If you really, really need a walk in the woods, but can't drive up the Hudson, head for the Native Flora Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Pretend that the not-too-distant sound of Flatbush Avenue traffic is the rushing of a mountain stream. (This garden does have a stream, but not a rushing one.) Carefully curated for more than a century to reflect the real Northeast, this reliably uncrowded path was magnificent yesterday.
The names of our native trees are a kind of poetry. Scarlet oak. According to its tag, it ranges from Maine to Michigan, and as far south as Georgia and Mississippi.
Sugar maple, yes the kind that gives us pancake syrup, with spectacular rainbows within a single leaf. It's the state tree, not just of Vermont, but of New York, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Sassafras, with its mitten-shaped leaves and root-beer-scented bark.
Black tupelo, another ravishing red. Also called sour gum, an irony since it is prized for the honey bees make from it.
And the fallen leaves of a tupelo tree provided gaudy camoflauge for the Blurry Bird of the Day, a reminder that this garden makes it worth your while to look both underfoot...
...and overhead.
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