The New York Botanical Garden

Vol. Ill DECEMBER, 1902 No. 36 JOURNAL The New York Botanical Garden EDITOR DANIEL TREMBLY MACDOUGAL Director of the Laboratories CONTENTS F&GB Some Historic Trees 213 A Remarkable Plant of a South American Tail-flower 221 Report of the Director-in-chief on his Visit to the Royal Gardens, Kew 223 Notes, News and Comment 224 Accessions 225 Death of Dr. Timothy F. Allen 232 Index 233 PUBLISHED FOR THE GARDEN AT 41 NORTH QUEEN STREET, LANCASTER, PA BY THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY OFFICERS, 1902. PRESIDENT—D. O. MILLS, VICE-PRESIDENT—ANDREW CARNEGIE, TREASURER—CHARLES F. COX, SECRETARY—N. L. BRITTON. BOARD OF- MANAGERS. 1. ELECTED MANAGERS. ANDREW CARNEGIE, J. PIERPONT MORGAN, CHARLES F. COX, GEORGE W. PERKINS, W. BAYARD CUTTING, JAMES A. SCRYMSER, WILLIAM E. DODGE, SAMUEL SLOAN, JOHN I. KANE, W. GILMAN THOMPSON, D. O. MILLS, SAMUEL THORNE. 2. EX-OFFICIO MANAGERS. THE PRESIDENT OF THE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC PARKS, HON. WILLIAM R. WILLCOX. THE MAYOR OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, HON. SETH LOW. 3. SCIENTIFIC DIRECTORS. PROF. L. M. UNDERWOOD, Chairman. HON. ADDISON BROWN, PROF. C. F. CHANDLER, HON. CHAS. C. BURLINGHAM, PROF. J. F. KEMP, DR. NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER, PROF. H. H. RUSBY, GARDEN STAFF. DR. N. L. BRITTON, Director-in-Chief. DR. D. T. MACDOUGAL, First Assistant. DR. JOHN K. SMALL, Curator of the Museums. DR. P. A. RYDBERG, Assistant Curator. DR. ARTHUR HOLLICK, Assistant Curator. DR. MARSHALL A. HOWE, Assistant Curator. F. S. EARLE, Assistant Curator. GEORGE V. NASH, Head Gardener. ANNA MURRAY VAIL, Librarian. DR. H. H. RUSBY, Curator of the Economic Collections. DR. WM. J. GIES, Consulting Chemist. COL. F. A. SCHILLING, Superintendent. JOHN R. BRINLEY, Landscape Engineer. WALTER S. GROESBECK, Clerk and Accountant. CORNELIUS VAN BRUNT, Honorary Floral Photographer. JOURNAL OF The New York Botanical Garden VOL. III. December, 1902. No. 36. SOME HISTORIC TREES.* Considering their abundance and their economic importance it is a curious circumstance that there is a widespread ignorance of our native trees. From a testing of class after class in botany for the past twenty-five years added to information derived from association with people in general, we have come to the con clusion that less than one per cent, of our population know ten trees accurately by name. Aside from the pine, the oak, the maple, and the elm which every one would be supposed to recog nize, but unfortunately does not, the ordinary trees, even those passed by daily for years are a sealed book to the great majority of our fellow citizens. An amusing illustration of this popular misinformation appeared a few years since in the successive issues of several of our New York papers. It commenced with Harper s Weekly which gave an elaborate account of the thirteen OAKS planted by Alexander Hamilton to commemorate the formation of the original states of the federal union. A little later the Spectator whose observations are to be found in the pages of The Outlook, took a short trip with a party about historic New York and in his account of the trip mentioned visiting the Hamilton MAPLES. Still later the Times gave one morning as a portion of " the news fit to print " an account of the dilapidated and neg lected condition in which one of its reporters found the Hamilton ELMS. This called out a reply from your lecturer stating the true nature of the trees, and the morning after it was printed * Lecture given in the autumn course at the Museum of the New York Botanical Garden, October 25, 1902. 213 214 came a letter from one of the grandsons of Alexander Hamilton stating that the trees were LIME TREES which his ancestor had ob- FlG. 28. The group of sweet gum trees planted by Alexander Hamilton, Con vent Ave. and 143rd St., New York city. From a recent photograph. tained from Mount Vernon on one of his visits to Washington. Now the facts of the case are that these trees are not oaks and 21T) not maples and not elms and not limes (or lindens) but plain straightforward examples of sweet gum (Liquidambar) a tree not uncommon in the native forests about New Yo k, and yet one whose corky-winged twigs are sometimes sold on the city streets as "the rare alligator-wood from the tropics." These trees stand on Convent avenue and 143rd street, nearly opposite the old Hamilton grange, and to the shame of the city's regard for the historic have been allowed to suffer neglect, and at present only one or two of them are living and the dead trunks still standing are covered with signs " for sale." With the rapid increase of building in the vicinity they are certain to pass speedily out of existence. Most trees, or at least those of the commoner sorts, are not difficult to recognize and that by very simple characters. Even a botanist of very fair ability might quail at certain of the critical species of oaks and hickories, but the greater number of even these groups are well-marked and unmistakable. Most trees have such pronounced characters that we ought to recognize them as easily as we recognize old friends, and their study has been greatly popularized by such works as those of Miss Keeler and Miss Lounsberry, and Miss Huntington's Trees in Winter. Most trees have characters that are to be found in the buds, in the leaves, in the bark, and in the general habit, so that by one or the other sets of characters they may be recognized in winter, spring, summer, or autumn. There is no more inviting and profi table field for amateur study in botany than among the trees, nor one that will yield surer, more pleasant, and more helpful results. Trees have been associated with human interests and human happiness since the earliest times. Way back before historic times the savage looked to certain trees for protection from the lightning and from other violent demonstrations of the elements, and came to regard certain trees with greater esteem than others. With the early dawning of the religious instinct, trees were asso ciated with early forms of worship and it was no mere poetical fancy that " the groves were God's first temples." The children of Israel found the Hamitic tribes, who occupied the promised 216 land upon their entry thereto, a race of tree worshippers, and the cutting down of the groves was a part of their work of destruc tion of the Hamitic idolatry, coordinate with the overturning of idols of wood, brass, and iron, and the destruction of heathen altars. Among the Mongolian races certain trees are held sacred and certain species whose allies have long since become extinct have been preserved to us in China and Japan by being planted and cared for about the temples. Even among the Celtic races the same conditions have prevailed to a certain extent. The Druids held the oak as a sacred tree and the practice was trans ferred to the Anglo-Saxons. Within the city of London a rail way station still bears the name of " Gcspel Oak " from the early practice of associating religious service with trees, and gospel oaks still exist in many parts of England where the name has not passed from the tree to the locality. It is perhaps not strange that the majesty of some of the grand old trees, more impressive than the aisles of the grandest cathedral man has formed, should lead men to cultivate the religious sentiment, for man's —" simple heart Might not resist the sacred influences Which from the stilly twilight of the place, And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound Of the invisible breath that swayed at once All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed His spirit with the thought of boundless power And inaccessible majesty." In more tropical lands, too, as the early inhabitants of America carried the elements of civilization across the Pacific, they carried with them the trees that were to them the most useful, and to day there is not a tropic isle in either hemisphere that is not girdled with a fringe of cocoanut palms, and on every sea-girt islet it is true for the native inhabitant that — " To him the palm is a gift divine, Wherein all uses of man combine — House and raiment and food and wine! " Besides the cocoanut palm other species stand in the same relation to island inhabitants. The date palm of the desert forms 217 the food of the Berber and in the recently added island of Puerto Rico the royal palm serves almost every possible use for the inhabitants from the siding of a house to the body of a saddle. Trees have long been the subjects of familiar allusion in litera ture ; there is no more delightful picture of forest life and forest scenery than Shakespeare's Forest of Arden in "As you like it" and many others besides Shakespeare and the banished duke have found "tongues in trees" and "books in the running brooks." Certain sorts of trees have suggested certain traits of character, as the oak of sturdiness, as in the case of the guard in Coriolanus who says of his general, " He is the rock, the oak not to be wind shaken," or again of toughness, as when the oak is mentioned as " unwedgeable," " hardest-timbered," "gnarled," and as possessing "knotty entrails." To the American poet a finer grain of sentiment is aroused by the white pine—" the mur muring pine," as in that most touching allusion to the burial of Hawthorne on that "hilltop hearsed with pines," which marks the last resting place of Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne, whose life-long friend said of it " I only hear above his place of rest Their tender undertone, The infinite longings of a troubled breast, The voice so like his own." Besides the oak and the pine, the lithe willow, the prickly holly, the bearded hemlock, the evergreen magnolia, and the spreading beech have all been the subject of the poet's song.

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