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here. On your right, by the first step, is a lamp, and 

 almost due east of this, on the border of the Drive, are 

 two very flourishing specimens of the groundsel tree. 

 If you have ever wandered over the salt meadows near 

 Coney Island in the Autumn, and seen the snow of the 

 groundsel tree's seed-pods fairly billowing over the 

 velvety sedge, your heart will give a leap of joy when 

 you come upon these bushes. At least, so it was with 

 me, the day I first found them here beside the Drive. 

 Instantly I saw the salt meadows, the flying white sea- 

 gulls turning in the sun; saw the drifting, rolling 

 sedges smoothing to the wind ; heard the sound of the 

 ocean surge and saw the white fluff of the groundsel 

 tree billowing over the tawny reaches of the marshes. 

 This snowy fluff of silvery white pappus which covers 

 the seeds so generously is the balloon that bears the 

 seeds on the breast of the wind, serving their disper- 

 sion. Each tiny little seed is loosed by the wind and 

 borne onward to its resting place by the wings of this 

 lovely, fairy-like fluff. The leaves of the shrub are 

 wedge-shaped, obovate and very coarsely toothed. The 

 branches are distinctly angled. 



Follow the Walk, still northerly, and just after you 

 pass, on your right, some fine old cottonwoods, easily 

 known by their towering trunks of heavily-ridged bark, 

 cross the Drive and strike the Lake-walk, where it 

 sends down a little side arm to the Lake itself. That 

 you may know the spot, a flowering dogwood stands 

 directly in the right-hand corner of this arm, and east 

 of the dogwood a cluster of tall, conical bald cypresses 



