Shade-Trees in Cities 



credit, but who deserves not his success. We mean the 

 abele or silver poplar. There is a pleasant flutter in his 

 silver-lined leaves, but when the timber is a foot thick you 

 shall find the air unpleasantly filled every spring with the 

 fine white down which flies from the blossom, while the 

 suckers which are thrown up from the roots of the mature 

 trees are a pest to all grounds and gardens, even worse than 

 those of the ailanthus. Down with the abeles! 



Oh! that our tree-planters, and they are an army of 

 hundreds of thousands in this country, ever increasing with 

 the growth of good taste - - oh ! that they knew and could 

 understand the surpassing beauty of our native shade trees. 

 More than forty species of oak are there in North America 

 (Great Britain has only two species - - France only five), 

 and we are richer in maples, elms, and ashes, than any 

 country in the old world. Tulip trees and magnolias from 

 America are the exotic glories of the princely grounds of 

 Europe. But (saving always the praiseworthy partiality in 

 New England for our elms and maples), who plants an 

 American tree - - in America? And \vho, on the contrary, 

 that has planted shade trees at all in the United States for 

 the last fifteen years has not planted either ailanthuses or 

 abele poplars? We should like to see that discreet, saga- 

 cious individual, who has escaped the national ecstasy for 

 foreign suckers. If he can be found, he is more deserving a 

 gold medal from our horticultural societies, than the grower 

 of the most mammoth pumpkin or elephantine beet that 

 will garnish the cornucopia of Pomona for 1852. 



In this confession of our sins of commission in planting 

 filthy suckers, and omission in not planting clean natives, 

 we must lay part of the burden at the door of the nursery- 

 men.* (It has been found a convenient practice -- this 

 shifting the responsibility - - ever since the first trouble 

 about trees in the Garden of Eden.) 



'Well! then, if the nurserymen will raise ailanthuses 

 and abeles by the thousands," reply the planting community, 



* It need not be forgotten that Mr. Downing was himself a nursery- 

 man. F. A. \Y. 



