3116 FLORIDA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY-THIRD ANNUAL REPORT.
CATALOGUE OF THE PRINCIPAL PEAT-FORMING PLANTS OF FLORIDA.
INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT.
The following catalogue includes only those species of plants which have been seen by the writer at least once in permanent water or on several inches or feet of peat, and therefore in a position to form peat as they decay. (Many of them are found also in other habitats, such as low pine lands and sandy lake shores; but those species mentioned in the foregoing pages as growing only in alluvial swamps, cypress ponds, etc., where there is no peat, are excluded). It is of course far from complete, for the reasons given elsewhere, and also because during the field work quite a number of species were encountered which I did not recognize at first sight, generally because they belonged to difficult groups; and when working on peat I was not usually prepared for collecting botanical specimens for subsequent identification. I have probably identified the genus correctly in nearly every case, and the species in the great majority of cases; and where I was not sure of the specific identity of a plant I have either omitted the specific name entirely or added an interrogation point. With all its shortcomings, however, this is probably the longest list of peat-forming plants ever published for a single state or country.
The species are grouped into genera and families in the Usual manner, and arranged in what is essentially the Engler & Prantl sequence, except that it is reversed, so as to bring the highest plants first and the comparatively little-known and inconspicuous mosses, etc., last.
Under each species is given first its technical name (usually the same as in Small's Flora of the Southeastern United States, 1903), and common name or names, if it has any,* then its observed distribution in Florida, with special reference to peat deposits, and finally its general distribution; the last primarily to show the relation of our peat flora to that of othei parts of the world.
*As I have not as yet made extensive inquiries into the common names used for plants in Florida, I have employed in most, cases names which are current in South Georgia. where I spent a few years before coming to Florida. Such names ought to b~e familiar to most Floridians, for many of them have lived in the neighboring state. (According to the census of r9oo nearly 11% of the inhabitants--and of course a still larger proportion of the adult inhabitants-@~f Florida were born in Georgia.) The most careful investigation, however, would probably not discover bona-fide common names for more than half of the peat-forming plants, for they grow in comparatively inaccessible places, and very few of them (except the trees) have any useful properties, so that the people have had little occasion for giving them names.