The characteristic trees are the live-oak, its wood almost as heavy as
lignum-vitae, the trunk not high, but sometimes five or six feet in
diameter, and extending its crooked branches far over the land, with the
long, pendulous, funereal moss adhering to them,--and the palmetto,
shooting up its long, spongy stem thirty or forty feet, unrelieved by
vines or branches, with a disproportionately small cap of leaves at the
summit, the most ungainly of trees, albeit it gives a name and
coat-of-arms to the State. Besides these, are the pine, the red and
white oak, the cedar, the bay, the gum, the maple, and the ash. The soil
is luxuriant with an undergrowth of impenetrable vines. These
interlacing the trees, supported also by shrubs, of which the cassena is
the most distinguished variety, and faced with ditches, make the
prevailing fences of the plantations. The hedges are adorned in March
and April with the yellow jessamine, (_jelseminum_,)--the cross-vine
(_bignonia_,) with its mass of rich red blossoms,--the Cherokee rose,
(_loevigata_,) spreading out in long waving wreaths of white,--and, two
months later, the palmetto royal, (_yucca gloriosa_,) which protects the
fence with its prickly leaves, and delights the eyes with its
pyramid-like clusters of white flowers.
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