OF PALM TREES--OF VARIETIES OF FISH--AND OF FRUIT AND LIARS AND BARON
MUNCHAUSEN
Let us return to the matter of growth in southern Florida. Everything,
as has been said, grows there. There are twenty-nine varieties of palm
trees; and one can spend an entire week doing nothing but check up palm
trees. According to official count there are two hundred and
seventy-five different varieties of fish in southern Florida waters--or
there were toward the middle of last February. A new variety is
discovered every week. Unofficial counters say that there are more than
seven hundred varieties. The unofficial ones are probably nearer right
than the official ones. There are so many different varieties of fruit
that if one attempted to eat every variety in one day, he would
unquestionably burst with a loud majority report. A partial list of
fruits which are being successfully raised in Florida’s southernmost
county, provided by a man with a poor memory, contains avocado--or
alligator pear, custard apple, mammea apple, Jamaica apple, rose apple,
Bugamot, citron, banana, Barbadoes cherry, chermoyas, cecropia, Surinam
cherry, carissa, Jackfruit, lime, lemon, loquat, various sorts of
mangoes, fifty-seven different varieties of orange, a number of crosses
between oranges and other things, grapefruit, eggfruit, dates, olives,
monsterosa deliciosa, papaya, pomegranate, Japanese persimmon, sour sop,
sapote, sapodillo, strawberry, tomato. If a Floridan has plenty of time
at his disposal, he can think up twenty or thirty more fruits that are
fruiting constantly and energetically in southern Florida.
One of the unfortunate features of discussing southern Florida lies in
the fact that if one isn’t careful, his non-Florida or anti-Florida
hearers will suspect him of having taken money to advertise the state.
They will, in short, suspect him of exaggeration when he carelessly
mentions the ever-sunny skies and the perfect-thirty-four bathing girls
and the amazing growths. The whole subject is fraught with risks. Baron
Munchausen would never have been able to work up a reputation as a liar
in southern Florida, because his lies weren’t much more startling than
the things that happen there every day. But if the Baron had sandwiched
a few Florida facts among his lies and had tried them out on his
neighbors some evening after his second gallon of Dortmunder beer, they
would have slapped one another on the back and rolled around in their
chairs with tears of mirth pouring down their cheeks, and assured one
another between their spasmodic gasps and groans of merriment that there
never would be anybody in the world who would be able to tell such
downright ridiculous, preposterous, side-splitting, hair-raising lies as
the Baron.