686 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



Cultivation 



Acer Negundo was very early introduced into England, being cultivated in the 

 garden at Fulham by Bishop Compton in 1688. According to Loudon, this tree 

 was about 45 feet high and 7 feet i inch in girth in 1835. 



It is by far the commonest of American maples in cultivation, the variegated 

 form being grown in every nursery and planted extensively in shrubberies and 

 town gardens for the sake of its colour. It grows from seed with extraordinary 

 rapidity, attaining 5 or 6 feet high in 3 years, is apparently at home in every kind 

 of soil, and resists all the extremes of our climate without injury. Though Loudon 

 says that the seed must be sown in autumn, I have found that it will germinate 

 readily when sown as late as June. Trees which came up in a bed of American 

 ash in my nursery in June 1901, are already 15 feet high, and bearing seed freely 

 when only seven years old. 



Remarkable Trees 



Though not often seen as a tree, yet on good soil it seems to attain almost as 

 great size in England as in America. Loudon mentions a tree at Kenwood which 

 was 47 feet high, 35 years after being planted. A tree at Botley, Hants, probably 

 planted by Cobbett, was recorded ' in 1 884 as being 70 feet high by 6 feet 4 inches, 

 but I did not find this when I visited Botley in 1906. The largest, however, that 

 we have seen is at the Mote, near Maidstone, which I found in 1902 to be 53 feet 

 high by 8 feet 4 inches. Henry measured one at Shiplake House, near Henley, 

 50 feet by 6 feet 3 inches, with a clean bole 1 6 feet long ; and there is a large wide- 

 spreading tree in Kew Gardens near the Director's Office which is about 40 feet 

 high, and measures 6 feet 8 inches in girth. Another in the Oxford Botanic Garden 

 is 4 feet in girth ; and a very old tree, with a short trunk and wide-spreading 

 branches, in Mortlock's Garden, behind the Corn Exchange at Cambridge, probably 

 on the site of the old Botanic Garden, is about 30 feet in height and 5 feet 

 8 inches in girth. Miss Wool ward, in 1905, measured a tree in the grounds of the 

 Knowle Hotel at Sidmouth, 38 feet in height and 3 feet 10 inches in girth. 



Timber 



Its timber is very unlike that of other maples, for though in young trees it is 

 whitish, the heartwood of old trees is of a most peculiar colour, purplish red with 

 dark veins.^ I have never seen it of sufficient size to be useful, though Michaux 

 says it was in his time sometimes used by cabinetmakers in the west ; and Sargent 

 states that it is sometimes used for the interior finish of houses, wooden -ware, 

 cooperage, and paper pulp. Small quantities of maple sugar are occasionally made 

 from this tree. (H. J. E.) 



1 Woods and Forests, 1884, p. 316. 



I made this note from specimens shown as "Box Elder" at the St. Louis Exhibition, but do not find any confirmation 

 of this in Sargent's or Hough's works. 



