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You can easily know this tree by its beautifully-cut 

 leaves, which make you think of ferns the moment 

 you see them. You can know it in winter by its light 

 gray, smooth bark, and by its long-pointed, brownish, 

 cigar-shaped buds. These long-pointed, cigar-like 

 buds are the sure winter mark of the beech. They 

 are distinctive of the beech alone, and you can be posi- 

 tive of the tree's identity from their testimony alone. 



Nearer the Walk again, as you go on, growing low 

 down, on your right, with closely-clumped, bayonet-like 

 leaves, is the Yucca filamentosa, or Adam's needle. In 

 midsummer it sends up a long, straight shaft several 

 feet high from its midst and from the top of this shaft 

 or scape the plant throws out its handsome bloom, large, 

 showy, white flowers, delicately tinted with green on 

 the outside. It belongs to the lily farnily, and is some- 

 times called palm lily. Another common name for it 

 is silk grass, though it is probably more generally 

 known by the name "Adam's Needle." Back of the 

 Adam's Needle you will see a handsome evergreen. 

 Its fine feather-spray of leaves, so distinctly plume- 

 like in appearance, with the rather conical or pyramidal 

 form of the conifer, will easily identify it for you. It 

 is a Chamsecyparis (ground cypress) or a Retinospora 

 (that is, it has a resin sac in its seed) of the variety 

 plumosa. For fineness of effect among the Japan arbor 

 vitae, the foliage of the plumosa (with its golden- 

 leaved variety aurea) is surpassingly beautiful. 



Close by the Walk, as you go, at your right still, low 

 down and growing about a foot high, you will see 

 bushes with very willow-like looking leaves. These 



