A REAL MEMORIAL TREE 



BY J. RUSSELL SMITH 



WHY should a memorial tree be useless when it might 

 just as well combine both use and beauty? Which 

 would you rather have your memorial tree produce, 

 leaves only, or leaves and nuts? 



Trees are among the noblest of memorials, but they 

 might just as well be nut trees, yielding edible fruit, as 

 oak trees yielding inedible fruit, or other kinds of trees 

 yielding nothing but leaves. 



For beauty, no treer, are more majestic or more beau- 

 tiful than three native American nut trees, the pecan, 

 the black walnut and the hickory. 



There are now available for planting, grafted nut 

 trees of one or more of these three species suitable for 

 all that part of our country where wild specimens of 

 any of these species grow, and for other territory beside. 

 For example, varieties of pecan native in Indiana and 

 Illinois will grow in all the lower elevations in the ter- 

 ritory south of a line from Chicago to Boston. We do 

 not yet know just how far north the northern pecan tree 

 will bear fruit, but they will make beautiful trees as 

 far as the line mentioned. Even to the north of this the 

 hardy northern grafted hickories of the delightful shag 

 bark variety will ripen their deliciously flavored nuts. 



Black walnut trees have been found whose kernels 

 come out in whole quarters, the pecans and shag barks 

 in whole halves. The making of such trees for the 

 market is a new art and a new business that will, in 

 time, give us a great new industry offering many me- 

 morial trees of the highest attraction and desirability. 



FAMOUS MORSE ELM GOES DOWN 



The famous Morse elm, at the corner of Pennsylvania 

 avenue and Fourteenth street, is gone, says the IVasIiing- 

 ton Times. It was taken down at midnight following a 

 long but losing battle for its life. 



The famous elm, one of the first trees given a place in 

 the Hall of Fame for Trees with a History by the Ameri- 

 can Forestry Association stood at the corner in front of 

 the Willard Hotel and had seen every inaugural parade 

 in Washington. It was named for Samuel F. B. Morse, 

 inventor of the telegraph, who, tradition relates, often 

 sat beneath the tree in the old days and recited to anyone 

 who would listen the wonders of the telegraph. Many 

 famous politicians met beneath the elm. The trunk of 

 the tree was presented to the American Forestry Asso- 

 ciation. 



Morse was born in .\pril, 130 years ago. May 24 was 

 the seventy-seventh anniversary of the opening of the 

 first telegraph between Baltimore and Washington. Fifty 

 years ago, in 1871, a bronze statue was erected to Morse 

 in Central Park, New York City. He died April 2, 1872. 



A delegation from the John Burroughs Club of the 

 Force School, as guests of the American Forestry Associa- 

 tion, visited the old tree Friday afternoon and Clifford 

 Lanham, sui)erintendent of trees and parkings, who di- 



Nattonal Photo 



THE LAST VISIT TO THE OLD ELM 



The Jphn Burroajghs Club of the Force School sent delegates to 

 pay a last tribute of respect to the famous old tree on the after- 

 noon of the day it was taken down. 



