Trees, Shrubs and Vines 
It is difficult to conceive of a more extraordinary, deli- 
cate, and beautiful shrub than the Tamarix, or Tama- 
risk. It is an exclusively foreign genus, and it can truly 
be said, there is nothing more charmingly singular in the 
Park than the few specimens scattered here and there. 
The finest is the African, its lithe, willowy branches 
literally buried in the countless tiny blossoms of early 
spring before a leaf appears. Yet the climax is not in 
the bloom, but in the full-foliaged effect, its million 
leaves as minute as the lobes of the most delicate fern, 
making the entire shrub a misty mass of translucent 
green, too ethereal for description. The first view of 
such an one as is found in the ‘‘ Ramble’’ can only be 
greeted with an exclamation. This will seem fulsome 
praise only to those who have never beheld the plant, 
and are not imaginative enough to picture it. Nature 
was in her most poetic mood when she devised the 
African tamarisk, and when she came out of it she fell 
to making the Jersey scrub pine and persimmon. 
Within a few years a unique type of foliage ornamen- 
tation has come into great favor, in the curious, finely 
cut, and richly tinted leaves of Japanese maples—shrubs 
in size but arboreal in figure, and forming one of the 
most delightful contributions of that favored land to our 
Western sylva. From the leaf one would never dream 
that these were maples, but the winged fruit is an un- 
mistakable sign of kinship to our popular species. The 
blossom, as a rule, is an inconspicuous feature in these, 
as in European and most American maples, but the 
pink flower of Acer japonicum is very pretty. A species 
becoming widely cultivated is 4. polymorphum, with a 
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