334 HORTICULTURAL MANUAL. 



weeping variety they are less used. hut none of them, 

 except the latter, has proven long-lived west of the lakes. 

 Even the native birches that grow along the streams of 

 eastern Iowa are not durable trees on prairie places or 

 parks. 



All of the birches imported by the writer from the 

 steppes of east Europe have proven defiant to heat, 

 drought, and cold on the college grounds at Ames, and 

 where tested at the West. They were imported under the 

 names of Bctula carpinifoHa, B. Siberica, B. urticifolia, 

 and B. Maximowiczii. The latter is now mentioned by 

 Alfred Kehder as "probably the most beautiful of all 

 birches, perfectly hardy at the North, and of rapid 

 growth." This species is credited to Japan, but as it 

 is hardy at St. Petersburg and Moscow, and also in the 

 northwest prairie States, it is probable that its home is 

 the Amur valley, from whence Dr. Maximowicz brought 

 the seeds to St. Petersburg and Moscow. 



320. The Oaks. In our relatively new country the oak 

 has not been planted as freely as its merits demand. The 

 impression has been too common that it was a tree of the 

 centuries and that it was too slow in growth to use in the 

 development of an American home. But of late the large 

 nurseries of the Eastern States have propagated it freely, 

 and people are learning that it grows in quite rich soils 

 about as rapidly as the sugar maple. The planting of the 

 best native species in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, in 

 large number after the exposition in 1876 has done much 

 to encourage the planting of the oak. 



Trees twenty years old are now about as large as the 

 elms, sycamores, and sugar maples planted at the same 

 time. On the campus of the Agricultural College at 

 Ames, Iowa, the growth of oaks in twenty-five years has 

 about equalled that of the red elm, sugar maple, hackberry, 



