowed at high water. Here it was associated with 

 Rhizophora mangle, Hibiscus tiliaceus, and other trees. It is a 

 constituent of the mangrove formation on the coasts of the Virgin 

 Islands in the West Indies and of the island of New Providence in the 

 Bahamas (Harshberger's Phytogr. Surv. N. Amer., pp. 687, 690-1). 

 It does not appear to be frequent now in Jamaica. I did not come 

 upon it myself in the Black River district, though in the recent 

 volume on the Flora of Jamaica by Fawcett and Rendle, where only 

 two localities are given, this is one of them. A fruit was brought 

 to me from the north side of the island. 



But one of the most interesting localities where Anona palustris 

 occurs is in South Florida, where, as we are told by Prof. Harshberger, 

 from whose memoir on the region the following details are taken, 

 this tree offers one of the most remarkable formations. In these 

 low-lying levels it occurs thirty to forty miles from the sea in an 

 area which has been for ages undergoing a transition from its con- 

 dition of submergence beneath the Gulf Stream in later Tertiary 

 times to one of marsh and swamp, and finally of dry land. The 

 greatest development in this region is a forest of "an almost pure 

 growth " of this tree, which, varied by an occasional cypress (Taxo- 

 dium distichum), forms a band usually two to three miles in breadth 

 for a distance of about thirty miles along the south and south-east 

 shores of Lake Okeechobee, passing on its southern side into the 

 marsh formation of the Everglades. Two or three of the islands 

 in this lake support a dense growth of this tree. In some places 



