NANTUCKET TREES 29 



forest growth. In the open it attains a tall symmetry 

 with columnar trunk. The spreading tulip tree in the 

 Folger yard across the street from North Church has evi- 

 dently felt Nantucket's winds as Ita branches begin 

 lower than is normal. The leaf of the tulip tree is dis- 

 tinctive, with palmate veins like a maple but with square- 

 cut lobes and a re-entrant angle at the tip. In May the 

 tree bears large yellow-green blossoms which have some 

 slight resemblance to a tulip. The blossoms are really 

 more like the Magnolia to which Liriodendron is related. 

 There are a few large shrubs of the early-flowering 

 Magnolia, Magnolia Soulangeana Soul., around town; one on 

 Winter Street might rank as a tree. The fine example of 

 Magnolia acuminata L., the cucumber tree, is scarcely 

 known. It stands in the yard of the Gables, Broad Street. 



Catalpas in Nantucket are the survivors of the 

 young trees which Gilchrist Company of Boston distributed 

 in 1911 to school children throughout the state. This 

 is recorded in the Nantucket School Report of 1911. "in 

 the Spring, 1911, one thousand Catalpa trees were offered 

 freely to the schools by the Gilchrist Company of Boston, 

 Mass. The offer was accepted and several of the trees 

 are alive and doing well at the Academy Hill grounds." 38 

 Mrs. Charles Clark Coffin reports for the children: "i 

 can remember my sister and I taking our trees home and. 

 planting them, and seeing them both grow and blossom, 

 only to be cut down for some reason later'." 8 Vissitudes 

 must have been heavy through these 35 years for today 

 only an occasional Catalpa strews the ground in June 

 with its exotic-looking blossoms. 



Evergreens, or more exactly, Gymnosperms, are 

 not abundant in town but there are a few interesting 

 specimens. The Ginkgo should stand first as a Gymnosperm 

 which is neither cone-bearing nor evergreen. Ginkgo 

 biloba L. is a tree with a history. It is one of the 

 few broad-leaved Gymno3perms^, relic of an age when more 

 moisture and warmth in the north temperate latitudes 

 made a paradise for great trees. Fossil records prove 

 the Ginkgo once grew abundantly in North America but in 

 this present age it is native only in China. 23 The 

 Ginkgo in the yard of the Eagle Wing Studio on Union 

 Street must have stood there for many years. Young 



