PLANTS OF DADE COUNTY, FLORIDA 
9 
to be appropriate to this Land of Sun¬ 
shine. 
Yucca aloifolia, or Spanish Bayonet, 
sometimes reaches the size of a small 
tree. It is a striking plant with its stiff, 
cruelly pointed, dark-green, closely-set 
leaves, and throughout the summer is 
covered with immense heads of waxy 
white lilies. It grows abundantly along 
the seashore and will flourish anywhere 
without care or fertilizer. I am not 
sure whether its companion, Y. gloriosa, 
is found in Dade County, but it prob¬ 
ably is, and it is as fine as Y. aloifolia. 
A strange tree is Casuarina equiseti- 
folia or Beefwood, which has escaped 
cultivation in extreme South Florida. 
It looks a little like a very slender, vig¬ 
orous white pine, but on close inspec¬ 
tion the branchlets look like miniature 
scouring rushes. It is a most astonish¬ 
ingly rapid grower, and like many rapid¬ 
growing tropical trees it has hard wood. 
It is being used here considerably for 
planting along roads, where it does well, 
but to me it is very dreary looking and 
suggests snow and ice. It has become 
naturalized on lower Biscayne Bay over 
quite a wide area which, in consequence, 
has been called “The Cedars.” It is a 
native of the Australian region. 
The Live Oak (Quercus virginiana) 
is somehow respected by nearly every 
one who has cleared up hammock, and 
is often allowed to stand. Whether this 
is from a love of the beautiful on the 
part of the settler or from the fact that 
it is an immense task to clear the trees 
and get rid of them I cannot say. The 
tree grows rapidly when young, and 
when old and hung with Spanish Moss 
is a most striking object. It, however, 
robs the soil till few things will do well 
near it. 
Our native mulberry (Morus rubra) 
is one of the very few trees found 
growing here and in the Northern states, 
as it ranges to Massachusetts, Michigan 
and Nebraska. Although it is deciduous 
in winter it is again covered with its 
handsome, light green foliage in Febru¬ 
ary, one of the earliest harbingers here 
of spring. 
Ficus aurea, Wild Fig, Wild Rubber 
Tree or Strangler forms a handsome 
tree when grown where it has room. 
The seeds are dropped by birds high 
up on trees in the hammocks. When 
they germinate they send down a slen¬ 
der root to the ground, then others 
which cross and form a network, till 
soon the host becomes strangled and 
dies. The dead tree quickly decays; the 
strangler becomes first a complete cylin¬ 
der, then grows inward until it has the 
trunk of an ordinary tree. With plenty 
of room it throws down great bundles 
of air roots which swing in the wind 
and finally become attached to the trunk, 
while others reach the ground, and 
the tree eventually may have the char¬ 
acter of the Banyan. 
Ficus populnea is also quite orna¬ 
mental. 
Shore Grape, a small tree (Cocco- 
lobis uvifera) grows abundantly along 
sandy beaches. It has large, glossy, 
leathery and nearly round leaves of 
extraordinary substance, and Charles 
Kingsley called it the most beautiful 
broad-leafed plant he had ever seen. 
The leaves have red veins and color up 
to an intense crimson or scarlet as they 
die. It bears a rather inferior edible 
fruit and will grow vigorously, planted 
out in pine land or hammock. 
Another species (C. laurifolia) the 
Pigeon Plum, is a dense-headed, hand¬ 
some tree with smooth bark. 
The Cat’s Claw of the hammocks 
(Zygia unguis-cati) has curious leaves 
in pairs, brownish or whitish flowers 
in heads, and twisted pods which, on 
opening, disclose black or brownish 
seeds, partly surrounded with a bright 
red aril, the whole being quite an at¬ 
tractive small tree. 
Z. guadalupense is also an interesting 
species resembling the first. 
There is an attractive small tree oc¬ 
casionally found growing wild in the 
edges of hammocks, the Wild Acacia. 
It has very delicate, twice pinnate leaves, 
and in the spring small yellow flowers 
in heads which are deliciously and pow¬ 
erfully fragrant. It will grow without 
attention in any ordinary pine land. 
This tree (Vachellia farnesiana) is nat- 
