232 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



in a cool, moist situation ; and it is nowhere more vigorous than 

 along the rivers of Pennsylvania and Virginia, and especially 

 on the Ohio and its tributaries. The elder Michaux measured 

 a buttonwood growing on a little island in the Ohio, fifteen 

 miles above the mouth of the Muskingum, and found its girth, 

 at five feet from the ground, to be forty feet four inches. Gen- 

 eral Washington had measured the same tree twenty years 

 before, and found it to be of nearly the same size. In 1802, 

 the younger Michaux and his companions, found a large tree 

 of this kind on the right bank of the Ohio, thirty-six miles 

 from Marietta. Its base was swollen in an extraordinary man- 

 ner, but, at four feet from the ground, its circumference was 

 found to be forty -seven feet. 



The buttonwood is remarkable for the rapidity of its growth, 

 especially when standing near water. Loudon mentions one 

 which, standing near a pond, had, in twenty years, attained 

 the height of eighty feet, with a trunk eight feet in circumfer- 

 ence at three feet from the ground, and a head of the diameter 

 of forty-eight feet. The buttonwood has been cultivated in 

 England more than two hundred years, having been introduced 

 about 1630. In 1S09, it had become more common than the 

 oriental plane, but in May of that year a severe frost is sup- 

 posed to have killed the young shoots of many of the largest 

 trees of this species throughout the Island. In Scotland, where 

 trees of both species were growing near each other, the oriental 

 escaped, while the occidental were generally injured. Many 

 died that year or in the summer of 1810, after making an in- 

 effectual effort to push their leaves. According to the observa- 

 tion of Lang, only the large trees perished. But the severe 

 winter of 1813 — '14, destroyed many of those which had es- 

 caped in 1809. 



It seems very doubtful, from the account given of this mal- 

 ady, whether it is referred to its true cause. Lang says, 

 " Trees from twenty to twenty-five feet in height were little 

 hurt; and smaller ones not at all." This looks very little like 

 the action of frost. 



The buttonwoods, throughout New England, were affected 

 in a similar manner, but less severely, in the springs of 1842, 



