GETTING ACQUAINTED WITH ?HE FREES 



trees, do admirably for street planting, and 

 ought to be better known and much more 

 freely used. 



I have seen many rare orchids brought 

 thousands of miles and petted into a curious 

 bloom indeed, often more curious than beau- 

 tiful. If the bloom of the liriodendron, in 

 all its delicate and daring mingling of green 

 and yellow, cream and orange, with its exqui- 

 site interior filaments, could be labeled as a 

 ten -thousand- dollar orchid beauty from Bor- 

 neo, its delicious perfume would hardly be 

 needed to complete the raptures with which it 

 would be received into fashionable flower soci- 

 ety. But these lovely cups stand every spring 

 above our heads by millions, their fragrance 

 and form, their color and beauty, unnoticed 

 by the throng. As they mature into the 

 brown fruit -cones that hold the seeds, and 

 these in turn fall to the ground, to fulfil their 

 purpose of reproduction, there is no week in 

 which the tree is not worthy of attention ; 

 and, when the last golden leaf has been 

 plucked by the fingers of the winter's frost, 

 there yet remain on the bare branches the 



154 



