NATIVE AND EXOTIC PLANTS OF DADE 
COUNTY, FLORIDA 
By Charles T. Simpson 
F OR 40 years it had been a life dream 
with me to be able some day to live 
in a land where there is no winter, and 
where I might cultivate the beautiful 
and strange vegetation of the tropics. 
A little over ten years ago I resigned 
my position in the Smithsonian Institu¬ 
tion and came to Dade County, Florida, 
to make a home for an old man. 
The piece of land selected for this 
purpose fronted on Biscayne Bay, in 
the village of Lemon City, about five 
miles north of Miami. It contained 
some 15^4 acres; three acres of the 
front being low hammock or muck 
land, two acres joining this, rocky, 
high hammock, and the rest rocky pine 
land. I was 56 years old, and having 
little spare money I put on overalls 
and a blue shirt and began the task of 
making a home in the unsubdued wil¬ 
derness. I chose this region for my 
home after studying Cuba, Haiti, Ja¬ 
maica and the Bahamas. These islands 
have the advantage of a more tropical 
climate than South Florida, their soil is 
generally richer, but I felt that to them 
could be applied the lines from the mis¬ 
sionary hymn: 
“Where every prospect pleases, 
And only man is vile.” 
This region has some decided disad¬ 
vantages to the grower of fruit and 
ornamentals. It lies in the track of 
the West Indian hurricanes and its 
soil is generally poor, but I felt that by 
proper fertilization it might be made to 
produce a finer quality of fruit than that 
which grows in the rich soil of the West 
Indies. I have sometimes felt that the 
remark made to me by a Bahaman truck 
grower at Homestead that “there is a 
hinsect here for every wegetable” was 
true. And there are sometimes morn¬ 
ings here in winter when the mercury 
wakes up to find itself “below the frost 
line” on the face of the thermometer. 
The clearing of the land here is an 
excessively heavy and expensive task, 
dynamiting, burning and removing trees, 
grubbing rock, getting it off the ground, 
and destroying the three or sometimes 
four species of palmettos as well as a 
variety of other scrub. And when it is 
all done the grower has a waste of dry, 
sandy soil in which it is exceedingly 
hard to make tender plants grow. I be¬ 
lieve it to be an excellent idea when 
clearing land to leave small pine trees 
and some of the low palmettos standing 
to shade and shelter the ground, and pro¬ 
tect young and delicate plants. The 
pines and palmettos may be removed 
later if necessary. 
One of the difficulties the grower has 
to encounter is the frosts and occasional 
spells of chilly weather. I have never 
been able to devisq any means by which 
I could completely protect young and 
tender plants from frost. It is a good 
plan to make a mound of dry earth 
around such young things, say early in 
December, to be removed as soon as 
danger of frost is over. This protects 
the collars of the plants, and if the tops 
are frozen they will generally sprout up 
vigorously. As soon as most tropical 
trees and shrubs have attained a height 
of six or eight feet they are not likely 
to be seriously damaged here. 
It would be impossible within the 
limits of a paper like this to give any¬ 
thing like a complete list even of the 
ornamental trees, shrubs and plants 
growing wild and already cultivated 
here. I shall therefore only attempt to 
mention the more prominent forms, call¬ 
ing attention to those that seem to be 
especially adapted to our peculiar soil 
and conditions, and to others which do 
not seem to succeed. The paper will 
