If any untraveled Northern botanist wishes to be puzzled, hopelessly
confused, clean put out of his reckoning, let him come to Miami.
His knowledge will drop away from him till not a rag is left. Let
him arrive, as I did, after dark, and in the morning take the road
southward to Cocoanut Grove. The distance is only five miles, and the
walking excellent. I should like to go with him, and listen to his
exclamations and comments.
The cocoanut palms before the hotel, as he leaves the piazza, he
has no need to inquire about; such things he has at least seen in
pictures. And the parti-colored crotons, likewise, are nothing new;
he has seen the like in hot-houses, if nowhere else. And the scores
of big, round hibiscus bushes, each with its score or two of regal
scarlet blossoms,--these, or poverty-stricken imitations of them, he
has admired before now in the Boston Public Garden and elsewhere. The
acalypha shrubs, also, he will perhaps recognize upon a second look,
though he has never before seen them growing as a hedge, carefully
squared, three or four feet high, and as many feet thick. Yonder
euphorbia bush, too (_Poinsettia_), with its flaring, flaming rosettes
of scarlet floral leaves at the tips of the stems--this, like the
crotons, he is more or less familiar with under glass. All these are
cultivated plants, pleasant to look upon out of doors in mid-winter,
but of themselves not especially interesting, perhaps, to a botanist.
But now, at the foot of Thirteenth or Fourteenth Street, less than a
quarter of a mile from the hotel, we come to some vacant lots. Here are
a few dingy live-oaks (still with last year’s leaves on), and in their
shadow, sprawling over the tangled undergrowth, a wilderness of gadding
morning-glory vines. How lovely the flowers are--pink and blue! Unless
it be the ubiquitous fish crow, there is nothing else so common in this
Miami country as the morning-glory; and the vines, acres on acres, hold
in bloom, one kind and another, so I am given to understand, almost or
quite the whole year round.
Now we leave the sidewalk and are in the pine woods. The
trees--long-leaved pines--our botanist knows well enough, the train
having brought him past a thousand miles of such, on his way hither;
though, even so, he might be puzzled to tell to which of two related
species (_Palustris_ and _Elliottii_) they belong. From the rude
bridge, as we cross the Miami River, he admires the myriad-footed,
glossy-leaved mangrove thickets that line the banks, especially as
he looks up the stream. Just beyond are ancient live-oaks, the huge
spreading branches of which support a profusion of air-plants (poor
relations of the pineapple), with here and there an orchid. I should
like to show him an _Epidendrum_ such as I secured ten days ago--an
open spray of a dozen blooms, handsome enough to grace the finest
of hothouse collections; but I have not been able to find a second
specimen, with all my searching. However, a smaller, one-flowered
species is common enough, and if he is sufficiently enterprising he
will climb one of the trees for it, or--as I did--cut a stick by means
of which, with more or less hard work, he can pry the bulbous root from
its foothold.
“What is this yellow flower?” he asks, as we go on.
“I don’t know,” is my answer. “Some member of the pulse family.”
My companion knew as much as that already.
“And this bush, with its strangely contorted pods?”
Here I am more at home, and proud to show it. The plant is
_Pithecolobium Unguis-Cati_, I tell him. Small wonder the pods are
twisted.
With this we come to more live-oaks, on which are more air-plants and
orchids, and just beyond is a confusion of thick-leaved trees and
shrubs.
“What is this?” he asks; “and this? and this?”
I have no idea, I am obliged to answer. But the tall tree a little
farther on is _Ficus aurea_, I hasten to remark, with a show of extreme
erudition.
“A fig-tree?” he answers, in a tone of surprise; for, being a botanist,
he knows, of course, that _ficus_ is fig.
Yes, I assure him, it is a _kind_ of fig (rubber tree, it is otherwise
called), though the leaf is small and, as botanists say, “entire,” not
in the least resembling the modest fig-leaf of convention. I know the
tree’s name, as I know that of the shrub before mentioned, because I
was told it yesterday. One’s knowledge (of names) increases rapidly
under favorable circumstances, in a country like this.
Yonder very noticeable shrub, bearing large globular bunches of small
bright-purplish berries (no eye could miss them), is the French
mulberry, so called (_Callicarpa Americana_); and the larger and
leafier bush near it, set along the branches with more loosely disposed
orange-colored berries, is _Trema micrantha_, a plant which Chapman’s
Flora credits to but one place in the United States,--“Shellmounds
in Lastero Bay, South Florida,”--though hereabout it is one of the
commonest of the common. Both it and the French mulberry are prime
favorites with various kinds of birds. Mockingbirds and catbirds are
feasting on the berries at this moment.
And yes, here is a tree that I knew would excite my companion’s
curiosity. No stranger ever drove over this road (and the first drive
of every newcomer to Miami is taken this way) without asking his driver
about it: a large tree, all its leafy branches far above the ground,
with a strangely conspicuous mahogany-colored bark, the outermost
layers of which peel off in loose papery flakes, after the manner
of the canoe birch. On my first jaunt into the hammock I heard more
than one driver pronounce its eloquent name--gumbo-limbo. The two or
three men of whom I made inquiries could tell me nothing more, till
my host, who professed no botany, modestly suggested a reference to
the dictionary. There, sure enough, I found the clue I was seeking.
The tree is _Bursera gummifera_, or Jamaica birch, one of two Florida
representatives of the tropical torch-wood family. It is among the
chief of my South Florida admirations, especially for its color. It and
the Seminoles should be of kindred stock. In the lobby of the hotel,
the other evening, I heard one man rallying another (who had been
fishing and playing golf bareheaded) upon the magnificent complexion he
had put on. “Your face reminds me of the gumbo-limbo,” the joker said.
The comparison was obvious. I had been thinking the same thing.
Our course takes us through a brief tract of pine land largely occupied
by bayberry bushes, about which there are always many myrtle warblers
(which is the same as to say bayberry warblers); and presently we
are in a dense tropical forest. This is the place I have desired my
companion to see; and here, after a few minutes of silent wonderment,
his curiosity begins to play. “What is this? What is this? What is
this?” His interrogations come in crowds; and to every one my answer
is ready--“I don’t know.” I am in the case of the poor fellow whose
sarcastic French instructor promised to teach him in one sentence how
to answer correctly every question he might be asked. Like him I have
only to respond, “_Je ne sais pas._” Trees, shrubs, and vines are all
far out of my range. During the fortnight that I have been here, to be
sure, I have begun to distinguish differences among them, and even to
recognize individuality; but as to what they are, and what their names
are, I know absolutely nothing.
It is a strange sensation, so delightfully, tantalizingly strange
that I can hardly keep away from the place. Day after day, in spite
of the dust and (sometimes) the scorching heat, my steps turn in this
direction. “Where have you been?” my new acquaintances say to me at the
dinner table; and I answer, almost of course, “Down in the hammock.”
Here and there, wherever there is a favorable opening, I venture a
few steps into the jungle; but sometimes I cannot stay. A feeling of
something like superstitious terror comes over me, the wood is so
dense and dark and strange. I am glad to get back into the dusty road.
My supposititious companion will be braver than I, I dare say, but
he will be with me in confessing how confusingly alike all the trees
look, and how utterly unavailable all his previous knowledge proves to
be. On this point I have talked with two botanists, and they have both
assured me that, although they had lived much in upper Florida, they
found themselves here in a world they knew nothing about. With me, who
am not a botanist, or only the sheerest dabbler in the science, it is
literally true that in this sub-tropical forest I cannot guess at so
much as the family relationship of one plant in twenty.