316 FLORIDA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY—THIRD ANNUAL REPORT. 
CATALOGUE OF THE PRINCIPAL PEAT-FORMING 
PLANTS OF FLORIDA. 
INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT. 
The following catalogue includes only those species of plants 
which have been seen by the writer at least once in permanent 
water or on several inches or feet of peat, and therefore in a posi¬ 
tion to form peat as they decay. (Many of them are found also 
in other habitats, such as low pine lands and sandy lake shores; 
but those species mentioned in the foregoing pages as growing 
only in alluvial swamps, cypress ponds, etc., where there is no peat, 
are excluded). It is of course far from complete, for the reasons 
given elsewhere, and also because during the field work quite a num¬ 
ber of species were encountered which I did not recognize at first 
sight, generally because they belonged to difficult groups; and when 
working on peat I was not usually prepared for collecting botanical 
specimens for subsequent identification. I have probably iden¬ 
tified the genus correctly in nearly every case, and the species in 
the great majority of cases; and where I was not sure of the specific 
identity of a plant I have either omitted the specific name en¬ 
tirely or added an interrogation point. With all its shortcomings, 
however, this is probably the longest list of peat-forming plants 
ever published for a single state or country. 
The species are grouped into genera and families in the us¬ 
ual manner, and arranged in what is essentially the Engler & Prantl 
sequence, except that it is reversed, so as to bring the highest 
plants first and the comparatively little-known and inconspicuous 
mosses, etc., last. 
Under each species is given first its technical name (usually 
the same as in Small’s Flora of the Southeastern United States, 
1903), and common name or names, if it has any,* then its ob¬ 
served distribution in Florida, with special reference to peat de¬ 
posits, and finally its general distribution; the last primarily to 
show the relation of our peat flora to that of other parts of the 
world. 
*As I have not as yet made extensive inquiries into the common names 
used for plants in Florida, I have employed in most cases names which are 
current in South Georgia, where I spent a few years before coming to Florida. 
Such names ought to be familiar to most Floridians, for many of them have 
lived in the neighboring state. (According to the census of 1900 nearly 11% 
of the inhabitants—and of course a still larger proportion of the adult inhab¬ 
itants—of Florida were born in Georgia.) The most careful investigation, 
however, would probably not discover bona-fide common names for more than 
half of the peat-forming plants, for they grow in comparatively inaccessible 
places, and very few of them (except the trees) have any useful properties, so 
that the people have had little occasion for giving them names. 
