January, 1900. Bruncken— Some Kejmarkable Trees. 
45 
tional in this vicinity by showing a form that looks Hke a modifi- 
cation of the New England type. It divides rather close to the 
ground, but the forks are decurrent at a pretty acute angle, and the 
secondary branches assume still more nearly vertical positions. 
An exception is made by a single stout branch which comes out, at 
a height of about ten feet from the ground, horizontally towards 
the west. This branch is about 6 inches in diameter, 20 feet long, 
and, like most horizontal branches in elms, very much of a zigzag 
growth. The peculiarities of form in this tree must probably be 
explained as follows : 
The seedling grew up in a rather open position, which caused 
it to fork early. By the time the main divisions were ready to 
branch, a dense growth of shrubs, possibly willows or dogwood, 
liad grown up around it, taking away the lateral rays of light and 
forcing the new shoots of the elm tO' grow upward, almost per- 
pendicularly. The shrubs formed the edge of a sun-lit glade, and 
in one place there was a break through which the light reached 
the shoot from which the horizontal branch was developed by 
growing in the direction from which the sun's rays reached it. 
Of oaks, all the large specimens I have seen belong to the tall, 
slender-shafted, small-crowned forest type. One specimen, how- 
ever, of the swamp white oak, w^hich grows on Barnekow Avenue, 
in the Town of Wauwatosa, half a mile south of the Blue Mound 
road, is of the type with wide-spreading crown. It is a compara- 
tively young tree, and if it is not prematurely destroyed mav de- 
velop into a very fine individual, similar to some of the great oaks 
of ^Massachusetts, described by Henry Brooks in ''Typical Elms 
and Other Trees of Massachusetts." Last August (1899) it was 
about 50 feet high, with a trunk diameter of 23 inches at breast- 
height. The lowest branches were not more than eight feet from 
the ground, and the diameter of the spread of its crown was 
sixty-six feet as measured by pacing. 
Of course there may be other large or otherwise remarkable 
trees in the vicinity of Milwaukee which I have never seen ; and 
it would be well if a record of them was made by people interested 
in fine trees. 
