"HALL OF FAME" FOR TREES 



Here is the oldest tree in Virginia and it is certainly en- 

 titled to a place in the Hall of Fame for trees. The nomi- 

 nation is made by Meade Ferguson, of Richmond. It stands 

 in Charles City County, Virginia, and for age and sice is 

 perhaps not equalled by any on the Atlantic coast. This tree 

 is the common Tulip or YtUow Poplar (Liriodendron tuli- 



Captain John Smith founded Jamestozvn, which is only a few 

 miles from ivhcre the tree stands. Throughout Eastern Vir- 

 ginia it is known as the Octopus tree. Some hundreds of 

 years ago the limbs were probably broken or. bent by savages 

 or wild animals so they have grown in the somewhat dis- 

 torted shape of a fancied resemblance to an octopus. A 



7H OCTOPUS TREE 



pfera), a well known species found in the woods from Ver- 

 mont to Florida. It measures twenty-seven and a half feet in 

 circumference six feet from the ground. The base at the 

 ground, however, is sixty feet in circumference. It is esti- 

 mated to be more than fire hundred years old, representing a 

 generation of trees, which existed hundreds of years before 



great race of men who once held war councils around its 

 roots have disappeared and been replaced by another race and 

 by a new civilization. Strange wild beasts, which once lurked 

 in its branches come no more and yet the old Octopus tree, a 

 great piece of Nature's creation, stands as a mute reminder 

 of the time before white men arrived in America. 



