Button Island is a small

island An island or isle is a piece of land, distinct from a continent, completely surrounded by water. There are continental islands, which were formed by being split from a continent by plate tectonics, and oceanic islands, which have never been ...

in the

Hingham Bay Hingham Bay is the easternmost of the three small bays of outer Boston Harbor, part of Massachusetts Bay and forming the western shoreline of the town of Hull and the northern shoreline of Hingham in the United States state of Massachusetts. It ...

area of

Boston Harbor Islands National and State Park Boston Harbor Islands National and State Park is a combination national recreation area and state park situated among the islands of Boston Harbor. The park is made up of 34 islands and peninsulas and is managed by the Boston Harbor Islands Par ...

. The island has a permanent size of under , plus an

intertidal zone The intertidal zone or foreshore is the area above water level at low tide and underwater at high tide; in other words, it is the part of the littoral zone within the tidal range. This area can include several types of habitats with various ...

of a further . The island rises 10 feet in elevation and is composed primarily of glacial till. The island is managed by the town of Hingham. The island is notable for a large

oak An oak is a hardwood tree or shrub in the genus ''Quercus'' of the beech family. They have spirally arranged leaves, often with lobed edges, and a nut called an acorn, borne within a cup. The genus is widely distributed in the Northern Hemisp ...

tree. Several smaller but mature oaks, linden cedars, and sumacs cover the island. Shrub species include

bayberry ''Myrica'' is a genus of about 35–50 species of small trees and shrubs in the family Myricaceae, order Fagales. The genus has a wide distribution, including Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and South America, and missing only from Antarc ...

and dewberry. Grasses and

sea lavender ''Limonium'' is a genus of about 600 flowering plant species. Members are also known as sea-lavender, statice, caspia or marsh-rosemary. Despite their common names, species are not related to the lavenders or to rosemary. They are instead in Plu ...

are abundant in the tidal zone.

References

Islands of Plymouth County, Massachusetts Boston Harbor islands Hingham, Massachusetts Coastal islands of Massachusetts {{PlymouthCountyMA-geo-stub