NEW AMSTERDAM GARDENS 65 
Long Island. The dogwood is the only tree answering 
his description, and this lacks two “petals” of filling it; 
for he says that the flowers have six petals, whereas 
the dogwood flowers have only four bracts. I fancy 
this a mistake in count, however, for the rest of what 
he says is so exactly the account of Cornus florida , and 
of nothing else, that he must have remembered wrong, 
or his printer played him false. One other possibility 
there is, though a very slight one; the “morning star” 
was a mediaeval weapon consisting of a ball, spiked 
hideously, hung on the end of a chain which depended 
from a great club. One kind of thistle has been 
known by this name, from its resemblance to this 
spiked ball. But this is not a flower of sufficient 
beauty to attract mention in a list like Van der 
Donck’s; and I am inclined to believe he meant the 
flowering dogwood, for this alone was really new to 
him, and is of course of striking beauty. 
“Maritoffies” are, to the best of my belief and 
ability to declare, lady-slippers, “Mary’s Slippers,” 
literally—the wild Cypripedium pubescens, C. specta- 
bile and C. acaule furnishing the yellow, the white and 
the red—not actually red to be sure, but a shade dif¬ 
ficult for the inexperienced to define, therefore called 
red by Van der Donck, that being as near it as he could 
come. 
The kitchen garden products are introduced with 
