SHADE-TREES IN CITIES. 31*7 



* 



sides this, the foliage of the tulip-tree is as clean and fresh at all 

 times as the bonnet of a fair young quakeress, and no insect mars 

 the purity of its rich foliage. 



We know very well that the tulip-tree is considered difficult to 

 transplant. It is, the gardeners will tell you, much easier to plant 

 ailanthuses, or, if you prefer, maples. Exactly, so it is easier to walk 

 than to dance but as all people who wish to be graceful in their 

 gait learn to dance (if they can get an opportunity), so all planters 

 who wish a peculiarly elegant tree, will learn how to plant the lirio- 

 dendron. In the first place the soil must be light and rich better 

 than is at all necessary for the maples and if it cannot be made 

 light and rich, then the planter must confine himself to maples. 

 Next, the .tree must be transplanted just about the time of com- 

 mencing its growth in the spring, and the roots must be cut as little 

 as possible, and not suffered to get dry till replanted. 



There is one point which, if attended to as it is in nurseries 

 abroad, would render the tulip-tree as easily transplanted as a maple 

 or a poplar. We mean the practice of cutting round the tree every 

 year in the nursery till it is removed. This developes a ball of 

 fibres, and so prepares the tree for the removal that it feels no shock 

 at all.* Nurserymen could well afford to grow tulip-trees to the 

 size suitable for street planting, and have them twice cut or removed 

 beforehand, so as to enable them to warrant their growth in any 

 good soil, for a dollar apiece. (And we believe the average price 

 at which the thousands of noisome ailanthuses that now infest our 

 streets have been sold, is above a dollar.) No buyer pays so much 

 and so willingly, as the citizen who has only one lot front, and five 

 dollars each has been no uncommon price in New- York for " trees 

 of heaven." 



After our nurserymen have practised awhile this preparation of 

 the tulip-trees for the streets by previous removals, they will gradu- 

 ally find a demand for the finer oaks, beeches, and other trees now 

 considered difficult to transplant for the same cause and about 

 which there is no difficulty at all, if this precaution is taken. Any 



* In many continental nurseries, this annual preparation in the nursery, 

 takes place until fruit trees of bearing size can be removed without the 

 slightest injury to the crop of the same year. 



