18 



appear much more like the cypress, a tree with which 

 they have no botanical alliance. The European tamarix 

 is grown in some Salem gardens as a shrub, but it is not 

 perfectly hardy north of Washington, where it shows its 

 great masses of blossoms in May or earlier. 



The Chinese tree (Tamarix chinensis) is much finer 

 and larger, throwing up its great waving plumes of pink 

 flowers in August. An old tree of this species stands 

 by the gate of Mr. Robinson's house, 18 Summer street, 

 and there is one in Mr. Dugan's garden on Dearborn 

 street. It is probable that all of the trees of this 

 species in Salem have come oi'igiually from these two, 

 as it roots readily from cuttings taken before the 

 leaves appear in the spring. There is a fine Chinese 

 Tamarix in the yard of the Peabody Academy of Sci- 

 ence, conspicuous from the windows of the museum. 



The once popular Ailanthus tree — tree of Heaven 

 and Chinese sumach (Ailanthus glandulosus) as it has 

 variously been called, — is now rarely seen. The disa- 

 greeable odor of the staminate flowers and a fancied 

 unwholesomeness of the tree itself, besides the really 

 practical reason of its tendency to spread everywhere 

 by root suckers, has banished it. I have only seen one 

 large Ailanthus near the street, the tree with a double 

 trunk on Milk street near Andrew, but there is a smaller 

 tree in Mr. Edw. C. Browne's yard at the corner of 

 Broad and Summer streets. 



The staghorn sumach (Rhus typhina) is so called on 

 account of the resemblance of its wide forking branches, 

 when denuded of their leaves, to the antlers of a stag. 

 This resemblance is the more striking as the branches 

 are covered with a velvet-like covering of close hairs. 

 Under favorable conditions this sumach becomes quite 



