154 THE HUMAN SIDE OF TREES 



of the English poet, Alexander Pope. This man, 

 while travelling in Smyrna, sent the lame genius a 

 box of figs. In the box was a twig of the weeping 

 willow botanically known as Salix babilonica. In 

 a spirit of curiosity Pope planted the twig at his 

 estate of Twickenham on the Thames. In the 

 course of time a stately and magnificent tree de- 

 veloped. Struck by its decorative grace, a British 

 officer coming to America in 1776 begged a twig 

 of Pope's willow. It was his intention to plant the 

 stick on an estate to be confiscated from some de- 

 feated colonial. As things turned out, the Britisher 

 did not get his estate and in chagrin gave the slip 

 to John Curtis of Virginia. The latter promptly 

 planted it and successfully raised a beautiful speci- 

 men of the tree. 



It is said that this tree became the progenitor 

 of all the weeping willows in the United States. 

 At any rate, when General Gates leased a farm 

 at Rose Hill, New York, in 1790, he planted at his 

 gate a slip from the willow. The young tree pros- 

 pered and as a venerable greybeard lived long after 

 Rose Hill had been swallowed up by the expanding 

 city of New York. For many years it stood at 

 the corner of Third Avenue and Twenty-second 

 Street, but at length, in 1860, fell a victim to the 

 march of time and the Park Department's axe. 



