Photograph by Arthur E. Anderson 

 THE TOPOGRAPHY OE THE DUNES LENDS ITSELF TO THE FORMATION OF MARVELOUS 



PLANT SOCIETIES 



this wonderland of sandy beach and for- 

 ested lake shore. 



The outlines of the dunes are always 

 graceful ; for Nature, though sometimes 

 cruel, displays wonderful skill as an 

 artist, and the exposed wind-carved sands 

 are arranged in beautiful curves and out- 

 lines against the sky. 



The topography of the dunes lends it- 

 self to the formation of marvelous plant 

 societies : great shallow ponds, with their 

 typical borders of marsh-loving plants ; 

 deep, sheltered hollows, perfectly dry at 

 the bottom ; active stream beds, thickly 

 fringed with willows, alders, and button- 

 bush, with thickets of giant mallows on 

 the mucky shores ; north slopes, with 

 trailing arbutus, wintergreen, partridge 

 berry, hepaticas, and violets, and rare 

 ferns and orchids spread in artistic pro- 

 fusion ; moving dunes, whose leeward 

 sides extend slowly and surely south, in 

 time covering even tall trees, with their 

 smothering blanket of sand; old dunes, 

 clothed to their crests with vegetation, 

 and at intervals "blow-outs," where re- 



verse winds have uncovered ghostly tree 

 trunks, gray and weather-beaten and en- 

 tirely denuded of bark, but the wood still 

 sound and perfectly preserved by the 

 sand shroud with which it was sur- 

 rounded. 



PLANT LIFE OF MARVELOUS VARIETY 



Many trees adapt themselves to the 

 severe conditions on the more exposed 

 dunes, frequently sending out roots from 

 the trunk to take advantage of the en- 

 croaching sand, and if again uncovered 

 the roots immediately function as 

 branches. This is particularly true of 

 the cottonwood, which also sends out 

 roots of remarkable length close to the 

 surface of the sand, in this way making 

 use of surface moisture (see page 430). 



Trees, shrubs, and many plants from 

 the far north grow side by side with 

 others whose natural habitat is many 

 miles south of the lake, and the plant life 

 is bewildering to the uninitiated and a 

 joy to the botanist. The combination of 

 underlying sand and humus, with abum 



435 



