Page:Florida Trails as seen from Jacksonville to Key West and from November to April inclusive.djvu/205

 easily recognized by various characteristics, one being the exceeding brittleness of its small twigs. The light sweep of a hand will bare a branch. Beyond the willow is the deep carnelian red of maple keys and there are young leaves on the soft-wooded swamp ash trees all about. Yet there is this difference. In the North the leaves on an ash tree come forward in stately march, in full company front, one twig no whit behind another. Here they are out of step, some twigs having just broken bud, others being clothed with half-grown leaves. Perpetual sunshine has made the ash unpunctual.

With these things, however, all semblance to a Northern fishing pool ceases. I look past my floating bob into the depths and find there reflected the palms that top the wood with gray trunks and spreading frond-like leaves. The crooked ash shrubs hold air plants at every angle, each now sending up a stiff, rose-purple spike of bloom. On the opposite bank from the green willow grows a clump of the huge Achrostichum aureum, a Florida fern taller than myself, its tropic effect entirely dwarfing the Osmunda regalis and Osmunda cinnamomea, both of which line fishing pools North and seek the same locations down here. With these grow the linear leaves and white odorous blooms of the crinum, which is of the amaryllis family but whose blos-