Along the Lakeside — Third Excursion 



throw their limbs about in a most awkward, sprawling 

 fashion, and know nothing of grace and symmetry. 

 Yet occasionally a less uncouth specimen towers upward 

 in symmetrical dignity, much like the mountain-mag- 

 nolia. Such a tree in full bloom is a revelation. Its 

 bark is so distinctive as readily to identify the species, 

 but it is not an interesting feature of the tree. In fall 

 it hangs full of pods a foot long or more that remain 

 all winter and give the plant the name of Indian bean. 

 It is a thrifty species, easily cultivated both from slips 

 and from seed, and the Park contains many specimens, 

 especially the " Ramble" and southward. 



Angelica - tree. — A real arboreal curiosity, that 

 looks, more than anything else in the Park, as if made 

 when nature was in one of her tantrums — if she ever gets 

 into that undignified state — is a plant euphemistically 

 called angelica-tree ; but one finds its nature much 

 better expressed in its two other more fitting names, 

 Hercules' Club and Devil's Walking-stick, which state 

 frankly and fairly the character of this savage little beast 

 of vegetation. 



Imagine a grim-looking stump ten to fifteen feet high 

 and tapering gradually to the apex, scarcely branching 

 except toward the top, beset throughout with long sharp 

 spines, and from the summit throwing off in close suc- 

 cession a series of immense doubly or trebly compound 

 leaves sometimes over three feet long and two or more in 

 breadth, and one will understand the remarkable appear- 

 ance of this strange growth. Stripped of its foliage, 

 Hercules could not have asked for a better club, and for 

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