Feathers

This fragrant tree full of white feathery blossoms caught my eye as I cycled through Battle Pass yesterday. It is a Fringe Tree, Chionanthus virginicus (thanks to Flatbush Gardener for the ID).

The blooms surrounded this stern eagle atop a granite plinth. And the plinth marks the site where the Dongan Oak was felled by Revolutionary troops to delay the onslaught of the Redcoats during the Battle of Brooklyn. (The oak, named after an early governor of the area, was one of those colonial borderland markers, along with assorted ditches, hills and boulders, cited in early land records; this tree demarcated the border between the towns of Brooklyn and Flatbush.) One wonders why the Battle of Brooklyn sites are not hallowed in a national park, à la Gettysburg. One possibility: This is New York City. Another possibility: We got walloped ignominiously in this early defeat (although Washington slunk back nobly across the harbor—Washington could slink nobly, I'm certain—and regrouped to fight another day. Or several years, actually.)  At any rate, the eagle keeps watch over hundreds of joggers, cyclists, and stroller-pushers who zip past, most of whom probably have no notion of the bloody drama that unfolded here back in colonial days.

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[Xris (Flatbush Gardener)]

Fringe Tree, Chionanthus virginicus.