DEPARTMENT REPORTS. 



Table giving the Age, Height, and Diameter of a few Trees. 



i*> 



NAME. 



Swamp White Oak 



Sugar Maple . 



Big- Shell-bark Hickorj 

 (Hickori i, sulcata). . _ 



White Oak 



Butternut 



While Pine 



White Ash 



Bafcswood 



Chestnut. 



Common Locust 



European Larch 



Balsam oplar 



NOTES. 



Tapering; 10 feet up to small branches.. 

 Branches clear to ground on some of them. 



Ei?ht feet up to small limbs 



Sturdy ; healthy -. 



Top small, thin : 20 feet or more to branches 

 Pretty HDd healthy, some live limbs nparthe 



ground, low growing 15 to 18 inches or 



more each year 



Twenty feet to limbs; straight and clean... 



About 20 feet to small limbs 



Twenty-five feet to live branches; very 



straight and i ice .- 



Twenty-five fe t to branches ; will make 9 



to 10 fence posts 



Many dving .. 



Not desirable 



Age, 

 years 

 from 

 seed. 



23 



22 



21 

 20 

 22 



22 

 22 

 22 



22 



19 

 23 



26 



Heieht, 

 feet. 



fO 

 25 



25 

 25 

 35 



30 

 35 

 30 



35 



40 



40 

 40 



Diamet' 

 inches. 



1 ft. from 



the 

 ground, 



7 

 8 

 9 



10 



13 

 13 

 HV4 



A single red pine (or Norway) has done much the same as other trees 

 at the College, but not in the arboretum. They grow in heigh fifteen to 

 twenty inches in one season. 



The oldest American beech in the arboretum is twenty-four years old 

 and is rather closely surrounded by other kinds of trees as well as by 

 some beeches. It is 25 feet high, and a trifle less than seven inches in 

 diameter. The trunk tapers upward somewhat rapidly and holds its 

 branches w-ell to the ground. The lower branches are eight or ten feet 

 long. As an ornament for a lawn it would be a pronounced success, but 

 its progress is too slow, wdien 1he value of timber is taken into considera- 

 tion. 



A few common locusts were set among the other small trees after these 

 had grown three years or more. Owing to the fact that the trunks were 

 shaded and the locusts few in number and scattered, the borer troubled 

 the trees scarcely at all. According to my present knowledge, I think 

 it safe to scatter a few in thin places in the forest, where the soil is suit- 

 able. The timber ^ v<*vy valuable for posts and other uses where ex- 

 posed to the grourd. Under favorable conditions a tree in twenty years 

 v. ill make ten good fence-posts. The locust is one of the trees worthy of 

 study and experiment with reference to growing as a profitable crop — a 

 profitable crop when compared with any ordinary crops of the farm. As 

 it now appears to me in central Michigan, the chestnut is promising to 

 grow T for telegraph poles and for other purposes, mixing in a few box 

 elders, evergreens, beeches or something else to shade the ground and 

 keep out the sun and the grasses and weeds. Care must be taken to select 

 land that has a dry, open subsoil. 



Without going into detail at present, the following additional species 

 seem to me the most promising for testing in a forest: White ash. white 

 pine, Norway pine for poor sand, and perhaps white oak, shag-bark hick- 

 ory, basswood and sugar maple for suitable places. 



The space between the larger trees of our arboretum is in many places 

 pretty well occupied by a second crop coming on — a self-sown "crop, or 

 one sown by wind, birds and squirrels — and consists largely of woody 

 plants in great variety, a considerable portion of which are different from 

 those planted in the rows. 



