Florida trails as seen from Jacksonville to Key West and from November to April inclusive

by Winthrop Packard

It is rather odd, this matter of the palmettos being on their way. It is not so with the pines. They stand. But the palmettos stroll on. I do not know what gives them this semblance of groups in motion, but they surely have it. I fancy it is their erect trunks which are never quite erect. They seem to lean forward just poised for a step. Under foot is the scrub palmetto, brown grasses that fatten the range cattle, and the gallberry bushes now black with fruit. At first glance this seems all and you have to live with the savannas for a little before they give up more. At rare intervals you may find a tiny streamlet that in flood-time has dug its course down through the sand to a hard bottom where its clear water slips gently along. This will be bordered by myrtles a dozen feet tall, making a wall of foliage that you may see a mile ahead of you barring your way beneath the pines. But this is only an incident and does not affect the general tenor of the landscape.

But, though streams are rare, there is water in abundance in the saucer-like pools which make the savanna so lovable. Just when your way is becoming weary and the place the abode of monotony and loneliness, one of them bars your path and fills you with sudden admiration of its wild beauty. You may count them, little and big, by the score sometimes within a mile, you may find a mile without one, or you may find a single pool which takes up the mile. However long your walk in the level plain, it can never be lonely because of the comradeship of these. Here is one that is rimmed with prim, green rushes, standing close-set and bristly pointed as if guarding the clear, unvexed surface. Here is another so shallow that the wild grasses grow up through the water all about, spiring in tender points that are olive brown with the touch of autumn. Yesterday in such pools olive brown was the only color above the water which reflected the blue of the sky. To-day, under the touch of this amorous spring that swooped down upon them, these 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 beautiful yellow blooms of the utricularia. Along one tiny path or another which I follow along level miles, made by the range cattle and kept open as highways for all the wild creatures of the place, tiny motes of richest sunshine dance aside for my passing feet. Scarce larger than a pinhead are these blooms of Utricularia subulata, most elflike blooms, that seem to have no connection with earth. If you try to pluck them they shake all over with mirth which they cannot contain at your clumsiness. Leaves they have none, and the stem which bears them up is of such a neutral tint and of such gossamer fineness that it is almost impossible to see it. And that is all there is to it; a stem like a spider’s thread, springing from moist sand or mud in the path, bearing on its invisible support this tiny scale of sunshine, making the most elusive and fairylike plant that one might find on a continent. In Northern swamps and on the borders of still lakes the utricularias have given me pleasure, but never have they supplied such an amazement of delight as they spread before my feet in these wild savannas of southern Florida.

Along with the path-haunting utricularias is another tiny plant whose Northern prototype is familiar. This is the sundew. I take the one that carpets portions of these moist, wild ways with rich red to be the Drosera brevifolia from its shorter, wedge-shaped leaves. The nap of fine glands that clothes these holds diamond glints of infinitesimal dewdrops that flash finely in the sun and catch my attention and hold it, even as they do the tiny insects for whom the snare is spread. In favored locations these round mats of the sundew half carpet the gray-black soil along the path edges with a diamond-frosted, cerise velvet and should pleasantly pad the footfall of all small, wild creatures that pass that way.

The sundew grows only on the moist places. In the dryer spots, now that spring has come wooing with warmth and with showers, troops of sunbonneted beauties show up, these seeming to have sprung magically forth in a night. It may be that there were golden yellow sunbonnets nodding coquettishly in the wind all along the savannas ten days ago. I can only say that I tramped them back and forth and did not see any. It may be that the smaller, more modest blue sunbonnets were there too. I can only say that I did not see them. There is a freemasonry of the wild that keeps secrets from you till you are found worthy. Hence to know a wood or a plain you must visit it often. Often in coming back along a path which I have scanned in going I find flowers, nodding by the very path brim, that I did not see in going out. It is not to be believed that these opened in the interval; rather we must

“All must know when spring comes, whether in the Everglades or the New England pastures”

think that like children they lose their fear of strangers after a little.

So with these butterwort girls that wear the yellow and blue sunbonnets. I fancy there were a few of them along the path on my first day, but they did not care to be seen. Now they have taken heart at the boldness with which spring scatters love tokens all about and are trooping forth on the level sands. Pinguicula pumila I actually found first, though she is the more modest. Her blue bonnet is smaller and she herself is shorter of stature, nestling down among the wild grasses in a snugly confiding way which makes them love her. They cling close and it is difficult to pluck Pinguicula pumila without getting a half handful of defending grass stems with her.