FIELD TRIPS OF THE CLUB 
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 
Croton Point, extending into the Hudson from Harmon, and 
dividing the Tappan Zee from Haverstraw Bay, proved a new 
and interesting objective for the club on the field meeting of 
Saturday afternoon, Sept. 12. The rounded and lobate contours 
of this recessional moraine, the dump of the Pleistocene ice 
sheets when they had decayed back from their farthest south 
at New York Bay, and had halted for a time 30 miles up the 
river, are quite similar to the kettle moraines of Long Island. 
The wooded areas, comprising about half the area, are of second 
growth deciduous trees, including some fine black oaks at the 
east end, red and white oaks elsewhere, beeches, gray birches, 
red maples and some fine copses of sassafras. The point was 
once under cultivation for fields and vineyards and the mansion, 
wine cellars and other buildings of the estates formerly occupied 
there, are interesting relics of former years. The Point is now 
preserved as one of the units of the Westchester County Park 
system, which has, so far, modified the conditions found upon 
acquisition very little, and it would seem as if further develop- 
ment might retain much of the area without artificial changes. 
The salt marshes bordering the point and occupying the 
lowlands between the moraine lobes, are filled with purple 
loosestrife, rose mallow, both broad and narrow leaved cat- 
tails, Phragmites communis, and water arum, and the seaside 
goldenrod was coming into bloom. An interesting but irritating 
plant was the bur-grass, Cenchrus tribuloides, with its spiny 
seeds suggestive, as the specific name indicates, of the tribuli of 
the Romans, caltrops of medieval military usage, spiked globes 
thrown before horses to break up a cavalry charge. Dense beds 
of the partridge pea, Cassia Chamaecrista, with the leaflets 
folding back upon the midrib at a touch, were frequent. Brack- 
ish ponds on the south shore, emptying by rills across the beach 
at low tide, contain Ceratophyllum and Zostera. A colony of the 
great lobelia offered a fine touch of color. 
Two large gingkos, part of the early ornamental planting of 
the estate, offered a strange contrast beside a copse of sassafras. 
The English hawthorn has escaped from early planting and was 
in dense fruit on the south side. The water hemp, Acnida can- 
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