PRELIMINARY REPORT ON PEAT.

CYPRESS SWAMPS (OF THE LAKE REGION).
(PLATE 26.2)
The saw-grass marshes just described are bordered in many places by vast dense moss-garlanded cypress swamps. Just what determines whether saw-grass or cypress shall predominate iii a given area of lake peat is not obvious, but the transition from marsh to swamp is usually very abrupt, and marked by a narrow belt of small willows (Salix longipes?). The principal vegetation of these cypress swamps is about as follows.
TREES

Taxodium distichum (cypress) Liquidambar Styraciflua
Acer rubrum (maple) gum)
Magnolia glauca (bay) Nyssa biflora (black gum)
Fraxinus profunda? (ash)
SMALL TREES AND SHRUBS

(sweet

Sambucus Canadensis (elder) Ilex Cassine (swamp holly) Cornus stricta? Cephalanthus occidentalis (buttonbush)

Baccharis halimitclia Rubus sp. (blackberry) Decodon verticillatus

HERBS

Tillandsia usneoides (Spanish Ipomoea sp. (moonflower)
moss) Sagittaria lancifosta
Saururus cernuus Hydrocotyle sp.
Osmunda regalis (a fern) Lycopus sp.
Some of the plants in this list are believed to be rather partial to limestone. Somewhat similar swamps are found along the St. Johns River near Astor, Sanford, and elsewhere, in the lake region but not associated with saw-grass marshes.
The peat in the cypress swamps is of course open to the same objection as that of other swamps, namely, it is full of logs and woody roots. As cypress is one of the most durable woods known, and at the same time one of the largest of our trees, logs of it might not completely decay for hundreds of years. It might even be profitable, when living cypress trees are considerably scarcer than they are now, to dig out the buried cypress logs from these swamps and use them for shingles, posts, etc., as has been done to a considerable extent with buried juniper (Chamaecyparis) logs in Dismal Swamp and southern New Jersey.

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