NOMAHEGAN PARK
Cranford, Union County, NJ
95 acres

Directions:

Garden State parkway south to exit 138. Head west; turn left onto Springfield Avenue. The parking area is across from the entrance to Union County College on Springfield Avenue.

History:

Nomahegan comes from Noluns Mohegan, "women Mohegans," derisive name by Iroquois for Lenape.

Facilities:

fishing, athletic fields, bicycle path, fitness trail, picnic areas and playground.  Home for the Jersey Jazz by The Lake festival held in September.

Trails:

Connections north to Lenape Park and then east to Black Brook and Galloping Hill Parks should theoretically exist, but Union County had not made the appropriate connecting trails.

We took a short walk from the children's playground into the swampy woods. We walked along the Pond which took us along a connecting waterway into the Rahway River. There were some informal trails off the main trail, but the area was too wet to really bushwhack through (it had rained the previous night).

PLANT LIST:
Dr. Patrick L. Cooney

Trees:
Acer negundo (box elder maple)
Acer rubrum (red maple)
Liquidambar styraciflua (sweetgum)
Platanus occidentalis (American sycamore)
Quercus alba (white oak)
Quercus palustris (pin oak)
Quercus rubra (red oak)

Shrubs:
Ligustrum sp. (privet)
Rosa multiflora (multiflora rose)
Viburnum prunifolium (blackhaw viburnum)

Vines:
Celastrus orbiculatus (Asiatic bittersweet)
Smilax sp. (greenbrier)
Toxicodendron radicans (poison ivy)

Herbs:
Alliaria petiolata (garlic mustard)
Geum sp. (avens)
Plantago lanceolata (English plantain)
Polygonum cuspidatum (Japanese knotweed)
Rumex obtusifolius (broad dock)

Sedges:
Carex laxiflora type (loose-flowered sedge type)

Grasses:
Panicum clandestinum (deer-tongue grass)