Brown^s Forest Trees of America. 



187 



Fig. 11. The Ailan- 

 tus glandulosa : a full 

 grown tree. 



from two to three feet in diameter, its gigantic boughs and shoots, clothed 

 with large, pendulous leaves, give it a noble appearance, and seem to jus- 

 tify the original appellation, " Tree of Heaven." 

 The leaves are from one and a half to six feet in 

 length, pinnated, with an odd one, and having leaf- 

 lets with coarse, glandular teeth near the base. On 

 the first approach of frost, the leaflets begin to fall, 

 without having previously shown much change of 

 color, displaying, in this respect, a striking difference 

 from the leaves of most species of rhus, to which 

 those of this tree bear a general resemblance. The 

 flowers, which appear in June and Jul)', occur in 

 rather large, compact panicles, of a whitish-green 

 color, and exhale a disagreeable odor. The keys, or fruit, resemble those 

 of the ash, but are much smaller and more numerous. In some years, the 

 tree is said to bear only male flowers; and L'Heritier states that only twice 

 in ten years it bore both male and female blossoms at the same time, in 

 France. In his time, it had produced fruit in the Jardin des Plantes, at 

 Paris, and in the botanic garden at 

 Leyden ; but in both cases, it was 

 immature. It has since, however, 

 produced perfect fruit, from which 

 plants have been raised. It has also 

 ripened seeds at White Knight's, 

 near Reading, in England. At 

 Philadelphia and New York, the 

 seeds of this tree ripen freely in 

 October, and plants are raised from 

 them in abundance. 



Geography and History. — The 

 Ailantus glandulosa is a native of 

 the northern provinces of China, 

 more particularly in the neigbbor- 

 borhood of Pekin. Mr. Loudon 

 states that seeds were first sent to 

 England, to the Royal Society of 

 London, by the Jesuit missionary, 



D'Incarville, in 1751 ; and that they were sown by Miller, in the Chelsea 

 botanic garden, and by Philip Cartaret Webb, at Bushbridge, in Surry, the 

 same year. As the tree produced suckers freely, it was soon generally 

 propagated, and there are many fine specimens of it growing in different 

 parts of that country. 



The largest tree of this species in Britain, is at Syon, near London. In 

 1835, it had attained the height of seventy feet, with a trunk three feet, ten 

 inches in diameter, and an ambitus, or spread of branches, of forty feet. 

 Its trunk formed an erect column about thirty feet high, before it ramified, 



Ttie leaflet andjlower of the 

 Ailantus, 



