FORESTRY ON THE COUNTRY ESTATE 



THE PLACE TO PLANT HEMLOCKS. 



brown. The pignut hickory is worth- 

 less except for its wonderful pale yel- 

 low in autumn, so that it should not be 

 spared unless scenic features can be 

 gotten with it in autumn. It is particu- 

 larly valuable on a hillside. Sweet gum 

 is that tree with the star-shaped leaves 

 that turn a magnificent dark-purple in 

 autumn. It is the only purple we have 

 that stays, as the oak and ash pass 

 quickly through purple to brown, and 

 the black gum goes to red. Another 

 feature of the sweet gum is its straight 

 columnar trunk, straight as a spruce, 

 not a branch on it to the fork of the 

 crown, a handsome feature in any grove. 

 You will not get this when it borders 

 an open space, but the compensations 

 in increased foliage more than repay. 

 As for the liriodendron, the tulip tree, 

 lucky the man who finds one growing 

 in his prospective grove ! Not only its 

 great handsome leaves turning violent 

 yellows in the fall, not only its showy 

 tulip flowers, but above all its towering 

 shaft of a trunk, straight as a lance, 

 sturdy as a factory chimney, makes it 

 an imposing tree in either landscape or 

 forest. 



As to maples, save the best of your 

 red maples for they and the black wil- 

 lows are the very first trees to show color 

 in the spring. Look along the edges of a 

 forest about the end of March and note 

 here and there splotches of deep red. 

 These are the flower buds of the red 

 maple and a few weeks later the woods 

 will be fragrant with their perfume. I 

 have a great many of them about me in 

 the Interlaken forest and have given 

 considerable study to their autumn color 

 phases. The red maple may have all 

 yellow leaves or yellow and red mixed 

 or all red. The difference seems to lie 

 in soil and root conditions. Where the 

 roots have to fight for nourishment, as 

 in wet swampy soils or dry arid ones, 

 the autumn leaves will be red or even 

 one solid flame of dark purple. On the 

 other hand with rich well-drained soils 

 it will turn a pure pale yellow, and there 

 are all sorts of graduations between. 



The sugar maples you will know at 

 once by their smooth-edged pointed 

 leaves with pointed base-lobes, whereas 

 all the red maples have rounded, toothed 

 base-lobes. The sugar maple does not 

 thrive much south of latitude 42 but 



