Photographs of Large Trees 



411 



country as the buttonwood or button- 

 ball, in allusion to its large seed-balls, 

 which hang on the tree all winter. 



The tree here illustrated is located 

 in the rich alluvial loam of the White 

 River bottom. As this stream fre- 

 quently overflows its banks, it period- 

 ically deposits a layer of silt around the 

 tree ; but the floods appear to have done 

 no damage to it, although on one occa- 

 sion it is said the water reached as high 

 as the fork, 15 feet from the ground. 

 It may be believed that this frequent 

 deposit of alluviiun is one of the factors 

 which has caused the great growth of 

 the tree. Many other large sycamores, 

 beech and walnut trees have been pro- 

 duced in the same locality, but most 

 of them have been long since felled for 

 lumber. One of the sycamores which 

 met this fate was so large that it could 

 not be hauled to the mill, but was 

 floated down the river; another, cut in 

 the last few years within 500 yards of 

 "the big tree," as the prize winner has 

 been known in the region since the 

 first settlers arrived, made five 10-foot 

 logs, the largest of them 60 inches in 

 diameter and measuring 1,960 board 

 feet. The tap log was about 43 inches 

 in diameter. These figures give some 

 idea of the amount of lumber that a 

 single one of these giants will yield. 



As is most large sycamores, the base 

 of this tree is hollow, the opening being 

 on the opposite side from that shown 

 in the photograph. Fire has recently 

 damaged it. 



That Indiana can produce even larger 

 trees than this may be inferred from 

 the following letter which appeared in 

 the Indianapolis News of July 5, 1915, 

 after a reference to the Worthington 

 specimen : 



LARGER ONE NOW GONE 



" I can tell of a much larger one, but, 

 unfortunately, the tree is gone, and 

 nearly all who have seen it. I have 

 twice written of it. The first time to 



the Cincinnati Weekly Enquirer, about 

 the year 1867, the second time for the 

 Museum, a monthly scientific journal, 

 published at Albion, N^ Y., by Professor 

 Webb. I then made the claim that it 

 was the largest tree ever grown in the 

 United States this side of the Yosemite 

 Valley. The article in question can be 

 found in the December niunber, 1896, 

 and embodies the following facts: 



"The tree grew within a distance of 

 100 feet of the bank of Driftwood, on 

 the east fork of White River, about 

 3 miles southeast of Brownstown, Jack- 

 son County, Indiana. My father bought 

 the land on which it stood as school land, 

 sixteenth section. I have often heard 

 him tell about the tree. I never saw 

 the tree standing, but the stump was 

 still to be seen up to as late as 1864. 

 I have on several occasions seen a pole 

 18 feet long turned completely around 

 within the stump, which was hollow. 

 It was measured by the surveyors of 

 original survey, and was over 67 feet in 

 circumference. The trunk of the tree 

 was about 15 or 20 feet high when it 

 made three branches. The smallest 

 one of the three was more than l}/2 feet 

 in diameter, or, as father said, as high 

 as a man's head when on horseback. 



' ' This tree in part resembles the Worth- 

 ington sycamore, in having branches 

 near the ground. Of course, this tree 

 was P. occidentalis. 



"M. Crabb." 



If Mr. Crabb's tree was measured at 

 the ground line, 67 feet is not an 

 impossible measurement, although it is 

 doubtful if there is a tree of the species 

 now living which reaches any such size. 

 F. Andre Michaux, one of the earlier 

 authorities on North American trees, 

 and a naturalist whose accuracy is well 

 attested, wrote^ on the subject as follows : 



"On a little island in the Ohio, 15 

 miles above the mouth of the Musk- 

 ingum, my father measured a button- 

 wood which, at 5 feet from the ground. 



2 "The elder Michaux," under auspices of the French Government, explored North America 

 from 1785 to 1796, studying the trees. His son, F. Andre Michaux, accompanied him in his later 

 travels. The father published part of his work, but met with an untimely death in Madagascar; 

 the son returned to America in 1801 and 1807 to complete the material for the "North American 

 Sylva," which was published in Paris 1810-13. The quotation above and others in this article 

 are from the translation published in Philadelphia, 1865, by J. J. Smith, with a supplement by 

 Nuttall; Vol. II, pp. 50, 51. 



