346 Landscape Gardening 



the tulip tree, or liriodendron. What can be more beautiful 

 than its trunk, finely proportioned, and smooth as a Grecian 

 column? \Yhat more artistic than its leaf, cut like an 

 arabesque in a Moorish palace? What more clean and 

 luslrous than its tufts of foliage, dark green and rich as 

 deepest emerald? What more lily-like and specious than 

 its blossoms, golden and bronze shaded? and what fairer 

 and more queenly than its whole figure, stately and regal as 

 that if Zenobia? For a park tree, to spread on every side, 

 it is unrivalled, growing a hundred and thirty feet high, 

 and spreading into the finest symmetry of outline.* For a 

 street tree, its columnar stem, beautiful either with or with- 

 out branches - - with a low head or a high head - - foliage 

 over the second story or under it - - is precisely what is most 

 needed. A very spreading tree, like the elm, is always 

 somewhat out of place in town, because its natural habit is 

 to extend itself laterally. A tree with the habit of the tulip, 

 lifts itself into the finest pyramids of foliage, exactly suited 

 to the usual width of town streets, and thus embellishes and 

 shades without darkening and incumbering them. Besides 

 this, the foliage of the tulip tree is as clean and fresh at all 

 times as the bonnet of a fair young quakeress, and no insect 

 mars the purity of its rich foliage. 



We know very well that the tulip tree is considered diffi- 

 cult to transplant. It is, the gardeners will tell you, much 

 easier to plant ailanthuses, or, if you prefer, maples. Ex- 

 actly, so it is easier to walk than to dance; but as all people 

 who wish to be graceful in their gait learn to dance (if they 

 can get an opportunity), so all planters who wish a pecu- 

 liarly elegant tree will learn how to plant the liriodendron. 

 In the first place the soil must be light and rich - - better 

 than is at all necessary for the maples - - and if it cannot 

 be made light and rich, then the planter must confine him- 

 self to maples. Next, the tree must be transplanted just 

 about the time of commencing its growth in the spring, and 



* At Wakcficld, the fine country-seat of the Fisher family, near Phila- 

 delphia, are several tulip-trees on the lawn, over one hundred feet high, 

 and three to six feet in diameter. A. J. D. 



