Page:Florida Trails as seen from Jacksonville to Key West and from November to April inclusive.djvu/173

 somber spires stand guard over prickings of tender green that sprang up in a night to meet the call of the passing goddess.

Here is another pool, deeper, this one, whose borders are halberded with the leaves of the pickerel weed, already flying blue banners here and there, starred with the white of the water plantain. In spots in these clear, deeper pools the tape grass stripes the surface and the crow blackbirds ride dry-footed on the round, floating leaves of the yellow pond lily. Many of the smaller pools are fairer yet, their clear, black water all rich with gold ornaments, curiously and beautifully carved and shining yellow in the sunlight which seems tangled in embossings and fret work. Not till I wade knee deep into the middle may I find out whence comes this curious and delightful ornamentation. After all, it is but the tangled blooms of Utricularia vulgaris, riding free and floating on the bladder-bearing whorl of leaves till gentle winds push them close and the spurred, bilabiate flowers tangle golden heads in nugget-like masses. Nowhere in the world, I fancy, can you find utricularias so large flowered and massed in such profusion as in the little, quiet pools that star the savannas from the Indian River westward to the northernmost beginnings of the Everglades.

The pools do not have a monopoly of the beau