The Place: Quiet and somewhat isolated today, Apalachicola was historically the important port of entry for its namesake river as well as a cultural center along the Florida Panhandle. Times have changed. The gnarl of waterways and marshes creating our ecologically rich delta and the buffering presence of sprawling forestlands channeled 20th Century growth to the East centering on Tallahassee and later routed mid-South beach traffic westerly, to the Panama City-Destin-Pensacola strand. Development evaded the Panhandle’s quiet core, a sparsely populated stretch of forested lands paralleling the Panhandle coast. Small towns and timber stands attest failure of grubstake farms once carved into land bared through aggressive harvest of ancient timber stands, exposing soils that proved, ultimately unsuited for cotton and tobacco, and much of it too wet even for peanuts.
Driving State Route 65, a Scenic Byway through Sumatra (itself named for a desirable strain of tobacco used for wrapping cigars), at the south end of Liberty County, one sees ghost town-like remnants of a much more populated era, where crops had been attempted for a generation or two. There a runway swath of dirt road recalls the abandoned dream of State Route 22, which first surfaced before the Great Depression would be a shortcut from US 319 at Sopchoppy to the coastal town that George Mortimer had rechristened Panama City in 1906. Sumatra seemed a town destined to become a bustling hub at the crossroad of a new highway and railway built to haul cargo that would never arrive from the Panama Canal. But the freight traffic turned to logs feeding St. Joe and Coastal Plain soils never supported the demands of cotton farming as lands cleared for fields were gradually reclaimed by a patchwork of pine plantations and titi hell.
In the first third of the 20th Century, large acreages of depleted farm and forest in North Florida were acquired by the Federal Government. This led to creation of Osceola National Forest (200,000 acres established in 1931 by Herbert Hoover), Apalachicola National Forest (635,000 acres, established in 1936 by FDR), St. Mark’s National Wildlife refuge (an 86,000 acre migratory bird refuge circumscribed in 1931) and Eglin Air Force Base (463,000 acres, secured in 1935). At the same time, with speculation quelled and land values low during the Great Depression, Alfred Du Pont and his brother-in-law operative Edward Ball reduplicated their Florida land purchases, consolidating over a million acres, most of which were Panhandle timber holdings for du Pont’s St. Joe Paper Company.
Given significant acreages protected at some level, forces would eventually coalesce to conserve other swaths of land in the central Panhandle. Florida created Tate’s Hell State Forest to the East, the Apalachicola Wildlife Management Areas running northerly along the Apalachicola River, Box R Wildlife Management Area directly west of Apalachicola, and just a bit further west, St. Joseph and St. Vincent Preserves. As early as 1935, Pine Log State Forest was established (as Florida’s first state forest) with a purchase of nearly 7,000 acres and more recently Bear Creek Reserve has followed. Additionally, the region benefits from numerous state parks, such as Ochlochonee River State Park near Sopchoppy and properties on both St. George Island as well as San Blas peninsula. It is a good thing so much land is protected, and Apalachicola remains at the heart of Florida’s great environmental legacy.
Preservation of Panhandle land at any level is ecologically important. We have become aware that the hundred mile stretch of Central Panhandle, spanning from the Ochlockonee to the Choctawhatchee River basins and centered along the Apalachicola/Chattahoochee corridor constitutes a biodiversity hot spot. The extant flora documents a timeless shifting mosaic of refugia that persisted through glacial and interglacial periods, preserving pockets of northern forest, elements of prairie landscapes, and ribbons of an ancient lower coastal plain flora. There is so much for the naturalist to learn here, so much not explained even to the current day. Plants we encounter in the Apalachicola region still hold beauties and biologies meriting attention, even discovery. Scholars and amateurs alike continue to build a base for further understanding. Students can study publications built up over the last three centuries of inquiry, now digitized and freely accessible on various platforms. The core resource is an electronic inventory the Atlas of Florida Plants, which documents plant diversity, taxonomies, and geographic distributions, amplified with photographs and herbarium specimens. But one doesn’t need WiFi access to learn the native flora; three soft-bound books remain available and inexpensive: Clewell’s Guide to the Vascular Pants of the Florida Panhandle, Wunderlin and Hansen’s Guide to the Vascular Plants of Florida, and Hammer’s Complete Guide to Florida Wildflowers. More costly, yet more complete, one might find at some libraries the Flora of Florida, compiled by Wunderlin and Hansen, and published by University Press of Florida in 7 volumes between 2000 and 2020. There are also virtual keys available, resources such as iNaturalist and the FloraQuest – Florida app. And older publications, now out of print, retain significant value. To access those, digital copies are available freely from the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL).
Realizing the unique location and natural history we inherit, the people of Apalachicola designated a small park near the town center as a public garden, celebrating our special natural history while honoring A. W. Chapman, a past community leader who established much of the basis for our current understanding of the Panhandle flora. That background merits some explanation.
The People: Through studying the history of our natural history, we realize fascination with the regional flora is not recent. Indeed, Apalachicola physician and botanist A. W. Chapman (28 September 1809 – 6 April 1899) found much to study in the Florida Panhandle. Having grown up in Massachusetts, Chapman was familiar with plant study, which flourished as part of primary and secondary education in the Northeast. Following graduation from Amherst in 1830, he found employment as an educator in East Georgia, where he was encouraged to study medicine by Dr. Albert Reece. In 1835 Chapman relocated to Quincy, FL, where he would complete his medical studies while also immersing himself in field botany and plant collecting. By 1847, Chapman, now a qualified physician, was encouuraded to relocate to Apalachicola, where he established a practice and continued botanical study for the remainder of the century. Chapman had moved to a bustling town, at the time the busiest cotton port along the Florida gulf coast, and destined to become a major timber port as billions of feet of pine and cypress were harvested from the surrounding area. Thomas Orman’s imposing home was completed just a decade before, and physician John Gorrie had abandoned his medical practice to dedicate greater effort toward perfecting his ice machine prototype.
We find no record of formal botanical training, but through first-hand knowledge of plants, study of literature, and active correspondence Chapman became one of few national experts regarding Southern plants. His original correspondence exists in many archives, particularly letters to the renowned botanist John Torrey (15 August 1796 – 10 March 1873) which date from as early as 1835 (available on-line through Wikimedia).
It seems Chapman came into communication with Torrey as part of his association with Hardy Croom, a North Carolina-based plantation owner who established his home on 2500 acres east of central Tallahassee (property that would later be named Goodwood, now a public institution through gift of the last owner, Thomas Hood). The workaholic Croom managed significant lands further west, near Aspalga, along the Apalachicola River. Botanically-enchanted and skilled, Croom collected and described many new, rare plants over a short time. It was Croom who first sent specimens to Nuttall and to Torrey of the plant we know today as Torreya. And Croom had been an inspiration to the younger Chapman. His tragic death, along with that of his wife and three daughters, came in 1837 following a trip to New York (where he had met with John Torrey) when their steamer headed to Charleston sank during a hurricane.
The association with Torrey set Chapman in contact with Asa Gray (18 November 1810 – 30 January 1888). A year younger than Chapman, Gray would become the most acclaimed of North American botanists. Working first as student and then as Torrey’s collaborator, Gray could be considered the first significant professional US plant taxonomist. Based eventually at Harvard, his knowledge, reach, and accomplishments are masterful. The 1848 1st edition of Gray’s “Manual” (A Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States), a project he said nearly exhausted him both physically and financially, cemented his reputation as the lead US botanical expert in both content and outreach. The Manual, which would pass through 8 editions over the next century (five authored solely by Gray), established a standard and inspired Chapman, who knew the Southern flora merited as much attention.
By the time Gray’s Manual was available, Chapman had been collecting and sharing specimens as well as corresponding with botanists throughout the US for well over a decade. Almost certainly he was thoroughly familiar with the past century’s wealth of historical literature documenting plants of the Southeast. He was well-versed in knowledge consolidated by Linnaeus from 1753 onward and embellished by botanists of all stripes. Those people ranged from Thomas Walter, whose 1788 Flora Carolinana is considered the first flora based in the US, to André Michaux’s 1803 Flora Boreali-Americana, and two decades later, A Sketch of the Botany of South-Carolina and Georgia by Stephen Elliott. Chapman was clearly aware of contributions by botanists based in Philadelphia and the Northeast, such as Thomas Nuttall, Frederick Pursh, as well as the quixotic, untethered vagabond Constantine Rafinesque. He also must have studied John Darby’s 1841 Manual of Botany adapted to the productions of the Southern States (updated in 1860), regarding it as a textbook including treatment of plants of South Carolina and Georgia. As his expertise with local plants and general botanical knowledge grew, Chapman ventured to publish his own accounts of the local flora, beginning with “A list of Plants Growing Spontaneously in the Vicinity of Quincy, Florida,” a twenty-three page accounting of 1200+ plants native to the area.
Given knowledge of plants, a network of botanists, and awareness of existing literature, Chapman was clearly provoked to imagine a complementary work dedicated to plants of the Southeast. In the preface to his 1860 first edition of Flora of the Southern United States, Chapman comments: ” My original design did not contemplate so wide a field; but was limited to an enumeration of the plants of the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida, — to which, chiefly, my attention has been directed during the last thirty years. But, influenced by the solicitations of friends, and by the apparent need of a more general work, I have extended my plan, so as to embrace all the states south of Virginia and Kentucky, and east of the Mississippi River… The plan of the work is nearly the same as that adopted by PROFESSOR GRAY, in his excellent Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States.“
Publication came as secession and war threatened. With his manuscript well along in 1859, Chapman took leave from his medical practice to spend several months at Harvard, working alongside Asa Gray. Returning to Apalachicola, Chapman left the manuscript with Gray, who saw the book through final editing and publication (New York) just before Civil War would break out. Preserving the printing plates, Gray was able to arrange a second printing in 1865, soon after the war. Due to wartime interruptions, Chapman never saw a copy of his Flora until the War ended. But his work continued, with new discoveries and name changes provoking a supplemented edition in 1883, followed more than a decade later by the wholly revised final edition.
We know Chapman maintained his correspondence with botanists and plant collectors throughout the eastern US, collaboration that centered at the outset on his working relationship with Moses A. Curtis (11 May 1808 – 10 April 1872), a North Carolina minister and botanist, someone Chapman regarded as a mentor, the person he clearly hoped to partner with for a fully-consolidated and updated version to the Flora. With Curtis’s death in 1872, just shy of 65 years, Chapman accepted his destiny to continue studies as single author, issuing his supplements and in his 80s, completing the fully rewritten 3rd edition in 1897. Imagining how much dedicated effort was required, I hope Chapman never read Charles Louis Pollard’s snotty review, printed in the April, 1897 issue of the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club. It goes without much comment that Pollard was tied closely to the New York superstar, John K. Small, whose 1903 flora would succeed Chapman’s work (see below).
Living in Apalachicola, a small and relatively isolated port town, Chapman clearly relished his American botanical cohort, people to whom he sent specimens and from whom he received information, support, and affirmation. Significant among those were Gray and Torrey, who celebrated the specimens he sent from Florida, and there was Curtis of course. But there were many others, botanists who shared location information and who he accompanied on collecting expeditions, like Hardy B. Croom (1797-1837). Many collectors sent specimens, including Henry William Ravenel, (19 May 1814 – 17 July 1887) while others actually contributed written plant treatments, Daniel C. Eaton for example. Some scholars published taxa Chapman had identified as worthy of naming, such as George Engelmann’s (2 February 1809 – 4 February 1884) publication of Pinus inops var. clausa, the tree we know today as Pinus clausa. Chapman, with his somewhat stoic lifestyle, outlived them all, managing to consolidate his work in 1897,. Chapman passed away as he approached his ninth decade in 1899.
More than a century has passed since Chapman’s time and much has changed regarding our understanding of plants. Taking Composites as an example, botanists today recognize over 32,000 kinds (species) of Composites worldwide, grouped into as many as 50 Tribes. Over 400 species are found growing in Florida, about 330 thought to be native.
That reflects quite a change from Chapman’s time. Examining two common Composites, in 1860 Chapman noted 22 species of Liatris, 11 of which he found present in Florida. Taking into account the current assignment of Chapman’s Liatris to 4 genera (Liatris, Carphephorus, Trilisa, and Garbera), we find about 25 species recognized for the state today. Comparing Aster, Chapman described 48 species in his first edition, at least 20 of which he considered present in Florida. Accounting for reassignment of his Asters to Symphyotrichum, Eurybia, Ionactis, Oclemena, and Doellingeria, we find as many as 35 species native to Florida.
How does that compare in a broader context? Between the first and third editions of Chapman’s Flora, George Bentham (22 September 1810 – 10 September 1884) and Joseph Hooker (30 June 1817 – 10 December 1911) published their 3-volume compilation, Genera Plantarum, recognizing 7,569 genera and over 92,700 species of flowering plants worldwide. Today, botanists accept as many as 14,000 flowering plant genera and speculate about 350,000 species should be recognized. Worldwide, the number of recognized genera is about twice what Bentham and Hooker cataloged, while the number of species is fully three times or more the number they recognized. Most growth in species diversity has been in tropical zones, which remain under-collected compared to temperate zones of Europe and North America..
As to the number of Liatris and Aster species Chapman recorded, yes there were new discoveries, but increases noted for Florida mostly reflect new records of already-described species based on more extensive collections. The truly significant change has been “systematic”, i.e. the ways we delineate species and methods utilized to assign them to genera., which is the over-riding story for plant science over the past few decades of study in North America. Scientific understanding and technique have refined our ability to describe, delineate, and categorize plants. Systematic botany has become Molecular Systematics, quite different from the descriptive science Chapman practiced when he wrote and re-wrote his Flora.
Take a moment to consider Apalachicola and the wider world Chapman experienced. He published the first edition of his Flora only months after Darwin’s Origin of Species… (24 November 1859) and he died before scientists realized the implications of genetic studies Gregor Mendel related in his 1866 publication. Even as an informed physician, Chapman would not have known about blood groups, a discovery announced in 1901, and was probably unaware that mosquitos harbor the malaria parasite, an important discovery made by Ronald Ross in August, 1897.
For Chapman, any work after dark was by candle and lantern light; Apalachicolans did not have electrical power until ice companies began generating electricity after 1900. Without electricity, Chapman certainly utilized traditional (and labor-intensive) methods of drying plants specimens, either over stoves and lamps, or through continual changing of blotters. As a physician, he might have had some type of microscope, but it is almost certain most of his descriptions were made with simple lenses. Chapman must have traveled locally on foot, by horse or wagon, or by boat; the railway did not arrive until 1907, and cars were not available during his lifetime. He likely handwrote all of his notes, in that typewriters first became available around 1873.
Paper was dear and mail was both slow and undependable. South Carolina seceded from the Union 20 December 1860; Florida followed 10 January, just four weeks later. Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox on 9 April 1865. Chapman would reprint the Flora that same year.
The story doesn’t end with Chapman and his associates, rather that early work is foundational to our understanding today. As one chapter in appreciation of the Southern flora (most particularly the rich diversity we find in the Apalachicola region) culminated, a highly relevant juggernaut emerged, albeit in New York. Collections and connections based on the program John Torrey had fostered at Columbia University became the province of Nathaniel Lord Britton (15 January 1859 – 25 June 1934) in 1887, the fallout being the 1896 transfer of 600,000herbarium specimens housed at Columbia University to the New York Botanical Garden, an institution founded in 1891 through leadership of Britton and his spouse Elizabeth. In the same year as NYBG was established, Britton and his collaborator Addison Brown published (1896) An Illustrated flora of the northern United States….basically replacing Gray’s Manual. (For a chronology of botanists impacting this history, follow this link: Interleafing Botanists)
Britton’s enormous accomplishments included nurturing contacts and students. among whom was grad student John Kunkel Small (31 January 1869 – 20 January 1938). Feverishly immersed in his study of Southeastern plants, with a strong emphasis on plants of Florida, Small’s work had engaged a host of collaborators who contributed to his doctoral thesis which went straight to publication in 1903 as the monumental 1,370 page Flora of the Southeastern United States. Emblematic of the philosophical approach among scholars in Britton’s sphere, Small was a “splitter,” recognizing new genera and practically any variant he could document. The Appendix to his Flora includes a list of taxa newly published (genera and species) that was over 15 pages long. Frederick Coville, concludes his 1903 review thusly: “The admirable keys with which the book is equiped throughout, a new feature in Southern flora, will greatly facilitate its use by students. This and the other timely and authoritative qualities of the work so greatly counterbalance any faults that may be charged against it that the book will necessarily take its place as the standard work on Southern botany.”
Small was at the leading edge of a new breed of taxonomists, emerging with the founding of New York Botanic Garden under leadership of Nathaniel Lord Britton, influenced by the energetic apostacy of Otto Kuntze. Britton coalesced NYBG as a taxonomic powerhouse in the Bronx, mentoring a generation of botanists who, through financial support of Charles Deering (31 July 1852 – 5 February 1927, International Harvestor), would bring particular attention to the Florida flora. Small was one of the first graduate students in the Columbia program, matriculating as staff at NYBG, where he would spend his entire career. Parallel to Small’s studies, Britton mentored George Valentine Nash, whose interest in Florida floristics actually preceded Small’s, based on a collecting trip of several months he made to Eustis (Lake County), Florida in 1894.
Complementing and expanding contributions of Chapman and Small one could discuss hundreds of naturalists, horticulturists, and botanists who contributed to discovery and understanding of our native plants and ecosystems, gr0und that has been covered in many articles, notably “Botanical Exploration in Florida” (2000) by R.P. Wunderlin, B. F. Hansen. and J. Beckner, in Flora of Florida, Volume 1. Given this brief introduction to the people who have described and interpreted our natural history, the crucial issue now is to highlight plants and associations that document the many reasons our region is so botanically exciting.
The Flora: Having reviewed how we know about our native flora begs consideration as to “What we Know”, which is quite a bit. But we have much to learn.
Regardless how plant-engaged or plant-indifferent people who visit and those who reside in the Apalachicola region might be, most know a pine tree when they see one. The majority of pines in our area are Slash pines, botanically categorized as Pinus elliottii, a species name published by St. Louis botanist George Engelmann in 1880, honoring important South Carolina botanist Stephen Elliott who had recognized this as a variety of Loblolly Pine in 1824. The public will likely know these pines are harvested for pulp and timber, and may even know that decades ago people thought of them as “turpentine pines”, many of which still bear the slashes in their bark below which resin was collected and processed into rosin. Many of us might guess the common term “Slash pine” derives from those bark wounds, while we later learn that “slash” is a term for densely vegetated, swampy areas.
And practically any Floridian will know Southern Magnolia, Magnolia grandiflora. People may not realize this tree has become significant in urban forests well outside its native Southeast, planted throughout wetter (mesophytic) areas in China (where it is one of Shanghai’s most common street trees), and even abundantly used in Los Angeles, to bring some rich green to the landscape. Many will be aware this state tree of Mississippi is celebrated for its handsome leathery foliage and out-sized luxuriantly creamy-white flowers, imagery depicted in art reproduced by the millions, such as Catesby’s 1747 illustration, Ehret’s lavish 1943 watercolor, and Heade’s 1888 oil on canvas ‘The Magnolia Blossom’.
Not as many people will know there are several other species of Magnolia native to the Eastern US, and hundreds more in Asia, as well as Central and South America. We see Southern Magnolia along forest edges, but it isn’t the most common of its genus. People might enjoy knowing and growing the upright, evergreen Sweet Bay, Magnolia virginiana, a smaller, somewhat narrow tree recognizable along roadsides by the silvery white reverse to its leaves, color that flashes as whole branches move with the wind. Far less common, Ashe’s Magnolia (Magnolia macrophylla var ashei), a Panhandle endemic (one of 155 Florida endemics). This small tree with giant leaves was described by Harvard botanist Charles Weatherby in 1926 and is classified as one of Florida ‘s many endangered native plants. But it has been propagated and people can grow the rare and handsome forest tree in their own yards.
If you recognize Slash Pine and Southern Magnolia, you know two of the 4,000 plants native or naturalized in the state. Our goal is to grow your familiarity with some of the other incredible plants that thrive in our Apalachicola region. But the full list of possibilities is too great for most of us to take in, so at Chapman’s Garden, we have selected around two hundred plants to bring to public attention. The plants presented below are distinctive and important for a variety of reasons, providing a broad sampling of the diversity that makes Apalachicola a “hot spot”. We selected plants that teach lessons, tell stories, and would be truly attractive additions to your own property.
There are many ways to organize a discussion of plants, emphasizing location and lifestyle (bog plants, canopy trees, etc.), reproductive biologies (butterfly or hummingbird pollinated, wind dispersed seed, etc.), structure (tree, shrub, vine, herb), or genetic relatedness (shared ancestries). And there are the purely practical among us who just alphabetize things based ontheir names. Here we explain important relationships but follow practical groupngs that aid in identification, thus:
- Mints, Gentians & other herbs
- Beans & related plants
- Daisies
- Carnivores
- Orchids
- Bulbs and Similar Plants
- Wetland Plants
- Grassy Plants
- Vines
- Nine Fine Native Shrubs
- Palms
- Swamp Trees
- Forest Trees
- Conifers & Relatives
References:
Bennett, Thomas Peter, 2019. Florida Explored. The Philadelphia Connection in Bartram’s Tracks, Mercer University Press, Macon, Georgia. ISBN 978-0-88146-693-5. 398 pp.
Chapman, Alvan Wentworth, 1860. Flora of the Southern United States: containing abridged descriptions of the Flowering Plants and Ferns of Tennessee, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida: Arranged According to the Natural System. Ivison, Phinney & Co, New York
Pollard, Charles Louis, 1897. Book Review, Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, 24(4): 210-213.
Link to this Page: https://botanyincontext.com/apalachicola-and-the-chapman-garden-gateway-to-a-flora/