II. 



BATTLE PASS TO FLOWER GARDEN. 



Starting- from the drive crossing at Battle Pass 

 and following the Walk south, the first shrubs you 

 will pass on your right are well grown bushes of Cali- 

 fornian privet and Cornelian cherry (Cornus mascula). 

 The Cornelian cherry bears greenish yellow flowers, 

 which are among the first to open in the spring. It 

 belongs to the dogwood (Cornus) family, and its 

 flowers, when fully out, bunch in clusters along its 

 branches in a way that makes you think of "bachelor's 

 buttons." The flowers develop in the summer to 

 beautiful light yellow berries, which in the early fall 

 change to shining scarlet. Further along, on the right 

 again, are English cork bark elm, and about opposite 

 the end of the Shelter over on the left of the Walk, 

 is American hornbeam. The hornbeam can be iden- 

 tified by its bark alone smooth, and often streaked 

 with fine silvery lines. It is impossible to mistake its 

 smooth, hard, muscular look, its clean-cut trunk and 

 boughs with their swelling ridges which suggest bare 

 muscles. There are many hornbeams in the Park, both 

 native and European. The native hornbeam (Carpi- 

 mis Caroliniana) is also called water-beech or blue- 

 beech, and certainly the leaf is very much like both 

 the beech and the birch, but more like the latter, how- 



