Live and let live: the most ancient, armored, and fearsome beside (but not
too close to) the most preciously bred.
tEnough of animals for a while. Both Bartrams were much more en-
thralled by the botanical marvels of the Southeast. In the Georgia uplands
they discovered and named a ‘‘new’’ tree,Franklinia altamaha, which John
then cultivated in his Philadelphia nursery. William found another speci-
men (or the very same one) during his – travels, but the tree exists
now only as a cultivar, all apparently descending from John’s plantings.
Along the St. Johns, meanwhile, William filled his journal pages with sight-
ings of bird species within their lush botanical habitats, trees soaring,
squat, florid, or dark, and hardly a nonwoody plant escaped his notice
either. Some of the last he represented as illustrations to accompany the
Travels. Later settlers and travelers were no less enchanted. These included,
of course, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, who made identification of native and
introduced trees and other plants, and mastery of their names, her mission.
She also gardened, relishing especially the glory of rose culture in north-
ern Florida. Marjorie replanted her rose garden every other year, she said,
because they ‘‘literally bloomed themselves to death.’’
William Bartram was fascinated also by aquatic plants. Early in his voy-
age south on the river, on ‘‘a fine cool morning, and fair wind,’’ he marveled
at ‘‘vast quantities of thePistia stratiotes, a very singular aquatic plant. It
associates in large communities, or floating islands, some of them a quar-
ter mile in extent, which are impelled to and fro, as the wind and current
may direct.’’ William thought the mature plant resembled lettuce, although
the leaves were greener, and he knew thatPistiasent down fibrous roots
toward muddy river and lake bottoms. All the descriptive detail paled with
the effects of the plant islands on his imagination, though. They were
a very entertaining prospect; for although we behold an assemblage of
the primary production of nature only, yet the imagination seems to re-
main in suspense and doubt; as in order to enliven the delusion, and
form a most picturesque appearance, we see not only flowery plants,
clumps of shrubs, old weather-beaten trees, hoary and barbed, with the
long moss waving from their snags, but we also see them completely in-
habited, and alive, with crocodiles, serpents, frogs, otters, crows, herons,
curlews, jackdaws, etc. There seems, in short, nothing wanted but the
appearance of a wigwam and a canoe to complete the scene.