54 BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN MEMOIRS 



Lighthouse there are high bluffs rising from the sea sometimes as much as 

 75-100 feet, which is a considerable height for Montauk. There is thus a 

 large area more or less in the lee stretching from east of Prospect Hill to 

 the Lighthouse and from just back of the coastal bluffs more than half way 

 to the shore of Gardiner's Bay. Not all of this area is covered with shrubs 

 and trees, but the better part of it is. So dense is the growth in many places 

 that it is practically impenetrable. Trees up to thirty feet are common 

 enough in the lower parts of this region and only on the very top of some of 

 the highest Downs is the expected grassland vegetation found. The density 

 of the growth, diversity of the species found there is immediately noticeable 

 to the casual traveler, after he leaves Great Pond to go toward the Light- 

 house. Where before one has been traveling over little more than easily 

 diverted trails over the grassland, from where the woods begin to the 

 Lighthouse, the road winds in and out among hills, it is true, but here they 

 are mostly covered with a dense growth of woody plants. No very careful 

 study has been made of this region, the largest in area and probably the 

 richest in species of plants at Montauk. One reason for this is the difficulty 

 of getting about, and the other is that here the process of forestation is so 

 far along that there is not the interest as in other parts of Montauk, where, 

 as it were, things are in the making, rather than as at this place, they are 

 very nearly made over. It is only because of the wind, which, while con- 

 siderably reduced in its action, is by no means impotent, that this woody 

 growth at Montauk Point is not higher. It may well be ultimately as 

 high as the forest on Gardiner's Island, and before the great storm of 23 

 September, 1815, it was said to be so. (See the section on climate in 

 "Factors of Control.") 



As a record of what has been observed in these woods at Montauk 

 Point, which as here defined means the region from Prospect Hill and the 

 cottages east of Ditch Plain to the Lighthouse, the plants peculiar to or 

 characteristic of the Point have been so designated in the list of plants of 

 Montauk, which is the final section of this sketch. 



No mere list of species, however, would convey an idea of the heavy 

 growth of shrubs and trees in this region of Montauk. The trees are mostly 

 as large as at Hither Woods, but the diversity of environment, for there 

 are several ponds, bogs, and swamps, is such that the number of different 

 species is greater than all other parts of Montauk combined. In the boggy 

 places, about the end of May this part of the peninsula is aflame with 

 Arethusa bulbosa, in fact it is more common here than elsewhere within the 

 observation of the writer.* It is here too that Kneiffia AUenii, a plant 



* Mr. Edward S. Miller, who with H. W. Young, wrote a "Catalog of the Plants of 

 Suffolk County," in 1874, and who lives at Wading River, reports that Arethusa is probably 

 more common in the bogs north of Manorville, than anywhere else on Long Island. 



