INTRODUCTION 
The trees at the Missouri Botanical Garden are enchanting throughout the 
year in their grandeur, colors, shapes, and histories. The floral display is 
most dazzling in the spring with cherries, flowering crabs, plums, and 
magnolias. The trees are coolly shady and enticing in the summer, and 
the fall colors rival the spring flowers for showiness. Even in winter, 
beauty shows forth in stark silhouettes, persistent fruits, and patterned 
barks. Our trees come from around the Northern Hemisphere; repre- 
sented are wild species, hybrids, and old and new cultivated selections. 
They offer inspiration and examples for landscaping, lessons in recogniz- 
ing native and exotic species, and surprises. As you get to know the Gar- 
den’s trees, you will discover curious roles in human affairs, tricky polli- 
nation mechanisms, and sundry charming and fascinating stories ranging 
from microscopic details to global trends, and from ancient cultures to 
high technology. The aim of this guidebook is to capture some of these 
highlights for the most prominent trees of the Garden. It is meant to add 
joy to a walk around the grounds and to observing trees wherever you en- 
counter them. 
The site of the Garden was originally prairie, and when Henry Shaw 
founded it in 1859 the Garden was virtually devoid of trees. No trees 
presently standing are older than the Garden. A few charter members of 
the tree collection are still with us, and are pointed out in this guidebook. 
In the earliest years, the northwestern portion of the grounds was an 
arboretum, which through the action of storms (including the tornado of 
1897), disease, air pollution, and age has almost vanished, although three 
large bald cypresses near the southwest corner of the visitor parking lot 
remind modern visitors of the original arboretum. Much of the opposite 
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