PRELIMINARY REPORT ON PEAT. 
271 
CYPRESS SWAMPS (OF THE LAKE REGION). 
(plate 26.2) 
The saw-grass marshes just described are bordered in many 
places by vast dense moss-garlanded cypress swamps. Just what 
determines whether saw-grass or cypress shall predominate in a 
given area of lake peat is not obvious, but the transition from marsh 
to swamp is usually very abrupt, and marked by a narrow belt of 
small willows (Salix longipesf). The principal vegetation of these 
cypress swamps is about as follows. 
TREES 
Tax odium distichum (cypress) 
Acer rubrum (maple) 
Magnolia glauca (bay) 
Fraxinus profundat (ash) 
Liquidgmbar Styraciflua (sweet 
gum) 
Nyssa biflora (black gum) 
SMALL TREES AND SHRUBS 
Sambucus Canadensis (elder) 
Ilex Cassine (swamp holly) 
Cornus strictaf 
Cephalanthus occidentalis (button- 
bush) 
Baccharis halimifciia 
Rubus sp. (blackberry) 
Decodon verticillatus 
HERBS 
Tillandsia usneoides (Spanish 
moss) 
Saururus cernuus 
Osmunda regalis (a fern) 
Ipomoea sp. (moonflower) 
Sagittaria lancifona 
Hydrocotyle sp. 
Lycopus sp. 
Some of the plants in this list are believed to be rather partial 
to limestone. Somewhat similar swamps are found along the St. 
Johns River near Astor, Sanford, and elsewhere, in the lake region 
but not associated with saw-grass marshes. 
The peat in the cypress swamps is of course open to the same ob¬ 
jection as that of other swamps, namely, it is full of logs and 
woody roots. As cypress is one of the most durable woods known, 
and at the same time one of the largest of our trees, logs of it 
might not completely decay for hundreds of years. It might even 
be profitable, when living cypress trees are considerably scarcer than 
they are now, to dig out the buried cypress logs from these swamps 
and use them for shingles, posts, etc., as has been done to a con¬ 
siderable extent with buried juniper (Chamaecyparis) logs in Dis¬ 
mal Swamp and southern New Jersey. 
