274 Home Adornment in tJie West. 



situations, for shade or ornament, the basswood, honey-locust, willow, and 

 tulip-tree are effective. 



In this connection I may mention another tree, — the Lombardy poplar, 

 which, though not a native, has been introduced and extensively planted in 

 some sections. Whatever may be said of it in other respects, it is certainly 

 striking and effective seen in the distance on the prairie, whether singly or 

 in clusters, about the farmstead or near the villa. It is giving a new and 

 novel aspect to these landscapes. The people like it, and will have it, 

 because it propagates easily, grows rapidly, and assumes a form towering 

 and spiry, which seems to take their fancy. 



We may choose from the lesser growths, for ornamental purposes, the 

 hop-tree, the early-flowering red-bud, the beautiful virgilia, the curious 

 fringe-tree of snowy whiteness, the sassafras, sumac, amelanchie, pawpaw, 

 viburnums, cornels, Missouri currant, and the queer little tree-shrub wicopy, 

 of yellow bloom and April cheer. 



We can make a fair show of climbers by taking our native wistaria, 

 Virginia creeper, trumpet creeper, bitter-sweet, clematis, and the honey- 

 suckles : these all take kindly to culture, and are rampant growers. The 

 trumpet creeper, rich in foliage and gorgeous in its clustered blossoms, 

 will give us the added pleasure of the humming-bird. These fairy visitants 

 from the tropics are peculiarly attracted by the large trumpet-shaped flow- 

 ers, in and around which, between honeyed repast and sunny pastime, they 

 seem to hum their little ecstasies all the summer through. 



The evergreens were not needed on these sunny plains till man's cultured 

 wants and tastes demanded them : so Nature left them out. But we must 

 have them now : indeed, we cannot afford to do without them. They are 

 as useful as ornamental ; breaking the force of the winds in bleak expos- 

 ures, and serving admirably for screens and hedges in the nearer home- 

 grounds. They are delightfully effective when seen in winter : more espe- 

 cially do they delight us, when, in appropriate situations, they display taste- 

 fully-arranged groups. Luckily they can be easily procured from our 

 northern borders, or, better still, from nurseries near home. They take 

 kindly to cultural treatment; and most of them — our native kinds — grow 

 rapidly with dense and symmetrical forms, pushing their boughs regularly 

 from the ground to the foot of the topmost leader. I look from my room 



