5i8 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



wardens are appointed in most parishes, who are often ladies ; and I am indebted 

 to one of the most enthusiastic and active of them, Miss Emma G. Cummings of 

 Brookline, Mass., for showing me some of the large Sassafras trees which still 

 survive in the suburbs of Boston. These form a group on a slope on the 

 south side of Covey Hill, the smallest being 6 feet in girth, and the largest 9 feet 

 7 inches and over 50 feet high. But these are far inferior to the trees in the 

 forests of the south and west, where Ridgway measured, in the Wabash valley, a 

 Sassafras 95 feet high by y^ in girth, and where, he says, it sometimes attains 

 12 feet in circumference. 



Cultivation 



The Sassafras was one of the earliest American trees introduced into England, 

 having been cultivated in 1633 in a garden near London.' The tree is propagated 

 by seeds, which should be sown as soon as ripe, and by suckers and root-cuttings. 

 When large it is difficult to transplant, as the thick fleshy roots are scantily provided 

 with rootlets. 



Cobbett,^ who gave an interesting account of the Sassafras, and was very 

 enthusiastic in its praise, found that the seeds rarely if ever come up in the first 

 year, and apparently often lie over for two years. Fresh seeds gathered by me in 

 the Arnold Arboretum and sown in autumn, only produced one seedling in the first 

 year, and no more have since germinated. This seedling though kept in a green- 

 house grows very slowly, and at three years old is only 10 inches high. But though 

 the tree is now rare in England there is no reason why it should not be grown on 

 rich sandy soil in those districts where the summers are warm and dry, if young 

 trees can be procured and established. 



Remarkable Trees 



The only really fine specimen of this species that we have seen in England is 

 in the garden at Claremont, the seat of H.R.H, the Duchess of Albany. This is a 

 handsome, healthy tree which in 1907 measured 48 feet by 6 feet 8 inches at i foot 

 from the ground. It forks low down, and the main stem is 4 feet 10 inches at 5 feet. 

 This tree flowers freely in the month of May, but Mr. Burrell has observed no seeds 

 on it (Plate 146). A tree formerly grew at Beeston Hall, near Norwich, which 

 Grigor states to have been 38 feet high in 1840, but this, as I am informed by Mr. 

 Wall, the gardener there, died and was taken down about 1898. 



There are four small trees in Mr. Friedlander's garden at White Knights Park, 

 Reading, which appear to be suckers from the roots of an older one now dead ; and 

 in the adjoining properties, White Knights and the Wilderness, there are also trees 

 of which the tallest is about 35 feet by 2 feet 10 inches. There is a younger tree 

 in Mrs. Robb's grounds at Goldenfield, Liphook, and a small one in Kew Gardens 

 planted by Sir W. T. Thisel ton- Dyer. There is also a healthy young tree at 

 Tortworth, 



> Gerard, fferiall {td. Johnson), 1524 (1633). 2 Woodlands, Nos. 489 seq. (1825). 



