FIELD TRIPS OF THE CLUB 



SWAMP SURVIVALS NEAR MOONACHIE, 

 NEW JERSEY 



The field trip of the Club, on Saturday afternoon, June 19, 

 in the surviving area of the swampy woods of the Hackensack 

 Meadows, south of the Paterson Plank Road, near Moonachie, 

 N. J., between Secaucus and Carlstadt, was exciting as well as 

 interesting, for the small but doughty party reached the spot in 

 machine-gun showers of hailstones as big as, well, cherries, and 

 before entering the swamp, was driven to the shelter of an 

 automobile by another fusillade from a thunderstorm, also with 

 hail. After that it stopped raining, but it was so wet in the woods 

 that it might as well have rained, as far as clothes were con- 

 cerned. 



This is one of the most interesting places for botanical study 

 near New York, from which it is but six miles in a straight line, 

 and is easily reached by bus or trolley via 23rd street ferry to 

 North Hoboken, and along the Plank Road through Secaucus, 

 to Washington avenue, in the southern part of Moonachie 

 Township, 3/4 mile west of the Hackensack River Bridge. It is 

 surprising to find there Rhododendron maximum, as reported 52 

 years ago by Dr. N. L. Britton, although it is not in very healthy 

 condition, much of it seems blighted and some has been dam- 

 aged by boys picking the flowers to sell to motorists on the high- 

 way. Magnolia virginiana, the Laurel Magnolia, frequent here, 

 suffers from the same vandalism, but seems to sustain it better. 

 One sees specimens which have been pulled over to break flower 

 clusters from their tops, and often the main trunks have been 

 broken near the butt by this abuse, but they have mended 

 themselves in a prone position and the lateral branches have 

 grown upright and produced more blooms, again to be ravaged 

 by the roadside flower sellers. 



Chamaecyparis tkyoides, the Southern White Cedar, which 

 once covered hundreds of acres in the Hackensack Meadows, 

 is represented in this swamp by many large stumps three feet in 

 diameter, probably cut 75 years ago or more, which must have 

 been extraordinarily large specimens; by some smaller dead 

 standing trees and by a very few small and unthrifty living 

 trees; it does not seem destined to survive here much longer. 



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