NANTUCKET TREES 17 



date 1870. 24 In this print trees are conspicuous only 

 for their small size and small number. Such trees as 

 we have today -would, in whaling days, have impeded the 

 view of anxious catchers from the "walks." Bicknell, 

 the outstanding authority for the Nantucket flora, 

 summed up in 1908 his observations upon introduced trees. 

 "The introduced trees number thirty-two, although only 

 one has become a strong structural element in the flora, 

 this being our native pitch pine which, history tells us, 

 vas first planted on Nantucket in the year 1847. Pew 

 other introduced trees have made such response to the 

 conditions that Nantucket has offered, although the 

 cockspur thorn is making itself at home there, and the 

 apple, the pear and the hybrid willow (Salix Smi ttii ana) 

 are sparingly more or less wide-spread. The Scotch pine 

 and the European larch have long formed an extensive and 

 increasing growth at the locality where they were ori- 

 ginally set out, and at a few places the locust and the 

 silver poplar are well established, but most of the other 

 trees are not much to be considered, and some number 

 only a few examples that have appeared spontaneously and 

 grown up in out-of-the-way places." 4 The many trees in- 

 cluded in my Key but not mentioned by Bicknell should 

 indicate that, in the generation since Bicknell 's time, 

 trees have increased on Nantucket notwithstanding the 

 handicap of poor soil and hurricane winds. With evi- 

 dences all over Nantucket of the havoc wrought by the 

 hurricanes of 1944 and 1945 we do not minimize this 

 handicap. As we see even native cedar and resistant 

 black pine burnt brown and see the heavy toll of up- 

 rooted trees, we find ourselves wondering that any trees 

 survive on Nantucket. 



The pitch pines of which Bicknell speaks were 

 planted along the Siasconset road by Josiah Sturgis in 

 1847. More were planted in 1854. 46 It is perhaps this 

 second planting of which Thoreau writes in his diary of 

 December, 1854. Capt . Edward-W. Gardner "is extensively 

 engaged in raising pines on the island. .. .He showed me 

 several lots of his, of different ages,... one tract of 

 three hundred acres sown in rows with a planter, where 

 the young trees, two years old, were just beginning to 

 green the ground, .. .and I saw one of Norway pine and our 



