President's Annual Address* 
BY G. L. TABER. 
Members of the Florida State Horticul¬ 
tural Society; Ladies and Gentleme^i: 
The message that I bring you to-day is 
of the woods. It is written in the midst 
of what is, to me, a most interesting 
thicket, covering an area of some thirty 
acres, which for seventeen years has been 
protected from fire. The particular trees 
under which my impromptu seat is placed 
are Liquidambars; seventy-five to ninety 
feet tall and from eighteen to twenty-four 
inches in diameter. The four trees that 
remain of this older generation are the 
survivors of many protracted and unequal 
battles. At the ground, their still open 
wounds bear mute evidence of the ter¬ 
rible onslaught of fire that destroyed 
their comrades. Higher up, their trunks 
are covered, for the distance a boy can 
.reach, with healed-over scars, where 
youngsters of twenty years ago had made 
incisions for' the liquid amber to collect 
and harden into the prized chewing, or 
sweetgum—from which the common 
name of the tree is derived. 
Everywhere, individually and in clus¬ 
ters, throughout the basic pines of the 
thirty acre thicket, is a younger progeny 
of lusty trees of many species. As is fit¬ 
ting the giant Liquidambars, the largest 
deciduous tree in this .particular thicket, 
are rearing up a younger brood and their 
light green, starry, maple-shaped foliage, 
as it glints in the sunshine against the 
darker background of the pines, presents 
an effect no less pleasing than that of the 
tops of the giant parents as outlined 
against the sky. 
Less than fifty feet from the large 
Liquidambars, stands another gum but of 
a different genus—^the so-called black or 
sour gum, Nyssa sylvatica. This is also 
a stately tree but of a very different habit 
of growth from the Liquidambars; for 
while the former send out their branches 
at an oblique angle and are inclined to 
climb skyward, the latter sends out 
branches more nearly at a right angle, 
and often clustered, in such a wav as to 
offer the fantastic suggestion that one 
might cut from the trunk a succession of 
naturally grown wagon hubs in which the 
spokes are already set. 
A few feet farther on stands an Ameri¬ 
can Holly, the shiny broad-leaved, spiny- 
toothed Hex opaca. At all seasons of the 
year, this is a most beautiful tree but par¬ 
ticularly striking during the winter 
months when its smooth, light colored 
bark, bright green foliage and abundance 
of scarlet berries accentuate the fact that 
the most rigorous winters we ever get in 
the Southland possess no terrors for it. 
In speaking of hollies, this is the species 
that we naturally associate with the name, 
and yet it is much less frequently seen 
than other species of Ilex—many of 
which we pass by with but little thought 
other than that they are graceful shrubs 
or trees as the case mav be. In this thick- 
et, there are at least six different species 
of Ilex, as follows: Ilex opaca. as above 
