IX. 



THE BOX TREE, MULBERRIES AND BUTTON WOOD . 



In contrast to the elms, trees which rapidly attain 

 great size, is the box (Buxus sempervirens) which is 

 probably the slowest growing of all trees. We are fa- 

 miliar with the dwarf variety of this tree which is used 

 so extensively in old fashioned gardens, in Salem and 

 other towns in Essex County, as an edging for flower 

 beds. The dwarf box sometimes grows to a height of 

 three feet, and there was, on Pleasant street in 

 Marblehead, some years ago, a garden famous in its day 

 for the large box which grew there. 



In Dr. Lyman's yard, on Washington square, is a 

 fine specimen of the tree box. It arises from ten or 

 more stems and forms a beautiful dense head eight 

 feet in diameter and as high from the ground. In 

 Mr. Robinson's garden, on Summer street, is a box tree 

 known to be over thirty-five years old. The height 

 of the tree is but four feet ; it has always been perfectly 

 healthy, and yet its single stem is but eight inches in 

 circumference. It is just half the age of the Bertram 

 elm, at the Public Library, whose trunk circumference 

 is one hundred and seventy two inches, or more than 

 twenty-one times as great. A catalpa, in the rear of 

 the museum building, eleven years old, one third of 

 the age of this box tree, is twenty-five inches in cir- 

 cumference, three times that of the box tree. 



What has been said here, and in the previous sketch, 



