Page:Florida Trails as seen from Jacksonville to Key West and from November to April inclusive.djvu/129

 trellises lost their yellow tint and were as white as the light that shone on them.

Tiny ferns, the southern polypodys, which you shall hardly know from those of the north by their appearance, seem to have little of the rock-climbing proclivities of their northern prototypes. These love a tree. Often you will find the level limbs of live-oaks made into ribbon borders with them and they nestle in the crevices between the criss-crossed stubs of palmetto leaves along the trunks whence the leaves themselves have fallen. Here in St. Augustine they seem to love the roofs of old houses, garlanding them with a most delicate beauty. If the northern polypody grew here I should expect to find the crevices between the stones of the old fort green with it and the bluff old sergeant custodian would have trouble in keeping it from making a fairy greensward of all slopes and levels on the parapets.

The southern polypody barely touches the fort. It seems to demand wood for its rooting surface and it makes the old-time roofs lovely with its tiny pinnate fronds. I dare say every moonlit night these soft aërial gardens entangle the light and are silvered by it, but it seemed as if on this night of nights the radiance was softer and glowed with a clearer fire. Over in the new part of the town where wealth has built huge domes and pinnacled minarets and fretted the walls and