The Plant World 



A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF POPULAR BOTANY. 



Vol. m. JULY, 1899. No. 10 



HISTORIC TREES OF NORTH AMERICA. 

 By VV. IV. Rozvlee. 



II. THE LIBERTY TREE OF ANNAPOLIS, MD. 



THE Washington Elm is more widely known than any historic 

 tree in America, but it must share with the Liberty Tree of 

 Annapolis the honor of playing a part in rocking the cradle of 

 Liberty. The Liberty Tree is a tulip-tree {Liriodcndron 

 Tnlipfcra), sometimes also called tulip-poplar. 



Tradition says that the people of Annapolis met in the troublous 

 days before the Revolution to consult together and listen to Samuel 

 Chase in his arraignment of King George. At that time its spread of 

 branches was far beyond anything known of it by this generation. It 

 is also a tradition that Washington and Lafayette banqueted in its 

 shade. They certainly were at different times in Annapolis and were 

 entertained at St. John's College, upon whose campus the tree stands. 



The tree now is quite hollow in the base and is large enough to 

 accommodate a table of reasonable size with four or five people 

 about it. 



Thorough the kindness of President Thomas Fell, of St. John's 

 College, the writer is able to quote from a history of Annapolis, the 

 following reference to the Liberty Tree : 



"The earliest traditions handed down to us of the imperial 

 poplar tree that adorns the College campus, is that it served as the 

 canopy under which the colonists and Indians made a treaty of peace. 

 As history records only one document of this kind signed here, this 

 treaty must have been the one agreed between the colonists and the 

 sturdy Susquehannocks in 1652. 



" The next public use of it, we find in Eddies' Letters, was when 

 the inhabitants assembled under it to determine whether or not per- 

 sons who have not joined the Association of Patriots should be driven 



