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Show Florida Hothouse 1 - , - - 4 , s - S - t i , - s, J ' ,. s s 1 f - ' ' -" ,3 - X - J' - -'" i " .'ti s O k ' , - i - '-i I r - - - 3 I i ' - L -....-. V: -. ? "j.-:irt . v' ";-v'V3-- "-"4 Picking Florida Strawberries in January. Prepared bv National Geographic. Society. ANEW national playground and game refuge conies into being with the passage by congress of an act setting aside an area of 2,500 square miles of the Florida Everglades as the Everglades Ever-glades National park. This romantic region is a retreat for many nearly extinct birds and a wide variety of animal life found nowhere , else in America. Such creatures as the giant ibis, the Everglades Ever-glades kite, the white heron, the alligator, al-ligator, crocodile and manatee are all found there, yet they are being slowly exterminated. Likewise in this amazing region there now exists a plant life of wild aud superbly beautiful palms, orchids, or-chids, bromeliads and fascinating climbing lianas. But like the bird and animal life, these colorful glades and hummocks have been threatened with destruction from fires, often left by careless hunters and others. Now the protecting hand of the government Is to be raised In time to save them. Set apart, preserved, and made accessible as a national park, this area will be visited in time by millionsmillions mil-lionsmillions eager for subtropical subtrop-ical adventure, but adventure under un-der American skies, amid American customs, and the comforts and excellent ex-cellent direction extended to all by the governmental supervision of the national park service of the Department Depart-ment of Interior. The leading citizens citi-zens of Florida and many residents of other states urged this important impor-tant and needed project, which of course is for all the nation. Florida's map resembles no other state's. In all America there Is no terrain so unusual, yet often so uniformly uni-formly monotonous, as one sees en route from Pensacola to Key West. From Jacksonville a small boat may cruise all the way down to the last big key, and even far out to the reefs on the way to Havana, broadly broad-ly speaking, in sheltered waters. Exotic Plants Flourish. Laved by the sun-warmed, mysterious myste-rious waters that swirl ceaselessly about it, and sweetened by the soft, pure trade winds that breathe life upon It, Florida is like a giant hothouse. hot-house. It forms to the imaginative eye a big experimental farm for all America. From 51 foreign lands plants and trees strange to us have been brought here to take up a new home and many are already adapted adapt-ed to our use. From Surinam to Singapore Uncle Sam's explorers have searched the nooks and crannies of the tropical world. As men in Bible times went forth in quest of camphor, incense , and myrrh, so these dauntless botanists bot-anists have hunted, found and brought to Florida various exotic plants and trees whose fruits we may use as food or medicine. Here is the jackfruit of Ceylon ; and the macadamia, a fine table nut from Australia ; the chayote vine from the mountains of Guatemala, Guate-mala, which bears the favoroite vegetable veg-etable of the Indians of that land ; here In Livingstone's garcinia, a delicate maroon-colored fruit discovered dis-covered in East Africa by the great missionary ; here is the capote, or chewing-gum tree, from Yucatan, and the lychee, or favorite fruit of South China ; here, also, are, of course, mangoes, papayas and avocados, avo-cados, and the chaya of Central America whose young shoots are as delicate as spinach. In pioneering vegetable gardens one sees the popular taro and yau-tias, yau-tias, reminiscent of hillside taro patches in Hawaii; the manihot, chief food to millions of tropical peoples, who eat it as we do potatoes; pota-toes; great bushes of "pigeon peas" from the West Indies the pea which, when ripe, forms an Ingredient Ingredi-ent in that famous Bahama Islands dish, "hoppin' John." Besides these, there is the famed m'chopo or Zulu fig (Ficus utilis), , from whose bark Congo women make their dresses; the candlenut-tree, candlenut-tree, from Polynesia and the lebbek tree from the avenue planted by the khedive in honor of the Empress Eugenie when she visited Egypt. Here, also, is the Limono pon-deroso, pon-deroso, or giant lemon. One sees It thriving near Miami, but not as yet on a commercial basis. It Is literally lit-erally too big. A woman who had some growing in her garden told a visitor she "made 14 glasses of lemonade lem-onade and three pies out of one lemon," and her statement, after seeing the size of the fruit, is not to be doubted. For the Convenience of Bugs. Another strange plant is the Monstera dellciosa. It grows a queer, cucumber-shaped fruit. An interesting charcteristic of this plant is the big holes In its leaves, like a lace pattern. One wit suggested sug-gested that nature provided these holes so that bugs may pass from one side of the leaf to the other at their convenience. The big fruit has a spicy flavor suggestive of apples ap-ples and bananas. In his haste to clear land for the sites where new homes and towns now stand in south Florida, man of necessity destroyed much of the original growth of cabbage palms and the dense hummock jungles, jun-gles, with their many trees, stran-gler stran-gler figs, and undergrowth of ferns. But for the botanist bringing in beautiful flowers, trees and shrubs from all over the tropical world, and the richness of the muck soil, these newly settled regions of Florida would be unsightly in their bare ugliness. Instead, now painted against a background of green grasses many of which are also imported, and now against backgrounds of stucco houses and garden walls, one beholds be-holds the riotous brilliance of many-hued bougainvillea, named for a great French admiral ; the Sa-haran Sa-haran oleander, the gorgeous flowering flower-ing cassias from Siam, the flame tree of the Caribbean, the red-flowered hibiscus, the polnsettia, and a host of others. Here, too, Is the sacred bo tree from India, the remarkable re-markable psychotria from the Comoro Co-moro islands, which carries bacterial bac-terial nodules in its leaves instead of its roots. From such exotic Immigrants of the vegetable world many small plant oases are forming in Florida. About them there also gather many kinds of tropical Insect pests, and tiny animals that feed on the plants. So here, to care for these imported plants and trees as well as the vegetable gardens and citrus orchards of Florida, an Intensive science of tropical entomology is being fostered. This work against citrus canker and other pests Is of measureless value to the whole nation. na-tion. Follow the equator around the world, and in many cities near It one may see botanical gardens, maintained as show places only. But there is no other region even approaching south Florida in size where tropical and subtropical plant life is cultivated on so vast a scale, with strict quarantine and funds for fighting parasites, experimenting experiment-ing with new varieties, and raising their culture to a commercial scale. Besides the culture of new plants, there are costly private ventures in animal husbandry, reforestation, intensive in-tensive farming, and group efforts at more efficient picking, packing and marketing methods. From that admirable institution, the Florida department of agriculture, at Tallahassee, Talla-hassee, there issues a steady stream of bulletins and periodicals on what and when to plant, how to raise it and sell it at a profit and, just think, alleged humorists used to call native Floridi.ms "crackers," Tung Oil Industry Growing. For decades we have used "wood oil," brought from China and other foreign countries for use in our paint and varnish ludustry. in China, besides It use In soap-making and for waterproofing, settlings of the burned oil make the "India ink" of commerce, it Is surprising to know that we Import the oil from the tung nut to the tune of $10 000 -000 to $15,000,000 annually? ' ' Now, as one approaches Gainesville and in the neighborhood of Green Cove Springs, Florida, long rows of tung or wood-oil trees may be seen flourishing here as in a similar latitude lati-tude in China. They grow in the most unlikely looking ground and their oily proclivity repels Insect Some years ago American consuls in China, co-operating with our Department De-partment of Agriculture, Introduced the seeds of this tree. True, this In-dustry In-dustry is only in Its infancy. Yot it affords another example of Florida Flor-ida s value to the nation ns an experimental ex-perimental plnnt laboratory that wi l one day not far distant st otiMn the development of home in Among exotic fruits that have found a foothold here Is the nv0 cado . often called "alligator pear " n old days South Sea sailors caHed It "midshipmen's butter" Years ago this fruit" was first brough to Fl01,da f,om Since then other selected varie d have been Imported. Tons of l . healthy valuable tab.e d 1 caCy V now shipped to northern and n |