NEW AMSTERDAM GARDENS 65 



Long Island. The dogwood is the only tree answering 

 his description, and this lacks two "petals" of filling it; 

 for he says that the flowers have six petals, whereas 

 the dogwood flowers have only four bracts. I fancy 

 this a mistake in count, however, for the rest of what 

 he says is so exactly the account of Cornus florida, and 

 of nothing else, that he must have remembered wrong, 

 or his printer played him false. One other possibility 

 there is, though a very slight one; the "morning star" 

 was a mediaeval weapon consisting of a ball, spiked 

 hideously, hung on the end of a chain which depended 

 from a great club. One kind of thistle has been 

 known by this name, from its resemblance to this 

 spiked ball. But this is not a flower of sufficient 

 beauty to attract mention in a list like Van der 

 Donck's; and I am inclined to believe he meant the 

 flowering dogwood, for this alone was really new to 

 him, and is of course of striking beauty. 



"Maritoffles" are, to the best of my belief and 

 ability to declare, lady-slippers, "Mary's Slippers," 

 literally — the wild Cypripedium pubescens^ C. specta- 

 bile and C. acaule furnishing the yellow, the white and 

 the red — ^not actually red to be sure, but a shade dif- 

 ficult for the inexperienced to define, therefore called 

 red by Van der Donck, that being as near it as he could 

 come. 



The kitchen garden products are introduced with 



