
          about the shores but have not observed it growing. The Royal Palm of
 the West Indies I have found growing in all its majesty both upon
 the eastern & western coasts. Another species of palm having something
 the appearance of the date Palm but with fronds much longer & armed
 with the most horrid spones. I have not had leisure to ascertain the
 [crossed out: genus] what it is but am told that it is common in Mexico. I think
 that I have now 7 species of Eugenia, one which I discovered on
 my last trip the proudes of all being a lofty tree of the hammocks
 with a straight trunk & furnishing a beautiful timber. I cannot at
 this time give you an account of all. I am in hopes of being able to enable
 you to add a new genus to our conifers. I have some strange epidendrous plants & my
 collections of Graminea [Gramineae] & Cyperoideai to me [crossed out: wh] as I have not paid much
 attention to those orders are overwhelming I found them in great variety 
 on prairies & the borders of the everglades. I have quite a variety of aquatic 
 plants, a Nymphea with yellow nearly inodorous flowers [crossed out: about] not so
 large as those of the odorata a submersed [purnassia?] Utricularia Pinguicula
 & some to which I am able to give no cognomer. To the Euphorbiaceae I have
 made some additions. Turneraceae 3 or 4 species Rubiaceae I have found but few
 Convolvulaceae several, one with tuberous roots in shape size a taste almost
 precisely like the sweet potatoe butt [but] with the most splendid flowering vine I ever
 beheld. The flowers almost recisely the colour of those of the Lobelia. 
 Cardinalis a little deeper if any thing. I found it growing in the rocky barrens
 near the southern extreme of the peninsula. I brought home some of the
 lichens & am trying to domesticate them. Of the Order Calyceraceae I think
 I have some sp. Do you remember a succulent leafless jointed vine attached
 to a stick which I left with you on my visit to Princeton. It belongs to the
 Asclepiadaceae. I have since obtained the fruit, but I cannot find it described
 in Decandolle's Prodromus perhaps you can enlighten me. I hope you will retain for
 me a labelled specimen of all the plants that I have transmited [transmitted] to you. In my
 next I will give you something of the Geological features of South Florida & its antiquity.


 Yours truly
 JL [John Loomis] Blodgett
        