Using

Fevertree (Pinkneya pubens) Range to Help Pinpoint Fort

Caroline Location
By Gary C. Daniels, TheNewWorld.us, LostWorlds.org
January 3, 2017

The location of the first French settlement in America, Fort Caroline, has never been
found. Academic consensus places the lost fort on the St. Johns River in Jacksonville,
Florida. In 2014 two competing theories were put forward that offered alternate
locations for the missing fort. The Fort Caroline Archaeology Project (TFCAP.org)
proposed the fort was located on the Altamaha River near Darien, Georgia.
Archaeologist Fred Cook proposed the fort was located on the Florida side of the St.
Marys River, the modern boundary between Georgia and Florida. TFCAP later
abandoned their Altamaha River theory in favor of the St.Marys River theory. But
could the answer to solve this mystery come from botany instead of archaeology?

In 1564 a young Frenchman living at the new settlement of La Caroline wrote a
letter home describing the voyage and establishment of the fort. In this letter,
published in Charles Bennetts book Laudonniere & Fort Caroline, this Frenchman
described the discovery of several important plant species near the fort:

The fort is in the said River May, about six leagues up
the river from the sea, which we will shortly have so
well fortified as to have it defense-worthy, with very
good conveniences and the water coming into the moat
of the fort.

We even found a certain cinchona tree, which has
dietary value, which is its least virtueWe have learned
from the doctors that it sells very well in France and
that it is well liked. Mr. de Laudonniere forbade our
soldiers to send it aboard these ships, and only he
would and did send some as a gift to the King and to the
other Princes of France and to the Admiral, together
with the gold which we had found there1

The fact that Laudonniere sent this plant along with gold to the King shows its high
value to the French. But what is a cinchona tree and why is it so valuable? According
to researchers, the cinchona tree is:

native to the tropical Andean forests of western South
America.A few species are used as medicinal plants,
known as sources for quinine and other
compoundsThe medicinal properties of the cinchona
tree were originally discovered by the Quechua peoples
of Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador, and long cultivated by

them as a muscle relaxant to abate shivering due to low

body temperatures, and symptoms of malaria.2


The fact that quinine, a remedy for malaria, is derived from the cinchona tree
explains its value. But since the cinchona tree is native to the Andes, could it really
be the plant the French found growing around Fort Caroline?

In October 1775 English naturalist William Bartram arrived at the Altamaha River in
Georgia on his way to nearby Fort Barrington. While there he discovered two
variety of shrubs new to him which he described in his book Travels:

I sat off early in the morning for the Indian trading-house, in
the river St. Mary, and took the road up the N. E. side of the
Alatamaha to Fort-Barrington. I passed through a well
inhabited district, mostly rice plantations, on the waters of
Cathead creek, a branch of the Alatamaha. On drawing near the
fort, I was greatly delighted at the appearance of two new
beautiful shrubs, in all their blooming graces. One of them
appeared to be a species of Gordonia * , but the flowers are
larger, and more fragrant than those of the Gordonia
Lascanthus, and are sessile; the seed vessel is also very
different. The other was equally distinguished for beauty and
singularity; it grows twelve or fifteen feet high, the branches
ascendant and opposite, and terminate with large panicles of
pale blue tubular flowers, specked on the inside with crimson;
but, what is singular, these panicles are ornamented with a
number of ovate large bracte, as white, and like fine paper,
their tops and verges stained with a rose red, which, at a little
distance, has the appearance of clusters of roses, at the
extremities of the limbs: the flowers are of the Cl. Pentan dria
monogynia; the leaves are nearly ovate, pointed and petioled,
standing opposite to one another on the branches.3

Botonists have shown that the first of these shrubs was the Franklin tree (Franklinia
Alatamaha) and the second was the Georgia bark or fevertree (Pinkneya pubens). It
is this second tree, the fevertree, which provides the clue to the location of the lost
Fort Caroline.

Botonists have noted the fevertree is

a small tree of the southern United States closely
resembling the cinchona or Peruvian bark, and
belonging to the natural order Cinchonace. It has
pretty, large white flowers, with longitudinal stripes of
rose-color. The wood is soft and unfit for use in the arts.

The inner bark is extremely bitter, and is employed with

success in intermittent fevers.4

Thus the fevertree is clearly the cinchona tree that the young Frenchman referred
to as living near Fort Caroline. But where does this plant grow?

According to a map produced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the plant
primarily grows in Georgia along the coast and inland in a narrow band reaching to
the Gulf of Mexico in northwest Florida. According to this map there also appear to
be three small populations in inland Florida.

An 1885 article in The American Journal of Pharmacy notes:

Michaux discovered this plant in 1791, along the banks
of the St. Mary's River, Florida, and described it as
follows: It grows in bogs along the banks of streams
from Florida to South Carolina, near the coastThe
plant is closely related to the cinchonae, and is one of
the many that have been proposed as a substitute for
Peruvian bark. From reports of physicians living in
States where it grows, it appears to have decided antiperiodic properties, though slower in its action than
cinchona bark. The genus was named in honor of Gen.
Charles Pinckney, of South Carolina.5

Except for this 1791 account of it growing at the St. Marys River, the border
between Georgia and Florida, it does not appear to grow along the northeast coast of
Florida nor along the St. Johns River. This would seem to preclude these locations as
being possible sites of Fort Caroline.

Unless the range of this plant has changed in modern times, it would seem this is
one more piece of evidence supporting the hypothesis that Fort Caroline was
located on either the Altamaha River or St. Marys River and not the St. Johns River.

Sources

1 Bennett, Charles E. Laudonniere & Fort Caroline: History and Documents. (p.68)
2 Cinchona. Wikipedia.org. Accessed online 3 January 2017 at
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinchona>.
3 Georgia Bark. Colliers New Encyclopedia. Accessed online 3 January 2017 at
<https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Collier%27s_New_Encyclopedia_(1921)/Georgia_
Bark>.
4 Pinckneya pubens. Digital Representations of Tree Species Range Maps from
Atlas of United States Trees by Elbert L. Little, Jr. (and other publications).
USGS.gov. Accessed 3 January 2017 at
<https://gec.cr.usgs.gov/data/little/pincpube.pdf>.
5 Pinckneya pubens, Michaux. (Georgia Bark.) The American Journal of Pharmacy.
April 1885. Accessed online 3 January 2017 at <http://www.henriettesherb.com/eclectic/journals/ajp/ajp1885/04-pinckneya.html>.