68 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



teristic sharp angles made by the smaller erect branches with the larger horizontal 

 limbs. 



Another photograph sent me by Mr. Ashe shows a group of Liriodendron, in 

 the forests of Transylvania Co., N.C., 120-140 feet high and 4-5 feet in diameter, 

 associated with Quercus rubra and Betula lutea which are not so tall. This 

 magnificent forest is, like most of those accessible to the lumbermen, rapidly 

 decreasing in area and beauty, owing to the growing demand for timber. 



For further details of the distribution in North Carolina refer to Pinchot and 

 Ashe's admirable account, pp. 39-41, and to a paper by Overton Price on " Practical 

 Forestry in the Southern Appalachians."* 



The largest trees of this species, however, have been recorded by Professor 

 R. Ridgway ^ from Southern Indiana and Illinois, near Mount Carmel, Illinois, which I 

 had the pleasure of visiting under the guidance of Dr. J. Schneck in September 1904. 

 Though the largest trees recorded by him have now been cut, reliable measurements 

 were taken of a tulip tree which reached the astonishing height of 190 feet, 

 exceeding that of any non-coniferous tree recorded in the temperate regions of the 

 northern hemisphere. Another tree cut " 8 miles east of Vincennes, was 8 feet 

 across the top of the stump, which was solid to the centre ; the last cut was 63 feet 

 from the first, and the trunk made 80,000 shingles." The soil here is an exceedingly 

 rich, deep alluvium, and the climate in summer very hot and moist. 



It is stated in Garden and Forest, 1897, P- AS^> that at the Nashville Exhibition 

 a log of this tree was shown by the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis Railroad 

 Company, which- measured 42 feet long, 10 feet 4 inches in diameter at the butt, and 

 7 feet at the smaller end, containing 1260 cubic feet of timber, and about 600 

 years old. 



Introduction 



The tulip tree was probably introduced, according to Evelyn,' by John Trades- 

 cant about the middle of the seventeenth century, but this is somewhat uncertain, 

 though it was grown by Bishop Compton at Fulham in 1688. 



According to Hunter the tree which first flowered in England was in the 

 gardens of the Earl of Peterborough at Parsons Green, Fulham, and this he describes 

 in 1776 as "an old tree quite destroyed by others which overhang it." At that time 

 there were also some trees of great bulk at Wilton, the seat of the Earl of Pembroke 

 in Wilts. 



Cultivation 



Though the tree can be propagated by means of layers, and in the case of 

 varieties by grafting, yet as seeds are easily procured from the United States it is 

 much better to raise it from seed. Cobbett, who was a great admirer of the tulip 

 tree, gives a long account of it, and of the best means of raising it,^ and says that if 

 sown in May, which he thinks the best time, it will germinate in the following May, 



' Yearbook U.S. Dept. of Agric. (1900). 



* Notes m Trees of Louver Wabash, Proc. U.S. Nat. Hist. Mus. 1882, p. 49; 1894, p. 411. 



' Evelyn's Silva, 214. Ed. Hunter (1776). Woodlands, par. 523 (1823). 



