156 LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



stances through which the tree has come to its present state. The 

 greater number of deciduous trees express their individuality of growth 

 in forms of softer and less definite outline which, though absolutely 

 characteristic for each species, are characteristic in a subtler way, and 

 render the trees recognizable much as men are recognizable, unmis- 

 takably, but hardly through the recognition of any definitely describable 

 feature. Some trees of no very definite branch arrangement like the 

 apple, some trees which grow in particularly exposed situations, like 

 the Monterey cypress, long-lived trees like the white oak, trees with 

 wood that resists decay and can survive the mutilations of wind and 

 snow like the cedar, any of these may through the result of exposure, or 

 merely in some cases as the result of great age, assume picturesque forms 

 which have great individuality and pictorial interest. Such forms may 

 be appropriate to a free-standing specimen tree which is a point of 

 interest in itself, or to a tree adding interest to a larger foliage mass of 

 which it is an outlying unit, and yet individuality of this kind does not 

 prevent trees from forming groups or masses where the unity of the 

 individual is merged in the effect of the group. 



Winter Tree Deciduous trees often manifest their character more plainly in 



Form winter, when their peculiar manner of growth, their distinctive attitude 



of trunk and branches, is not cloaked by their summer garb of foliage. 

 In the intricacy of snow-covered winter branches, in the lacework of 

 naked trees against the sunset sky, never repeating itself and yet 

 characteristic in its pattern for the oak, the beech, the hornbeam, and for 

 every different kind of tree, there is certainly no less beauty than in 

 the simpler and more obvious forms of the trees in their summer guise. 

 (See Plate 15 and compare Plates 16 and 18.) 



Form in At the other extreme from this beauty of characteristic structure, 



Topiary Work j s ^g e ff ect o f simplified and definite man-made shape obtainable in 

 topiary work.* Plants so treated have suffered a fundamental change of 

 character as units in landscape design. They have ceased to express by 

 their form their own individuality and have become architectural or 

 sculptural elements expressing the will of man. They are still living 

 objects, however, and in their texture they still to some extent reveal 

 their growth, and thus they form an intermediate step between free- 



* Cf. Curtis and Gibson, The Book of Topiary. (See REFERENCES.) 



