When I called upon my friend the entomologist, a few evenings ago,
she informed me that she had passed a very exciting day. While out on
her usual insect-collecting expedition, along the bay shore, she had
come suddenly upon an unknown plant growing among the mangrove bushes.
A glance at the blossom showed that it must belong to the mallow
family, and on getting back to the hotel and consulting the manual, she
determined it at once as _Pavonia racemosa_,--“Miami and Key Biscayne.”
Every collector knows the pleasure of discovering a plant or other
specimen, the known habitat of which is entitled to this kind of exact
specification.
“Very good,” said I, when she had finished the story, “I shall go down
to-morrow and look at _Pavonia racemosa_ for myself.”
The next afternoon, therefore, saw me at the place; but it appeared
that I had not sufficiently attended to my friend’s instructions.
At all events, I could find nothing that looked like a _Malva_. In
a country so richly and strangely furnished as this, however, a
visitor cannot turn his eyes in any direction without putting them
upon something he never saw before; and so it happened that while I
hunted vainly for one thing I found another and better; or if it was
not better in itself, it was more unexpected and interesting. This
was a shrub, or small tree, bearing large, glossy, coriaceous leaves,
clustered near the ends of the branches, from which depended long,
smooth, pear-shaped or gourd-shaped buds. More careful search revealed
a few faded flowers and a large pendent green fruit. And then, ten
minutes afterward, as I was starting away, my eyes fell upon a clump of
the rare _Pavonia_.
With that, of course, there was no room for difficulty. I had only to
compare the specimen with the printed description, and check the name.
But as for the strange shrub, of which I had bud, blossom, fruit, and
leaf (what more could a man desire?), with that I was fairly beaten.
Even a methodical, schoolboyish use of the “key” was without result.
The signs brought me, or seemed to bring me, to the Bignonia family,
and there came to nothing.
Happily a professor of botany in one of our great universities had
arrived in town within the last twenty-four hours, and after supper I
invited him to my room to help me with the puzzle. He set about the
work just as I had done, only after a more workmanlike fashion, and
him also the key led to the _Bignoniaceæ_, but no farther. As the
common saying is, the trail had “run up a tree.” In short, with all the
facts before us,--leaves, buds, blossom, fruit,--we were stumped. “It
is some representative of the Bignonia family not included in Chapman’s
Flora,” was the professor’s final verdict.
The next forenoon we had agreed to spend together in the big hammock,
through which I had been sauntering by myself for the past five weeks.
We should pass the Agricultural Experiment Station on the way, and I
determined to carry the troublesome specimen along and submit it to
the professor in charge. So said, so done; but as we stopped at the
post office, there stood the man himself at the door. “What is this?”
I asked, scarcely waiting to bid him good-morning. “_Crescentia_,”
he answered promptly, “a plant of the Bignonia family.” So the other
professor had been exactly right.
And now for the more dramatic part of the story. The day before--at
noon of the day on which I found the plant in question--I received a
letter from a Boston friend, himself a university professor of botany,
to whom I had written, begging him to quit his desk, like a reasonable
man, and join me in this botanical paradise. He replied that he could
not come, and furthermore, that he wasn’t so very sorry. New England
winter is to him a constant refreshment and exhilaration, it appears.
Happy New Englander! “To-day is simply perfect,” he wrote, “and you
can’t beat it in Miami.” As to that point I reserve my opinion. “How
changed the place must be from what it was when I was there in the
’80’s,” he continued. “No railroad then within hundreds of miles, and
none of your modern improvements. It is a great place for plants. I
shan’t forget how delighted I was to find _Crescentia cucurbitina_ in
flower. I had searched the whole range of Keys for it in vain.”
This very plant, of the existence of which I had never before heard,
I had found, without knowing it, within two hours after receiving my
friend’s letter.[6]
Winter botanizing by newcomers, in a country so foreign as this,
where much the greater part of the shrubs and trees are West Indian,
with no better help than Chapman’s Flora, is carried on under almost
discouraging difficulties. “If we only had the blossoms!” the professor
is continually exclaiming. And his pupil responds, “Yes, if we only
had!” As it is, we content ourselves with finding out a few things
daily, guessing at characters and relationships (no very bad practice,
by the way), running down all sorts of clues, real or imaginary, like
detectives on the hunt for a murderer, and even asking questions
freely of chance passers-by, especially of the numerous class known
by the white people hereabout as “Bahama niggers.” They, rather than
their pale-faced superiors, seem to be observant of natural things.
It is likely, too, that they or their forbears may have brought some
traditionary knowledge of such matters from the islands where the
plants are more at home. At all events, it is pleasant to notice how
ready even the black children are, not only to answer questions, but to
ask them as well, about any flowers that one happens to be carrying.
The other day I came suddenly upon a bush, the like of which I had
seen and wondered over a hundred times since my arrival in Miami,
remarking especially the highly peculiar, almost perpendicular carriage
of its innumerable thick, brightly varnished leaves, a device, as the
professor had suggested, for protecting them against the vertical
rays of the sun. I had never seen either fruit or blossom, but here,
on this particular plant, my eye fell upon a few scattered purplish
drupes. Now, then, here was something to go upon. Now, possibly, with a
sprinkling more of good luck, I might find the name of the bush. I was
a mile or two from town, on the road to Alapattah Prairie, where there
are many truck farms. A white man came along, one of the “truckers,”
driving homeward from the city.
“Do you know what this is?” I inquired, showing him the specimen.
“No, sir,” he answered.
Soon I met another man, and proposed to him the same question, with the
same result. A third attempt was no more successful. Then I overtook
two colored men talking beside a quarry.
“Excuse me,” I said, “but can you tell me the name of this plant?”
“Yes, sir, it is cocoa plum,” answered one of them; and the other said,
“Yes, cocoa plum.”
And so it was; for on referring to the manual I found the bush fully
described under that name.
Another experiment in this kind of putting myself to school, it is fair
to add, was less in the Bahama colored man’s favor. A tourist whom I
happened upon resting beside the hammock road held in his hand two or
three twigs, from each of which depended a large, stony, pear-shaped
fruit, and seeing me curious about the novelty, he kindly offered me
one. This, also, I forthwith carried into the city, stopping passengers
by the way--like a natural-historical Socrates--to ask them about it.
No one, white or black, could tell me anything till in a fruit shop
I questioned a white boy. “It’s a seven-year apple,” he said. “Some
foolish local name,” I thought. At all events it could do me no good,
since it was not to be found in Chapman’s index. But that evening, on
my showing the specimen to the entomologist, and telling her what the
boy had said, she replied, “Certainly, that is right. The plant is
_Genipa_, or seven-year apple.” And under the word “Genipa” I found it
so spoken of in the Standard Dictionary. There the fruit is said to
be edible, which seems to disprove the conjecture of another lady to
whom I had shown it, that it derives its name from the fact that it
would take an eater seven years to digest it. Apples, like men, are not
fairly to be judged in the green state.
I have said that this guessing at characters and relationships is not
a bad discipline. And no more is it the worst of fun. Of this I had
only two days ago a strikingly happy proof. Everywhere in the hammock
there grows a tall tree, noticeable for the peculiar color of its bark
and its channeled and often fantastically contorted trunk. The leafy
branches are always far overhead (a necessity in so crowded a place),
and I had seen the purplish, globular drupes only as they had dropped
one by one to the ground. At every opportunity I had made inquiries
about the tree, but had received no light, nor, after much searching,
had either the professor or myself been able to hit upon so much as a
plausible conjecture as to its identity. Well, two days ago, as I say,
we were walking together on the outskirts of the city, when we came to
a tree of this kind growing in the open, the fruit-bearing branches of
which hung within reach. We pulled one of them down, and I exclaimed at
once, “Why, this should be related to the sea-grape!”--a most curious
West Indian tree (_Coccoloba uvifera_, a member of the buckwheat
family!) which grows freely along the shore of Biscayne Bay. “See the
fruit,” said I, “for all the world like a bunch of grapes.” With that
we began a detailed examination, and, to make a long story short, the
tree proved to be another species of _Coccoloba_--_C. Floridana_.
That was pretty good guessing, based as it was on nothing better than
an “external character,” as the professor rather slightingly called it.
For five weeks my curiosity had been exercised over the puzzle, and in
five seconds I had found the needed clue. Who will say that this was
not better and more interesting, and withal more instructive, than to
have been told the tree’s name on the first day I saw it?