POPLARS AND WILLOWS 153 



is the desire for plants merely because they grow 

 rapidly. A very rapid -growing tree nearly always 

 produces cheap effects. This is well illustrated in 

 the common planting of willows and poplars about 

 summer places or lake shores. Their effect is 

 almost wholly one of cheapness and temporari- 

 ness. There is little that suggests strength or 

 durability in willows and poplars, and for this 

 reason they should always be used as minor or 

 secondary features in ornamental or home grounds. 

 Where quick results are desired, nothing is better 

 to plant than these trees, but better trees, like 

 maples, oaks, or elms, should be planted with 

 them, and the poplars and willows should be re- 

 moved as fast as the other species begin to afford 

 protection. When the plantation finally assumes 

 its permanent characters, a few of the remaining 

 poplars and willows, judiciously left, may afford 

 very excellent effects ; but no one who has an 

 artist's feeling would be content to construct the 

 frame w r ork of his place of these rapid -growing 

 and soft -wooded trees. 



I have said that the legitimate use of poplars in 

 ornamental grounds is in the production of 

 minor or secondary effects. As a rule, they are 

 less adapted to isolated planting as specimen 

 trees than to use in composition, that is, as 

 parts of general groups of trees, where their char- 

 acters serve to break the monotony of heavier 

 foliage. The poplars are gay trees, as a rule, 



