Open Space

The next stop on my tour of Franklin parks was this little spot, which I have been meaning to visit for a year now.



I don't yet know the history of Mr. DelCarte's Open Space, but it includes a lovely pond.

Please excuse my awful photos. I wrangled a stroller (baby included) down a muddy, rooty, steep path to get this far. Plus, it was raining.

I didn't want to put Gabe through the torture of bumping along the path that turned to follow the banks of the pond, so I didn't see much aside from the soggy Autumn view. However, one plant did catch my eye:



I'm pretty sure it's an American chestnut, Castanea dentata. That dark mass at the bottom of the second photo is a stump. Between fifty and a hundred years ago, this tree was reduced to a stump by the chestnut blight. It still lives, but like almost all of that last generation of American chestnuts, it will never produce offspring.