NANTUCKET TREES 13 



Nantucket ' 3 surface are gradually disappearing. Thoreau 

 has noted In his diary that the William Coffin map of 

 Nantucket 18^4 records 1050 fresh ponds. 45 These may 

 be found today in all stages of conversion to dry land. 

 There is Maxey's Pond where the clear water is bordered 

 by a zone In which grow rushes and the dainty floating 

 heart, -while outside that is a sandy shore encroached 

 upon by cranberry vines and sphagnum moss. Then there 

 are the two ponds at Taupaushaw whose open vater can be 

 reached only by struggling through a quaking bog of 

 sphagnum using clumps of swamp loosestrife for foothold. 

 Not far from Taupaushaw are the two Pout Ponds. Within 

 the last few years these have changed to bogs ringed 

 about by rushes and by dying shrubs. The Pout Ponds 

 show, perhaps, an abnormal progression in an over-rapid 

 lessening of water as the Mosquito Control lowers the 

 water table. Pitcher Plant Swamp, east of Almanac Pond, 

 has reached a corresponding stage with less of death ap- 

 parent. Here, in the midst of deep sphagnum, clumps of 

 azalea, poison sumac, and red maple saplings flourish. 

 But here the end is in sight for the white pond lilies. 

 They are rooted in muck and sphagnum with luxuriant, 

 short-stemmed leaves, but they seldom bloom. We may see 

 the near climax of a progression at Ram Pasture in a 

 grove of red maples whose sprawling roots offer easy 

 footing in the sphagnum. Finally there is the "Hidden. 

 Forest." Here, although there is still sphagnum and wa- 

 ter enough to make a paradise for mosquitos, the low- 

 spreading beeches, the sour gums and other great trees 

 shelter an undergrowth of wood mosses, ferns and flower- 

 ing plants such as is found in no other spot on Nantucket. 

 Of these Bicknell has written: "Here, too, surviving in 

 the thickets and tree groupings, are little colonies of 

 woodland plants, vestiges, we may suppose,' of an earlier 

 flora that had its day in that unrecorded period before 

 the woodlands were destroyed." 4 If this be true, the 

 undergrowth speaks of an antiquity greater than that of 

 the trees in whose shade it now grows and Jack-in-the- 

 pulpit, the dainty oak fern and the moss Georgia are 

 lineal descendants of the growth under pre-glacial for- 

 ests. The great trees, as members of a climax forest 

 that has replaced a post-glacial lake, are upstarts of 

 a century or less. Bassett Jones, by tests made with a 



