FAMOUS TREES 47 



TREES ASSOCIATED PARTICULARLY WITH WRITERS AND LITERATURE 



CALIFORNIA 



Jack London's Oak. A sturdy oak tree planted on the plaza before 

 the city hall, in his native city, Oakland. The dedicatory resolution 

 of the city council of Oakland reads : 



We confer this mite of honor by dedicating Oakland's standard-bearing oak 

 to him who grew with this city, that this sturdy sentinel may stand in memory 

 and to honor Jack London. 



Mark Twain Oak, on Jackass Hill, Tuolumne County, under which 

 the humorist wrote The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, which 

 made him famous overnight. This tree was felled in 1929, and only 

 the stump remains. Sections of the tree are on exhibit in the Mu- 

 seum of Natural History, New York City, and in the British Museum, 

 London. 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 



Six memorial oaks, all red oaks on the new Academy of Science 

 grounds Twenty-first and C Streets NW, keep alive the memory of 

 Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Burroughs, John James Audubon, 

 Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Walt Whitman. 



Shakespeare plot in West Potomac Park, Washington. On April 

 23, 1935, the anniversary of the birth of the Bard of Avon, trees 

 presented by the Governors of various States were planted in a corner 

 of the rose garden in West Potomac Park, as the nucleus of a Shake- 

 speare garden. Wives of Senators and Representatives of the States 

 contributing officiated in the tree planting. The trees planted include 

 a tuliptree contributed by Tennessee, an ash by Massachusetts, moun- 

 tain-ashes by New Hampshire and New York, pines by Michigan and 

 Virginia, elms by Nebraska, Maine, and Arizona, oaks by South 

 Carolina and Illinois, a cypress by Maryland, cherry trees by Kansas 

 and California, persimmon trees by Florida and Delaware, a Russian 

 olive tree by South Dakota, and a magnolia by Louisiana. 



Southworth Oak (red oak), in the park at Thirty-sixth Street and 

 Prospect Avenue NW, planted by the League of American Pen 

 Women in memory of Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, authoress, who 

 resided for many years in old Georgetown. 



Mandarin Live Oak, Duval County, on St. Johns River. The 

 piazza of the home of Harriet Beecher Stowe was built around this 

 tree. During the Civil War a cannonball w r as shot into the tree 

 from a Federal gunboat in the river. The bark has grown around 

 the ball and has almost entirely covered it. 



GEORGIA 



Lanier Oak, on the edge of the Marshes of Glynn, at Brunswick. 

 Under the gracious boughs of this tree, Sidney Lanier, native of 

 Macon, Ga., and the greatest lyricist of the South, was inspired to 

 write the Marshes of Glynn (fig. 24). 



