FOREIGN EVERGSBENS. 91 



Chinese Arborvltae. 



Some twenty years ago Robert Douglas advised me to 

 raise these trees for Southe'm Nebraska, Kansas and the 

 Southern states for they endured the hot, dry weather remark- 

 ably well. 



I found them very easy to grow from seed. It did not 

 seem to make any difference how old they were. I have plant- 

 ed seed obtained from many different sources and never knew 

 them to fall. And they do not damp off like other Evergreens. 

 So you can raise themi very easily. I had been growing them 

 with success for twenty years and wrote quite a commendatory 

 article for one of our leading papers. But the Ink was scarce- 

 ly dry when there came one of those mysterious Northwest 

 death waves which took the foliage off the Scotch Pines, killed 

 some of the Red Cedars and demoralized the nursery general- 

 ly and they hit the Chinese Arborvltaes hard and killed the 

 tips. They sprang up again and with fresh branches covered 

 up the dead ones, but after all they got a staggering blow. 1 

 had one that was a record breaker. I left It where It grew In 

 the seed bed. Only six years from seed It was over nine feet 

 tall and shapely as a Juniper. A cold snap of 35 below Injured 

 It. 



These death waves are mysterious things. One winter such 

 a wave four or Ave miles wide swept through the Rockies 

 like a flre and turned the evergreens brown. Many were kill- 

 ed. Even the Ponderosas, the hardiest of all were badly scorch- 

 ed. One wing of the blast hit our nursery there. It scraped the 

 sheen from the Pungens and browned some of them badly so 

 It took years for them to recover. These things show that 

 the unexpected and the uncertain are always hovering over us. 



The Norway Spruce — PIcea Excelsa. 

 These have been planted on a larger scale than any of 

 our foreign trees. I think they were Introduced about sixty 

 years ago. They are somewhat of the form' of our native White 

 Spruce but more rapid growers. They succeed falrlr well 

 Bast of the Mississippi river, and In favored localities beyond. 

 There are hardy ones among them. That Is you may plant dne 

 hundred under the one hundreth meridian and perhaps one 

 among them will survive. In the counties bordering on the 

 Missouri river they often succeed, but you cannot safely move 

 them out on to the open of unsheltered prairies. We often 

 plant them In nurseries at York and they may do well tor a 

 year or two, then they will be nearly all wiped out in some 

 unfavorable winter. In Illinois at one time I saw a cattle 

 yard surrounded by these trees. It was one of the finest arti- 

 ficial plantations I ever saw. The trees were uniform' In size 

 and of drooping habit. They certainly added much to the 

 charm of a prairie landscape. 



