A city's trees 

 H. Elliott McClure 



As a relief project the City of Danville, Illinois, instigated 

 a tree survey during the months of August, September, and 

 October of 1934, under the supervision of the street commis- 

 sioner. The object of the survey was to determine the condition 

 of ail trees on public property and those of private property in 

 the front yards and to locate dying and diseased elms in an 

 effort to check or prevent further spread of the diseases that 

 seemed so common. 



The Trees of Danville, Illinois 



More than 18,000 trees were examined in the three months 

 and this was probably 90% of the trees within the main part 

 of the city. Of these trees 59% were healthy, 38% in need of 

 care, and 3% were dead; 29% of the trees, or 7,000, were on 

 public property and of these 61% were healthy, 36.6% needed 

 care, and 2.4% were dead. Of the 11,000 trees on private 

 property, or 71% of the total, 57% were healthy, 39.4% needed 

 care, and 3.6% were dead. Trees in the parks were, with the 

 exception of the elms, in uniformly good condition. Trees on 

 the boulevards were crowded and starved and were in poor 

 condition. As the trees on private property have more room to 

 grow, it would be expected that they would be in better con- 

 dition than those on the boulevards. This was not true for the 

 condition of trees in both situations was relatively the same. 



There were 29 different groups of shade trees in the city and 

 of these, eight constituted 87%. These eight were soft maples, 

 elms, box elders, catalpas, ailanthus, hard maples, cotton-woods, 

 and oaks. 



Soft Maples 



Three thousand three hundred and thirty soft maples were 

 examined and of these 38% were on public property and 62% 

 on private. They constituted 17% of the city's trees. Only 56% 

 of the trees were found to be healthy. This is due to the fact 

 that they have been butchered throughout the town. Soft 

 maples are very susceptible to heart rots and wherever they are 

 injured they tend to rot. Nineteen per cent of them had been 

 topped and in no instance was a topped tree found to be free of 



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