FAMOUS TREES 107 



it off close to the pier. The tree spread out a broad base, forming a truss 

 with a compression member to overcome downward and lateral pulls. It 

 also sent roots upward through the vertical seams between the masonry, 

 thus forming the tension members of a truss. It is doubtful whether any 

 tree rooted in the soil is more effectively anchored against all the stresses 

 and strains the elements can exert. 



MAINE 



O Elm near Fryeburg is so named because of a twisting branch 

 which forms an almost perfect O. 



MARYLAND 



An oak with a gold ring in its heart. While workmen were cutting 

 railroad ties near Willoughby, Queen Amies County, they discovered 

 a gold ring in the heart of an oak tree. It is supposed that the ring 

 had been lost in the woods many years before it w r as found in its 

 strange hiding place and that when the tree w T as the sprout of an 

 acorn the ring became encircled around it. 



MASSACHUSETTS 



Wishing Elm is near the State highway in Bridgewater. This tree 

 w T as formed by the binding and growing together of four saplings, 

 giving the appearance of a single tree on stilts. It is known as "the 

 wushing tree" because small boys and girls of the locality believe that 

 if one w^alks in and out among the four legs of the trunk while mak- 

 ing a wish the wish will come true. 



A 4-foot tree 120 feet high in downtown Boston. High up on 

 Tremont Temple, rooted in a tiny crevice, is a small tree which can be 

 seen from the street. It has been growing several years, and clings 

 so tenaciously to its airy perch that attempts to pull it out have been 

 unsuccessful. It is believed that the seed from which it grew was 

 carried to the crevice by a pigeon. (From Fancy This, No. 137, Bos- 

 ton Herald, May 25, 1935.) 



MICHIGAN 



The Mill Wheel Tree grows near Owosso. More than a hundred 

 years ago, a mill wheel was left standing against a young tree in 

 Owosso. No one bothered to remove it, so the tree grew around it. 



The Stump Mother, a tree within a tree stump, grows near Alger, 

 about 10 feet from the highway. 



MISSISSIPPI 



The G -trees of Biloxi are pines famous for their freak growth 

 wmich cannot be caused, as many believe, by the breaking over and 

 continued growth toward the light, of an individual tree, because 

 there are a considerable number of trees in different groups, all of 

 which, small as well as large, have developed the same peculiar shape. 

 According to a forester, the explanation lies in the death of the central 

 terminal shoot and the subsequent effort of the tree to replace it by 

 substituting one of its laterals or side branches. 



MISSOURI 



An elm, an oak, and two sycamores grow from one common trunk, 

 4 miles from Pineville, McDonald County, on the bank of the Elk 

 River. The trunk itself is a homogeneous whole. Above the union 



