XXV 



WINTER INJURY AND HOW TO AVOID IT 



Far more has been laid to the unkindness of the winter 

 wind than is due. Trees that have been carelessly planted in 

 half-prepared soil, that have starved throughout the summer, 

 suffered from drought in autumn, and are blessed with neither of 

 the commonest comforts (a mulch for foot-covering and a wind- 

 break to keep the northeasters from their backs), while rats 

 and rabbits are permitted to worry their roots these victims, 

 if unable in the spring to send out their leaves, are charged 

 to the account of "killed by the winter." To be sure, the 

 winter days are days of reckoning, a kind of day of judgment 

 for the weaker brethren; yet the verdict of "winter-killed" 

 is sometimes like the coroner's safe and easy statement of 

 "death by heart-failure." 



It is one of the paradoxes of horticulture that in winter 

 trees are far more likely to suffer from heat than from cold. 

 For the unacclimated, the peculiar tryingness of the American 

 winter lies not in its severity but in its inconstancy. Capricious- 

 ness in April or May makes havoc among the magnolia blos- 

 soms and blights the hopes of the azaleas, but it does not 

 wreck the constitution of a plant like inconstancy in January. 

 It is the few sudden warm days in the midst of zero weather 

 that uncurl the rhododendron leaves and loosen the "buds" 

 on the standard roses, so that, the brief armistice suddenly 

 ended, the cold catches them unaware. 



186 



