FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
23 
show a hectic flush again in the fall but 
this may be one of either shame or choler 
at having to disrobe for the winter. At 
all events, his choler, if choler it is, will be 
surpassed by both the sweet gum and the 
scarlet maple, and all three of them out¬ 
classed in this respect by the black gum. 
But as even the dwarf, illy-developed 
sumach seems to vie with its o’ertopping 
neighbors in this direction, we will as¬ 
sume that they have all merely eaten and 
drunk to repletion and that the plethora 
of .fullness, as sometimes observed in their 
two-legged neighbors, shows in their 
faces. 
In this connection, I would say that the 
formerly accepted theory that highly 
colored autumn foliage is due to the 
action of frosts, has of late been widely 
disputed. Careful investigation seems to 
show that richness of tint in fall foliage is 
dependent, to quite a considerable extent 
at least, on the character of the preceding 
summer. If the summer and fall have 
been very dry, only low tints will be shown 
in the foliage. If wet, high tints will de¬ 
velop. 
Still, I know one man, at least, who will 
dispute the latter theory; the editor of a 
paper very properly called ‘‘Above the 
Clouds,’^ printed on top of Mount Wash¬ 
ington, New Hampshire. I had the good 
fortune to spend an evening with this 
editor, last summer, in his rocky eyrie, 
and he told me that the fall foliage was 
much more resplendent as seen from the 
top of the mountain than when viewed 
from the valley. As his point of vision 
was from an altitude of considerably over 
a mile above sea level, and he was there¬ 
fore above the trees, as well as, often, 
above the clouds, he was necessarily look¬ 
ing down into the tops of the trees instead 
of looking up into them like ordinary 
mortals. It may be that this inverted 
angle of vision may have a bearing on the 
subject. I did not think to ask his views 
on this point. At any rate, he would have 
seen more of the upper, and more highly 
colored, side of the foliage than the most 
of us, and with less intervening shadow to 
dim its splendor. 
But to go back to our thicket and our 
oaks. Here are not only water oaks and 
live oaks but the post oak, Quercus minor, 
with its beautiful large five-lobed leaf, and 
several other species besides, all of which 
show more difference in individual speci¬ 
mens than a casual observer would give 
them credit for. And indeed it is an in¬ 
teresting study to pick out varieties of 
these or in fact, any species of trees and 
note the latitude of form that Nature 
gives to her offspring. We must remem¬ 
ber that botany stops, for the most part, 
with species and that beyond these are in¬ 
dividual characteristics as varied in dif¬ 
ferent species of our forest trees as are 
those in any species of frift trees like the 
orange and peach. If these forest species 
produced edible, merchantable fruit, there 
would be the same necessity for varietiz- 
ing them as there is with the kinds we cul¬ 
tivate in groves and orchards; but as they 
do not, we simply pass them by with the 
general remark that such a tree is a live 
oak, the next a maple, and so on, without 
ever really becoming acquainted with tiie 
varietal characteristics of any particular 
individual of a species. 
Here, for instance, is a young sweet 
gum with comparatively smooth, light 
colored bark resembling a maple, and with 
foliage too that, at a little distance, might 
easily be confounded with that of the 
maple. The lighter tint of green of the 
sweet gum’s foliage might, however, 
strike us at once and lead us to identify 
