276 FLORIDA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY-THIRD ANNUAL REPORT.
from several feet down, a condition which is not easily explained. One peat prairie of particular interest will be described in some detail under the head of exceptions.
MARSHY PRAIRIES OF MIDDLE FLORIDA.
(PLATE 27.2)
In the northern part of the Middle Florida hammock belt, especially in Madison County, and to a lesser extent in Leon, are a number of marshy prairies of various sizes and shapes, which bear a striking resemblance to those in Okefinokee Swamp, Georgia,* though they are surrounded by loamy hills, quite different from the flat sandy pine woods around Okefinokee.
In the largest prairie of this kind that I have seen, which covers several hundred acres between Greenville and Madison, there is a dense border of pond cypress, heavily festooned with Spanish moss, and more or less undergrowth of vines and bushes. Next to the
prairie the trees are usually considerably smaller than they are in the midst of the cypress belt, and they are bordered by a dense growth of a small weak shrub, Decodon, and a fern, Anzchistea. Small clumps of similar vegetation, sometimes with only one or two trees in them, are scattered over the surface of the prairie, as the accompanying illustration shows.
The vegetation of these prairies and their bordering fringe of timber is about as follows:
TREES
Taxodium imbricarium (pond cy- Nyssa biflora (black gum) (rather
press) (very abundant) scarce)
SHRUBS
Pieris nitida Dec.don verticillatus
Smnilax Walteri Leucothoe racemosa
Clethra alnifolia Pieris phillyreifolia
HERBS
Tillandsia usneoides (Spanish Pontederia cordata (wampee)
moss) (on trees) Sagittaria lancifolia
Panicum hemitomon (maiden Hydrocctyle s,
cane) Eleocharis interstincta
Castalia odorata (white water-lily) Nymphaea orbiculate (bonnets)
MOSSES
Sphagnum sp.
*See Popular Science Monthly 74: 604, 609. 1909.