Florida trails as seen from Jacksonville to Key West and from November to April inclusivePackard, Winthrop
History
Florida trails as seen from Jacksonville to Key West and from November to April inclusive
Packard, Winthrop
Florida -- Description and travel; Natural history -- Florida
on the trees well down into the middle of the State. Here the cold was
not severe enough to do that, but the cocoanut palms over on the Indian
River bore frosted cocoanuts one morning and all tender vegetables such
as beans, eggplants and tomatoes were killed outright. The result gives
the eye some key to those trees and shrubs which are truly tropical and
have wandered north over their really proper boundary line, and those
which hold northern pith and do not mind some cold weather. The oranges
have not minded the temperature of twenty-six degrees which came to
them. The yellow fruit hangs like golden blobs of sunshine all about.
The green leaves are untouched, even those of the little thumbling
kumquats which are the least of oranges.
Lemons as well, though they are far tenderer than the oranges, hold up
their pointed ovals in the midst of green leaves. But the guavas were
badly nipped and their foliage everywhere is brown, a color something
like the soft tans in their sycamore-like trunks. Though the guava leaf
is like that of a chestnut, its trunk makes one think it a young
sycamore. By rights its fruit should be a button or a bur, according to
Northern landmarks. As a matter of fact it begins an orange blossom,
most spicily sweet scented, grows a green apple to a lemon-looking
maturity, and its seeded pulp is peach-like, and spiced with a faint
off-color flavor which seems but to add to its delectability. In
Northern minds there is well rooted a belief that the orange tree holds
ripe fruit, green fruit and new blooms at the same time. This is hardly
borne out by the facts. The orange is a cropper, just as the apple is,
and just now the trees hold no color save that of the ripe fruit, no
odor but that of its spicy, oily rind. The guavas, however, have
everything in motion from bloom to ripe fruit.
Cocoanut palms and royal palms are both to be found in south Florida,
though neither is indigenous, both having been planted by accident or
design. The palmetto is on the other hand native to the State. In the
northern third of the State, however, it never seems to me to feel at
home. Palmettos there are set out along fine walks and in yards and
formal gardens where for the most part they stand primly and seem a bit
self-conscious. Rarely there in my woodland walks, either in swamp or
upland, did I find the cabbage palmetto, which is the only tall growing
kind, wild. As you come south you begin to find along in the Palatka
neighborhood sudden accesses of tropical picturesqueness in the swampy
lands. The jungle grows stateliness and becomes peopled with
possibilities of all romance, a condition less common to the lonely,
flat woods and the impenetrable tangle of jasmine and greenbrier and
gray moss of the swamps in the northern counties of the State.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account