Page:Florida Trails as seen from Jacksonville to Key West and from November to April inclusive.djvu/166

 *apple-like plants that are indeed of the pineapple family though they bear no pineapples. Instead they shoot upward a scarlet, gladiolus-like spike from which appear long tubes of blue petals, holding out yellow anthers. The whole looks as if some vivid, tropic bird had lighted on this pineapple-top and was poising there a moment before farther flight. Underneath springs the rank growth of Florida's largest fern, the Achrosticum aureum. Its fronds rise as high as my head and spread like a trunkless palm in a circle sometimes ten feet in diameter.

Out of all this confusion of Northern and Southern spring signs, rises always one clear note, that of the southeast trade wind in the palm trees. Rarely is it absent from the ear. It brings fresh, sea-born smells of perpetual spring to the nostrils, sometimes weary of the too rich perfume of spicy pines and odorous gardens, and its rustle sings you to sleep all night long with the song of the Southern sea. So as the palmetto grows dearest to the eye of all these Southern trees, it becomes also dearest to the ear. It is the harp on which this loneliest, yet most alluring of all Southern tunes is soothingly played.