320 Division of Forestry. [Bull. 165 



a 



them twelve inches in diameter, could be cut from 500 yards 

 of this hedge. The value of such a windbreak, twenty-five feet 

 high, is not easily computed if it surrounds a garden or fruit 

 plantation. 



BLACK WALNUT. 



At Ogallah the black walnut shows the greatest variation in 

 growth and success of any species. In the demonstration 

 block, on the north side of the farm, the trees have been a total 

 failure. Unable to endure the neglect, the encroachment of 

 the buffalo grass and a fire, but five poor little trees are yet 

 alive; the largest of these is only six feet high and one and a 

 half inchjs in diameter. On the east line of the place, near 

 the southeast corner, stand a few walnut trees where the nuts 

 were planted twenty-five years ago by Mr. C. C. Yetter, the 

 owner of the adjoining farm. They have benefited by the 

 accidental mulch blown about them and by the soil which has 

 drifted into the mulch from the adjoining fields. 



These trees show in marked degree the form best suited for 

 their survival widespreading tops, which shade the trunk and 

 the soil about it. The measurements of these twenty-one trees 

 show quite strikingly the adaptability of trees to the condi- 

 tions in which they grow. The spread of the tops is very much 

 greater in proportion to their height than in trees of the same 

 species under similar conditions in eastern Kansas. Where 

 three or more trees are sufficiently close to protect the middle 

 one, the middle tree runs up higher and puts less of its growth 

 into protecting branches, but for the greater number, stand- 

 ing quite a distance apart, it has been a case of "each for him- 

 self." Of a number of black walnut trees observed in eastern 

 Kansas, the proportion of height to spread of branches in 

 trees which stand alone is about two in height to one in spread. 

 These trees at Ogallah are very nearly equal. Some have a 

 spread of branches considerably greater than their height. 

 One tree of this row, ten inches in diameter at three feet from 

 the ground, is but sixteen feet high, but has a spread of 

 twenty-two feet. The best tree in the row has a diameter of 

 fifteen inches, is thirty and one-half feet high, with a spread 

 of twenty-four feet. The averages of the twenty-one trees in 

 this row are : Diameter, nine and three-tenths inches ; height, 

 twenty and one-tenth feet; spread, nineteen and two-tenths 

 feet. These figures may not mean much to persons who are 



