77 



reach of branch and bough. The upper parts of the 

 tree and the smaller branches are of a dusky sooty 

 blackish gray, and the buds and end branches are red- 

 dish in winter. In June the European linden breaks 

 open its starry flowers in cyme-like clusters from leaf- 

 like bracts. The five white petals open wide and show 

 the pin-head stamens standing clear and fair without 

 any petal-like scale attached (as in our bass wood). 

 They are very fragrant, and at night their perfume is 

 almost heavy. When you are studying the flowers of 

 the linden, note that the European silver linden has 

 the petal scale attached to the stamens, whereas the 

 common European linden (Tilia Europcea) has it not. 

 The fruit of the European linden is faintly five-angled. 

 In this it varies from the silver linden, whose fruit is 

 quite strongly five-angled. 



Just beyond this rock, or series of rocks, the Walk 

 and the Bridle Path bend in close together, on the 

 right. Where they approach, at the nearest, there are 

 two honey locusts and an English maple. The honey 

 locusts you know by their smooth, blackish bark, beset 

 with long-pronged thorns, and by their compound 

 leaves of small, elliptic, oval leaflets ; the English maple, 

 by its squarish-lobed leaves and thick set stocky form. 



As you go on northwards, some little distance beyond 

 and out upon the Ball Ground itself, you come to a 

 boulder standing poised with firm base on a rock. Just 

 northwest of this stands a tree which will surely inter- 

 est you. It is Prunus Mahaleb, the Mahaleb cherry of 

 middle and southern Europe and of the Caucasus. In 

 May it throws out its fragrant flowers, in corymb-like 



