56 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1893. 



County, confer other wealth than that of money obtained by their 

 sale. Rich in the extent and uniform distribution of its sylva, which 

 is alike remarkable for its diversity, beauty, and comprehensiveness, 

 the arborescent features of the county constitute one of its greatest 

 gifts from nature and one of its grandest charms. No other area in 

 the United States, of equal extent, has a sylva so varied nor at once 

 so notable for vigor and luxuriance. In the southern limits of the 

 county trees and shrubs, whose native habitat is in the States farther 

 south, are of quite frequent occurrence. In the towns upon the New 

 Hampshire line, the beau^^iful paper or canoe birch is occasionally 

 found raising its columnar stem like a pillar of the whitest alabas- 

 ter, and upon the summits and slopes of Mt. Wachusett are found 

 trees and shrubs whose natural realm is the far north. Upon that 

 cold, bleak ridge, or topographical backbone of Massachusetts, 

 extending northeast from Rutland to Gardner, grow the white and 

 black spruce, the balsam fir, and the American larch, not in rare in- 

 stances, but in actual profusion. In some of the southern towns of 

 the county the prostrate juniper attains a diameter of its spread of 

 thirty feet, and a height of three feet. In certain localities in the 

 same section of the county the red cedar or savin tree acquires a 

 girth at the base of two and one-half feet, and a height of forty feet. 

 In all sections of the country are swamps of varying areage, covered 

 with growths of the white cedar, and so dense are these growths that 

 the intensest rays of the most glaring sun cannot penetrate them. 

 In Winchendon and towns adjoining is found the American moun- 

 tain ash, a tree which I have never seen in the central or southern 

 sections of the county. The native rhododendron, though rare, is 

 found to my knowledge in three localities, and one of them is acres 

 in extent, for it will be remembered that the rhododendron, like the 

 azalea and laurel, is a social plant. In and upon the borders of 

 swamps, near the Connecticut line, the lovely, sweet-scented clethra 

 felnifolia (sweet pepper bush), is more like a tree than a shrub. In 

 Sterling and Lancaster are isolated growths of the true chestnut oak, 

 which must not be confounded with the variety so commonly desig- 

 nated as such. The sumac, the beauty of whose foliage is so greatly 

 admired by persons from places in which this shrub is a stranger, has 

 attained in Worcester County a diameter of nine inches. 



One of the most interesting localities in Worcester County, as 

 regards its trees and shrubs, is Mt. Wachusett. Visiting for the pur- 

 pose of studying its sylva is like going into another country, into 

 another clime, as one really does. Of the five hundred and fifty 



