ARBORICULTURE 



A MONTHLY MAGAZINE 



Published in the Interest of the 

 Intern ATioNAi, Society of Arboriculture. 



Subscription $1.00 per annum. 



John P. Brown, Editor and Publisher, Connersville, Indiana. 



Entered as Second-class Matter January 4th, 1904. 



Volume v. 



Connersville, Indiana, February, 1906. 



Number 2. 



History Written in a Tree Trunk. 



A WHITE ASH STORY. 



LIBRARY 

 NEW YORK 

 BOTANICAL 



GARDEN. 



On New Year's Day, A. D. 1906, 

 there was standing on a side track of 

 the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton 

 Rail^yay, a flat car which was laden 

 with ten white ash logs, a small remnant 

 of the great forests for which Indiana 

 was once noted. 



The logs were knotty and badly de- 

 cayed at the heart, except the one which 

 attracted our attention. 



A dozen years ago these logs would 

 not have been looked at by any saw- 

 mill operator, but now "anything goes" — 

 mill men are glad to buy even such culls 

 as these. 



The larger log was thirty inches in 

 diameter and had grown to this size in 

 118 years, the seed having started into 

 growth in the spring of 1787. Its aver- 

 age annual diameter increase was 

 slightly less than one-fourth inch. 



Had conditions been as favorable dur- 

 ing its entire life as they were during the 

 ^ middle period, this tree would have been 

 3^ five feet diameter, instead of thirty 

 I inches. But we anticipate. 

 lO The annual growth, as shown by the 

 X] concentric rings at the end of the log, 



during th€ first thirty-two years of this 

 tree's life was almost imperceptible, the 

 lines being but one-thirty-second part of 

 an inch apart. Each year it had added 

 one-sixteenth inch to its diameter. 



Evidently its struggle for existence 

 during this third of a century must have 

 been very severe, crowded among 2,722 

 other infantile ash and other trees, each 

 striving to secure its share of the quart 

 of water which fell as rain or snow on a 

 square-foot surface during an entire 

 week of the growing season, as that 

 water contained in solution those ele- 

 ments of fertility necessary for exist- 

 ence, of even a slow-growing tree, it 

 having gathered up this matter while 

 percolating through the six inches depth 

 of soil whicfi the roots of this ash had 

 appropriated. For it is known that even 

 the most voracious members of the vege- 

 table kingdom may partake of that food 

 only which had been dissolved by water. 



Resins, gums, varnish, rubber and 

 even camphor may be the product of the 

 sap of various trees which supply these 

 particular substances, and while we are 

 unable to redissolve these articles except 



