SAND DUNES AND SALT MARSHES 



glows in many a sandy hollow. Its fruit, how- 

 ever, is brown in color and comparatively in- 

 conspicuous. 



The sumach family is an interesting and 

 beautiful one. Three of the tribe occur in the 

 dunes, and of these the staghorn sumach de- 

 serves first place with its thickets of brown, 

 hairy branches in the spring, very suggestive 

 of a stag's antlers in the velvet. Its wealth of 

 dark green foliage in the summer is tropical 

 and palm-like in appearance, and its flame-col- 

 ored masses of fruit in the autumn are borne 

 aloft like so many torches on the ends of the 

 branches. Its great compound leaves, before 

 they drop, rival the fruit in color. Unlike the 

 staghorn, the poison sumach or dogwood is 

 decidedly uncommon, and is easily distin- 

 guished from it by its more delicate leaflets, 

 its reddish leaf stalks and its white fruit. The 

 last of this group in this seashore region, the 

 poison ivy, abounds in every grove and 

 thicket, and there is no more beautiful vine, 

 with its shining green leaves which change to 

 wonderful shades of yellow and red in the fall, 

 and on whose bare winter branches hang clus- 

 ters of greenish yellow berries. 



Perhaps the most beautiful common bush of 



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