In the " Ramble " — Fourth Excursion 



be a display of large compound leaves, or possibly, as in 

 some magnolias, huge simple leaves a foot or two long : 

 with such verdure there is no place for twigs. Winter's 

 harsh angularity is thus atoned for. But one who is 

 not a botanist has no such knowledge wherewith to keep 

 his courage up, and turns in some disgust from the un- 

 sightly figure. Six months of the year it may properly 

 be said of the Kentucky coffee-tree that it is not fit to 

 live, "cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?" 

 Throughout May, all but the expert would declare it 

 dead. But early in June it begins to awake from its 

 long stupor, and slowly to put forth its leaves — and such 

 leaves ! The observer wonders if they will ever reach 

 their full dimensions ; on and on, foot after foot, the 

 compound leaf unrolls; doubly compound, in fact, 

 until it sometimes attains the enormous dimensions of 

 three feet long and two feet wide, containing over a 

 hundred leaflets, each of itself a sizable leaf. With such 

 a task before it, no wonder it procrastinates its budding 

 every spring. This is the largest of all native leaves, 

 beautifully symmetrical, dark green when mature, and 

 bright yellow in autumn. Its name comes from the fact 

 that the first immigrants to Kentucky used its berries as 

 a substitute for coffee — needless to say, a poor substitute, 

 and soon dispensed with for the genuine article. Few 

 comparatively have even heard of the tree, for, though 

 widely distributed in the country (though never in New 

 England), it is one of the rarest, and never grows in 

 clusters — is not gregarious, as we say of animals ; not 

 social, speaking humanly. I have seen but one speci- 

 men in the Park, on a slight elevation on the east side 

 "7 



