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Logging of Roystonea regia in South Florida


Ubuntwo

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Currently the native range of royal palms in South Florida is limited to some strand swamps (in Collier-Seminole, Fakahatchee, and Big Cypress), as well as tropical hardwood hammocks in the Everglades. The populations in strand swamps are very large and healthy; however, the hardwood hammock populations are quite small in the modern day, limited to just a few hammocks. I've read some late 1800's/early 1900's accounts which described royal palms as being much more plentiful in the Everglades and in the Miami area than they seem to be today. I suspect that most of these larger populations were logged or transplanted, anybody have more information on this?

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If you enjoy looking at early pics of S Florida as Much as I do you might be able to see for yourself.

please share any cool ones if you do find any

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The Palm Mahal

Hollywood Fla

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 I never heard of any logging of Roystonea regia in Florida. I have read of logging of Bald Cypress Trees in the Fakahatchee back in the early days. Those loggers dug up some of Royal Palms and loaded them on barges to take to Fort Myers. You see the logging roads still today in the Fakahatchee. Actually Royals have found those roads to be a perfect place to grow with the added elevation and high water table. The native population of Royal Palms in Florida are considered to be rare and not considered to widespread like Sabal palmetto. There is not any early reporting or evidence to support R. regia was found outside the Fakahatchee/Big Cypress area and some areas in the Everglades in Western Dade County. With exception Only report outside of that was from William Bartram in Volusia County. Today you will find a lot of naturalized populations unknown sources that should not be considered native. 

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I can't think of any practical reason to log royal palms. Palm trunks are fibrous, not woody, and break down quickly and easily in the FL climate. So they have little use as building material.

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Meg

Palms of Victory I shall wear

Cape Coral (It's Just Paradise)
Florida
Zone 10A on the Isabelle Canal
Elevation: 15 feet

I'd like to be under the sea in an octopus' garden in the shade.

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They’ve logged Sabal palmetto almost to extinction in North Carolina to build Civil War forts, fishing warfs and this palm was also prized for its edible bud. 

Did this practice occur in Florida with Roystonea?

 

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Zone 8a/8b Greenville, NC 

Zone 9a/9b Bluffton, SC

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1 hour ago, NC_Palms said:

They’ve logged Sabal palmetto almost to extinction in North Carolina to build Civil War forts, fishing warfs and this palm was also prized for its edible bud. 

Did this practice occur in Florida with Roystonea?

 

Not that I'm aware of. I'm not sure they were ever numerous enough to be harvested, except perhaps for their fronds. Cutting down a whole royal for a few fronds makes no economical or practical sense. In SC during the Revolutionary War, patriots built walled forts out of Sabal trunks - British cannonballs bounced right off them. Still, structures made of palm trunks survive only a fraction of the time of wooden structures.

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Meg

Palms of Victory I shall wear

Cape Coral (It's Just Paradise)
Florida
Zone 10A on the Isabelle Canal
Elevation: 15 feet

I'd like to be under the sea in an octopus' garden in the shade.

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Here's an interesting publication I found. It's pretty old, but it does describe the Royal Palm as being situated around Biscayne bay and along several rivers in the Everglades. These populations are clearly extirpated, the question being why. Even more bizaare is this article. It reports Roystonea regia as being very abundant in Mahogany Hammock in the Everglades. Because this has been a national park since the article was written, logging cannot really the decline of royals there (Though it does mention that some Royal Palm containing hammocks in Miami were being destroyed for development). Maybe some sort of pest? Other environmental conditions? Not so sure on this one.

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When I visited Cuba around 20 years ago I went on a hike into the mountains in central part of the Islam. I witnessed the locals using royal palm trunks as siding for their home. It was a pretty cool place. They lived in a very remote are in a tiny valley. Pretty special place. They would cut down the palms and mill the trunks. They were doing it all by hand without any power tools

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Royals were very uncommon in Dade county. The geography doesn't suit them, most of Dade is solid rock, royals are mudders. There were a few small stands in what is now ENP, a few at the mouth of the Little River, and a single tree at roughly what is now I-95 and 79th Street. The stand of royals behind the Florida City Burger King was allegedly native Royals also. That's about it. They, like the orchids in the Fakahatchee, are the northern limit of their range in South Florida. Bartram is often quoted as seeing them up in North Florida, that confusion seems to revolve around the misuse of the word crownshaft, very doubtful they were actually Royal Palms. All of the ornamental Royals in the Hollywood Lakes section and on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach were grown from Cuban seed brought in by George Young in the 1920s

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1 hour ago, kurt decker said:

Bartram is often quoted as seeing them up in North Florida, that confusion seems to revolve around the misuse of the word crownshaft, very doubtful they were actually Royal Palms.

I'm going to have to disagree with you here. The palm that Bartram described is most certainly Roystonea regia. The argument that I've most often seen is that he saw royals, but he was actually much further south than Lake Dexter. Supposedly Bartram's field notes disappeared while on loan after his death, so his "Travels" is the only source for his information, and he doesn't explicitly state where he was when he saw Palma elata. Placement of his sighting near Lake Dexter was sort of an informed guess by Francis Harper, who spent years tracing Bartram's travels and edited a "Naturalist's Edition" of the Travels with commentary and index. It is possible that Harper got the location wrong, and that Bartram was actually somewhere south of Lake Okeechobee. This used to be supported by the fact that Bartram described the Okeechobee gourd as growing in the same area as the palms, and these were previously only found south of the lake, but the gourd was rediscovered near Lake Dexter by Marc Minno. This doesn't mean that Harper didn't place Bartram too far north, just that placing the palms growing in the same location as the gourd isn't the best supporting evidence behind placing Bartram further south. 

 

I'll defer to Scott Zona for further supporting the idea that Bartram was, indeed, describing Roystonea regia, in "Proposal to Conserve Oreodoxa regia Kunth, the Basionym of Roystonea regia (Kunth) OF Cook, against Palma elata W. Bartram (Arecaceae)" (Zona 1994):

"Bartram’s Travels (1791) provided some of the earliest post-Linnean descriptions of the flora of the southeastern United States including a large, solitary palm with an ashen white trunk topped by a green leaf sheath and pinnate leaves from a locality in central Florida… There is no doubt that his description applies to the palm now known as Roystonea elata."

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Keith 

Palmetto, Florida (10a) and Tampa, Florida (9b/10a)

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6 hours ago, Zeeth said:

I'm going to have to disagree with you here. The palm that Bartram described is most certainly Roystonea regia. The argument that I've most often seen is that he saw royals, but he was actually much further south than Lake Dexter. Supposedly Bartram's field notes disappeared while on loan after his death, so his "Travels" is the only source for his information, and he doesn't explicitly state where he was when he saw Palma elata. Placement of his sighting near Lake Dexter was sort of an informed guess by Francis Harper, who spent years tracing Bartram's travels and edited a "Naturalist's Edition" of the Travels with commentary and index. It is possible that Harper got the location wrong, and that Bartram was actually somewhere south of Lake Okeechobee. This used to be supported by the fact that Bartram described the Okeechobee gourd as growing in the same area as the palms, and these were previously only found south of the lake, but the gourd was rediscovered near Lake Dexter by Marc Minno. This doesn't mean that Harper didn't place Bartram too far north, just that placing the palms growing in the same location as the gourd isn't the best supporting evidence behind placing Bartram further south. 

 

I'll defer to Scott Zona for further supporting the idea that Bartram was, indeed, describing Roystonea regia, in "Proposal to Conserve Oreodoxa regia Kunth, the Basionym of Roystonea regia (Kunth) OF Cook, against Palma elata W. Bartram (Arecaceae)" (Zona 1994):

"Bartram’s Travels (1791) provided some of the earliest post-Linnean descriptions of the flora of the southeastern United States including a large, solitary palm with an ashen white trunk topped by a green leaf sheath and pinnate leaves from a locality in central Florida… There is no doubt that his description applies to the palm now known as Roystonea elata."

Agree 100% See Snyder’s defense of Bartram’s painted vulture too

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Bartram's painted vultures were probably undoubtably caracara. His description of them hopping around fields after fire looking for scorched reptiles is behavior I've actually seen caracara do. Did Bartram see Royals? Sure. Did he see them upstate? Probably not. This was 225 years ago, it's amazing how much he got right, considering how little information was available at the time on both biology and geography.

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6 minutes ago, kurt decker said:

Bartram's painted vultures were probably undoubtably caracara. His description of them hopping around fields after fire looking for scorched reptiles is behavior I've actually seen caracara do. Did Bartram see Royals? Sure. Did he see them upstate? Probably not. This was 225 years ago, it's amazing how much he got right, considering how little information was available at the time on both biology and geography.

Snyder debunks the caracara theory. It is most likely that Florida held a relictual population of Pleistocene-surviving king vultures with unique tail plumage. Here’s the info, enjoy! http://dvoc.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Cassinia_74-75_Bartrams-Painted-Vulture.pdf

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All this to say that it is likely Bartram saw things in FL which were lost shortly thereafter due to extreme cold events

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Great points made by Zeeth and I will need to locate “Synder’s Defense” referred to by Yunder.

After reading Bartram and viewing his hand drawn Royal, the liklihood of coincidental conjuring is remote. Can anyone truly believe that Bartram just got lucky with his design of a new palm in the Florida jungle?

Very interesting point made by Zeeth that Bartram was actually further south than he believed. If editor Harper made an informed guess about Lake Dexter, one could surmise that Bartram was further south. The only thing that makes this unlikely in my opinion is the year. In 1791, Florida south of the areas described by Bartram were virtually if not completely unknown but for the early Indians. Lake Okkeechobee was viewed for the first time by US soldiers during the Indian Wars in the 1830’s.

The Spanish first landed in St. Augustine and the State was viewed as extending from Pensacola to Jacksonville at the time of Statehood in 1824 (Tallahassee became the state capital because it was midway in between). The interior of the state south of the areas clearly known and traveled by Bartram (referencing Smyrna as the southern point ie New Smyrna) all point to the St. Johns River and its lake system traveled and explored by Bartram. In 1791, well before the iniation of any drainage attempts, the interior of Florida was an extended , impenetrable swamp that could only be navigated by the Indians.

The headwaters of the St. Johns commence in eastern Oscola County nearest Melbourne but would not have been navigable by Bartram. Simply stated, no way no how Bartram was further south than New Smyrna in Florida in his travels in my opinion.

Parenthetically, but for plagiarism or inauthenticity on the part of Bartram, it is my opinion that the Royal drawn by Bartram was located in the place his editor Harper devined. That stated, this does not eliminate the possibility that the Royal as well as the gourds were not planted by the Indians, who were familiar with these rarities in their journeys through the impenetrable.

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I'm not basing my opinions on what Bartram is saying so much as I'm thinking about the way royal palms grow. Lake Dexter is 165 feet above sea level and is an area composed almost exclusively of silica sand. Royals prefer rich organic soil with abundant moisture. Even in the glades, for royals to get past the seedling stage you have to have a lot of perfect years in a row, water level, temperatures, etc., and then they have to survive the helminthosporium fungus that kills most of them. The read about the painted vultures is interesting, but the description and the behavior Bartram describes doesn't really match up with any known bird. We may never know the answers to these things.

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I believe we got the lakes mixed up. Lake George is the lake where Bartram found Roystoneas growing. Lake Dexter is a sand hill lake in Winter Haven. Lake George is part of the Saint Johns River system where the elevation is low and swampy. The lake’s surface area is large enough to create a microclimate. If there was not any killing freezing back than most likely Bartram observations are correct. I am willing to bet they got there by Native Americans. That also explains the observation of the Okeechobee Gourd. Back before the Seminoles there were other Native American tribes in Florida. One of them were called the Mayaca which were on the Saint John’s water shed. Some Mayacas moved to the north eastern shores of Lake Okeechobee where you can find the Okeechobee Gourd today. Port Mayaca was named after them. Now it is reported the Mayaca were hunter-fishing-gatherers and have little agriculture practices. I imagine the Okeechobee Gourd was still useful to them. I think it is possible there were some trading between Myacas and other now extinct Native American tribes in South Florida. Royal Palm seeds could of been traded.  Does anybody know Bartram’s decriptions of the Royals on Lake George? Were they really tall and old or were they young fruiting size ones? The Spanish discovered the Mayaca in the 1500s. 

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1 hour ago, DavidLee said:

I believe we got the lakes mixed up. Lake George is the lake where Bartram found Roystoneas growing. Lake Dexter is a sand hill lake in Winter Haven. Lake George is part of the Saint Johns River system where the elevation is low and swampy. The lake’s surface area is large enough to create a microclimate. If there was not any killing freezing back than most likely Bartram observations are correct. I am willing to bet they got there by Native Americans. That also explains the observation of the Okeechobee Gourd. Back before the Seminoles there were other Native American tribes in Florida. One of them were called the Mayaca which were on the Saint John’s water shed. Some Mayacas moved to the north eastern shores of Lake Okeechobee where you can find the Okeechobee Gourd today. Port Mayaca was named after them. Now it is reported the Mayaca were hunter-fishing-gatherers and have little agriculture practices. I imagine the Okeechobee Gourd was still useful to them. I think it is possible there were some trading between Myacas and other now extinct Native American tribes in South Florida. Royal Palm seeds could of been traded.  Does anybody know Bartram’s decriptions of the Royals on Lake George? Were they really tall and old or were they young fruiting size ones? The Spanish discovered the Mayaca in the 1500s. 

There actually is a Lake Dexter along the St. Johns River right in the same area of Lake George, but looking up "Lake Dexter" on Google maps only shows the one in Winter Haven. They're basically in the same area though, so you're not wrong about the area, the naming is just a bit confusing because of the 2 lakes in Florida called "Lake Dexter".

Here's a screen shot:

1337934539_ScreenShot2019-02-16at08_26_15.thumb.png.f4c9c8637228fee5cb38e53f684b8d34.png

Here's one including both lakes:

1514508763_ScreenShot2019-02-16at08_27_13.thumb.png.dbbf9bc949fd4b7b1e8c675266e9d3e2.png

Just wanted to verify, but the shores of this Lake Dexter are at about 1 m elevation.

Screen_Shot_2019-02-16_at_08_56_56.thumb.png.76df4a7185765e7bdd9d6192f4b2d243.png

 

Bartram described the royals as quite tall. Here's his exact description of the royals in Travels:

"The palm‑trees here seem to be of a different species from the cabbage tree; their straight trunks are sixty, eighty, or ninety feet high, with a beautiful taper, of bright ash colour, until within six or seven feet of the top, where it is a fine green colour, crowned with an orb of rich green plumed leaves" 

 

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Keith 

Palmetto, Florida (10a) and Tampa, Florida (9b/10a)

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Zeeth, thanks for clearing up the confusion. I thought I read Lake Dexter before. Someone said 165 feet elevation. I am like no way. I checked google maps and it shown Lake Dexter in Winter Haven. I did not know there was two Lake Dexters.

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20 hours ago, Zeeth said:

I'm going to have to disagree with you here. The palm that Bartram described is most certainly Roystonea regia. The argument that I've most often seen is that he saw royals, but he was actually much further south than Lake Dexter. Supposedly Bartram's field notes disappeared while on loan after his death, so his "Travels" is the only source for his information, and he doesn't explicitly state where he was when he saw Palma elata. Placement of his sighting near Lake Dexter was sort of an informed guess by Francis Harper, who spent years tracing Bartram's travels and edited a "Naturalist's Edition" of the Travels with commentary and index. It is possible that Harper got the location wrong, and that Bartram was actually somewhere south of Lake Okeechobee. This used to be supported by the fact that Bartram described the Okeechobee gourd as growing in the same area as the palms, and these were previously only found south of the lake, but the gourd was rediscovered near Lake Dexter by Marc Minno. This doesn't mean that Harper didn't place Bartram too far north, just that placing the palms growing in the same location as the gourd isn't the best supporting evidence behind placing Bartram further south. 

 

I'll defer to Scott Zona for further supporting the idea that Bartram was, indeed, describing Roystonea regia, in "Proposal to Conserve Oreodoxa regia Kunth, the Basionym of Roystonea regia (Kunth) OF Cook, against Palma elata W. Bartram (Arecaceae)" (Zona 1994):

"Bartram’s Travels (1791) provided some of the earliest post-Linnean descriptions of the flora of the southeastern United States including a large, solitary palm with an ashen white trunk topped by a green leaf sheath and pinnate leaves from a locality in central Florida… There is no doubt that his description applies to the palm now known as Roystonea elata."

Thanks Zeeth! That’s some great info. I never knew about a population of Okeechobee gourds living around Lake Dexter. Since it has Okeechobee gourds and allegedly roystonia, it makes me wonder why that one area is supporting S Florida flora. 

Westchase | 9b 10a  ◆  Nokomis | 10a  ◆  St. Petersburg | 10a 10b 

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1 hour ago, RedRabbit said:

Thanks Zeeth! That’s some great info. I never knew about a population of Okeechobee gourds living around Lake Dexter. Since it has Okeechobee gourds and allegedly roystonia, it makes me wonder why that one area is supporting S Florida flora. 

I think the Mayaka Indians had something to do with the Okeechobee Gourd’s distribution.The Mayacas were found in the same locations as the Okeechobee Gourd on the shores Eastern shores of Lake Okeechobee and Saint Johns River in the Lake George vicinity. Now that does not answer the question how Roystonea regia got to Lake Dexter. That is very far from Cuba, the Fakahatchee and the Southern most Everglades. 

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6 hours ago, Zeeth said:

There actually is a Lake Dexter along the St. Johns River right in the same area of Lake George, but looking up "Lake Dexter" on Google maps only shows the one in Winter Haven. They're basically in the same area though, so you're not wrong about the area, the naming is just a bit confusing because of the 2 lakes in Florida called "Lake Dexter".

Here's a screen shot:

1337934539_ScreenShot2019-02-16at08_26_15.thumb.png.f4c9c8637228fee5cb38e53f684b8d34.png

Here's one including both lakes:

1514508763_ScreenShot2019-02-16at08_27_13.thumb.png.dbbf9bc949fd4b7b1e8c675266e9d3e2.png

Just wanted to verify, but the shores of this Lake Dexter are at about 1 m elevation.

Screen_Shot_2019-02-16_at_08_56_56.thumb.png.76df4a7185765e7bdd9d6192f4b2d243.png

 

Bartram described the royals as quite tall. Here's his exact description of the royals in Travels:

"The palm‑trees here seem to be of a different species from the cabbage tree; their straight trunks are sixty, eighty, or ninety feet high, with a beautiful taper, of bright ash colour, until within six or seven feet of the top, where it is a fine green colour, crowned with an orb of rich green plumed leaves" 

 

It’s pretty obvious that he saw a well-established grove. I think it simply speaks to the likelihood that he saw a FL that had gone centuries without the sort of killing freeze that would come on the heels of his visits and destroy citrus crops north of their present distribution. Royals grow like weeds so long as they have heat, sun, lots of water, and temps that rarely dip below freezing. In most years, much of peninsular FL still fits the bill now, and it’s not hard to imagine a small difference in absolute lows for 200-300 years would allow royals to spread north along the shores of inland lakes.

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It wouldn't take 200 years. Birds move tremendous amounts of Royal seed, up in the fruit spathes of big royals are entire ecosystems that revolve around the massive amount of food and seed they produce. That's some brilliant sleuthing about the conditions around that lake. Bird born seed could easily establish a large amount of seedlings if there was a roost or something in that spot, and if you had even a decade-long window of perfect weather, royals could get large enough to trunk and become much more tough when it comes to cold. Great job, guys. This is starting to make sense.

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This all seems to suggest that Floridian Royal populations, with the exceptions of those in strands swamps in Collier County, are constantly fluctuating with the climate and environmental conditions.

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 Florida writer Steve Glassman shares some compelling evidence making Bartram’s placement of the Royal palm near Astor/Lake Dexter suspect in “Some Outstanding Problems in Bartram”.

(1) William Bartram’s 1773 botanical exploration  was funded by Englishman, Dr. Fothergill, a close friend of William’s father, John Bartram, who was considered the most prominent botanist in the world at the time. John Bartram traveled in virtually the same area as William and his notes were published in “John Bartram’s Diary”, which was also annotated by Francis Harper and published in 1942. Francis Harper published “A Report to Dr. John Fothergill” in 1943, which constituted the contemporaneous notes of William Bartram. “The Travels of William Bartram, Naturalist Edition” was published in 1958 also annotated by Francis Harper and this is the book, originally published in 1791, approximately 18 years after the commencement of William Bartram’s exploration. The lapse of time between the journey and the book is attributed to the Revolutionary War but Glassman points to this amount of time lays the foundation for faulty recollections.

(2) Francis Harper readily admits that part of William Bartram’s intellectual make-up contained an undeniable streak of carelessness. Francis Harper observed William Bartram’s claim of traversing the entire length of the St. John’s River, which he claimed to be 400 miles in length (which would extend to Cuba) and other inaccurate statements. Harper accepts the Royal Palms placement in Astor/ Lake Dexter based upon the historical freeze of 1835 and the presumption of their demise.

(3)Glassman reaches out to hard scientific data to obtain an idea of Florida’s climate in the 1700’s (nearby pollen studies) but also obtains an opinion from a Florida professor/PHD that indicates Florida in the 1700’s was colder than the present. Although not mentioned by Glassman, this time corresponded to the Mini-Iceage, from the 1400’s to the early 1800’s, when the Thames froze thick numerous times and Lisbon experienced frequent snowfalls.

(4) Glassman also points out numerous inconsistencies between the contemporaneous notes of both William and father John as compared and contrasted to the later book.  John’s notes, in the identical area that William observes the Royal palms, only make reference to an extremely tall cabbage palm.  Indeed, William’s contemporaneous notes to Dr. Fothergill not only make no reference to the Royal palms in this identical area but in fact make the affirmative statement that nothing new was found.   

(5) Glassman also finds Bartram’s short and apt description of the Royal palms to be contrary to his normal wordy writing style.  Glassman finds this particularly suspicious given Bartram’s proclivity of waxing ecstatic for several pages on a minnow.  The Royal palms constituted a major botanical discovery of which Bartram would be fully aware. His accurate but brief description of the Royal palms seems to defy their significance. 

(6) Glassman discusses the possibility of Indians bringing the seeds of the Royal palms north and planting them as a ceremonial possibility.  Glassman dismisses this possibility because of the numerous visitors to this region of the Saint Johns river by 1835, who would have also observed the Royal palms.

(7) Lastly, Glassman discusses the possibility that Bartram obtained the description of the palm from the Indians without viewing it or alternatively  possibly viewed it during an earlier journey to South Florida in the 1760s with Florida’s first geographer, De Brahm. 

I find it difficult to give up the existence of the Royal palms in Astor/Lake Dexter, which I have found so compelling since reading Bartram’s Travels.  At the same time, I believe Glassman makes a very strong argument to the contrary.

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Having never really thought this through, I have always dismissed the idea of Royal Palms ranging North through the state. They are too exacting  in the conditions for them to get established. This conversation has been interesting from the standpoint of an isolated group existing at a certain time in a certain place. I know firsthand how much seed birds move around from royal palms. I know how astonishingly fast volunteers grow in my soil, which is sandy muck. I don't see it as a stretch, particularly during spring migration, where birds might not have carried royal palm seeds in their gut upstate. Particularly at a roost site, where bird droppings would enrich the soil even further, royal palms could get a flying start. Once they have trunk they're a lot tougher. That only takes 2 or 3 years of great conditions, so this becomes very possible. We're never going to know, but I would tend to side with Bartram on this one

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Kurt,

I join you in the acceptance of Astor/Lake Dexter as proclaimed by Bartram/Harper. It might be my long time acceptance of the seemingly impossible Astor/Lake Dexter Royal palm or just an unwillingness to accept reality but I am on board with Bartram!

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Cuplet Fern, Dennstaedtia bipinnata is a tropical fern only found in Palm Beach County but also a couple populations in Seminole County. It has a wide distribution from southern Mexico through the Caribbean to northern Brazil but in Florida it is endangered and only found in these 2 counties.

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Eric

Orlando, FL

zone 9b/10a

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It would have been interesting to see what else grew wild in interior central Florida prior to the big 1835 freeze. It seems the late 1700s/early 1800s was a warm period  with citrus groves in the Jacksonville, FL and Savannah, GA areas and even up to Charleston, SC. There were also West Indian avocado and citrus groves at St. Augustine. All wiped out in 1835.

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Eric

Orlando, FL

zone 9b/10a

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2 hours ago, Eric in Orlando said:

Cuplet Fern, Dennstaedtia bipinnata is a tropical fern only found in Palm Beach County but also a couple populations in Seminole County. It has a wide distribution from southern Mexico through the Caribbean to northern Brazil but in Florida it is endangered and only found in these 2 counties.

I'm going to look for these ferns here in PBC and if I find some I'll try growing some. Ferns up to 8' tall with 3' wide fronds, count me in!

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This is such a fantastic thread. I bet that Roystonea (and many other palms) were once found farther north in our recent history. I have heard speculations that Serenoa repens and many Sabal species were once found into Virginia and possible farther north before the mid-1800s. 

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Zone 8a/8b Greenville, NC 

Zone 9a/9b Bluffton, SC

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4 hours ago, Eric in Orlando said:

Cuplet Fern, Dennstaedtia bipinnata is a tropical fern only found in Palm Beach County but also a couple populations in Seminole County. It has a wide distribution from southern Mexico through the Caribbean to northern Brazil but in Florida it is endangered and only found in these 2 counties.

I've seen those here in Brevard too, around Turkey Creek.

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Brevard County, Fl

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22 hours ago, PalmTreeDude said:

Does anyone have a soil map of Florida that shows where the rich and poor soil is? 

I'll get back to you on that one.

Brevard County, Fl

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Very interesting topic of discussion where i can see the many suggested ideas of the species current distribution..and possible distribution in times past being truthful. 

Somewhat related, i came across an article from the Desert Sun in Palm Springs ( Article was published on Sept. 11 / Updated on the 13th of September of this year. Titled " How did a Palm Oasis get to the California Desert?.. A behind the scenes look at these *Tropical Islands* " ) regarding how Washingtonia filifera got to where it exists in California.

Some very interesting thoughts / insights worthy of a read and discussion here.... If accurate, thoughts discussed toward the end of the article raise an interesting question regarding the " If indigenous people moved various plants around in times past, what quantifies as locally native, vs introduced" discussion.  Here in Arizona, various Agave species, and Saguaro may have had help extending their natural / regional range in various parts of the state in times past. 

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13 hours ago, Silas_Sancona said:

Very interesting topic of discussion where i can see the many suggested ideas of the species current distribution..and possible distribution in times past being truthful. 

Somewhat related, i came across an article from the Desert Sun in Palm Springs ( Article was published on Sept. 11 / Updated on the 13th of September of this year. Titled " How did a Palm Oasis get to the California Desert?.. A behind the scenes look at these *Tropical Islands* " ) regarding how Washingtonia filifera got to where it exists in California.

Some very interesting thoughts / insights worthy of a read and discussion here.... If accurate, thoughts discussed toward the end of the article raise an interesting question regarding the " If indigenous people moved various plants around in times past, what quantifies as locally native, vs introduced" discussion.  Here in Arizona, various Agave species, and Saguaro may have had help extending their natural / regional range in various parts of the state in times past. 

The native vs. invasive dichotomy  is a philosophical stance with no scientific merit. All things on earth are natural; whatever means transfers a species from point A to point B, whether a land bridge, storm, or airplane, is also natural. Species survive or disappear on the basis of their ability to adapt and thrive. The pythons of FL are no more alien than the jaguars of South America: neither evolved in situ and both are perfectly adapted for their current New World homes. In the case of Jaguars, they invaded South America before man (though still relatively recently) so we don’t consider them invasive, but they are just as foreign to their South American home as the cane toad is to its new Australian one. The worst part of the cult-like promulgation of natve-vs.-invasive rhetoric is its insensitivity to measurable needs: camels and water buffalo have only Australia as a stronghold, yet they are officially nuisance animals there; Burmese pythons are threatened in SE Asia, where they’ve never hurt local bird populations, yet they could thrive in FL, but they’re slaughtered because of baseless claims that they’re eating up all birdlife there. If we can get to a point where seeing a wild animal anywhere is thrilling, we will have made a breakthrough. Wild peafowl in CA are gorgeous and self-sustaining, why aren’t they native? Wild turkeys were introduced to CA last century, but they were present there during the Pleistocene before being killed off (likely by man). Are they native? The whole thing becomes ridiculous the deeper you drill down.

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10 hours ago, Yunder Wækraus said:

The native vs. invasive dichotomy  is a philosophical stance with no scientific merit. All things on earth are natural; whatever means transfers a species from point A to point B, whether a land bridge, storm, or airplane, is also natural. Species survive or disappear on the basis of their ability to adapt and thrive. The pythons of FL are no more alien than the jaguars of South America: neither evolved in situ and both are perfectly adapted for their current New World homes. In the case of Jaguars, they invaded South America before man (though still relatively recently) so we don’t consider them invasive, but they are just as foreign to their South American home as the cane toad is to its new Australian one. The worst part of the cult-like promulgation of natve-vs.-invasive rhetoric is its insensitivity to measurable needs: camels and water buffalo have only Australia as a stronghold, yet they are officially nuisance animals there; Burmese pythons are threatened in SE Asia, where they’ve never hurt local bird populations, yet they could thrive in FL, but they’re slaughtered because of baseless claims that they’re eating up all birdlife there. If we can get to a point where seeing a wild animal anywhere is thrilling, we will have made a breakthrough. Wild peafowl in CA are gorgeous and self-sustaining, why aren’t they native? Wild turkeys were introduced to CA last century, but they were present there during the Pleistocene before being killed off (likely by man). Are they native? The whole thing becomes ridiculous the deeper you drill down.

I saw somewhere that the official definition is that a non-native species was introduced by man after 1500 AD

Brevard County, Fl

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Either way, it does not seem likely that humans brought over Royal palms. The popular explanation that the Spanish brought them to feed pigs makes little sense - not only was Spanish inhabitation of South Florida limited, the palms are so widely distributed in the Fakahatchee strand in a way that seems unlikely to have arisen in just a few hundred years. The natives bringing it over is also a bit nonsensical, as the fruits of Roystonea are quite undesirable for humans. To me it seems much more likely that these palms were brought over by migratory bird species, just like most of the hundreds of tropical plant species native to Florida.

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