DECIDUOUS TREES. 
363 
The form of the silver poplar is irregularly squarish, its foliage 
abundant and massy, and its branches light-colored, and of an 
ashy-green hue, smooth, and cheerful-looking in winter. It grows 
luxuriantly in almost any good moist soil, and becomes a spreading 
tree of great size in less time than any healthy tree we know of. 
Cuttings from this tree take root freely, and make good trees j but it 
is usually grown from suckers. It is said to be a longer-lived tree 
than others of its species. For wide avenues, or to stand out on a 
lawn, it is a superb tree, especially where the subsoil is a rich moist 
clay. But it takes up too much room to be suitable on any small 
grounds. We know of no tree that will so quickly make a noble 
shade for pasture fields. 
The Lombardy Poplar. P. fastigiata . — This model of a syl- 
van sentinel is one of the most peculiar of trees ; having the least 
diameter of head in proportion to its height of any tree known. 
This slender form has made it most useful in landscape gardening ; 
its spiry top being employed to form a central point in groups of 
trees, a back-ground relief to level-lined architecture, or to break, 
with its exceptional erectness, the more monotonous outlines of 
other trees. When first introduced into this country the rage for 
it was so great that town streets, and country roads, and farm-house 
yards, were everywhere filled with them ; but familiarity has bred 
contempt. It has been found that, though a tree of most original 
and picturesque character, it is not comparable to our native trees 
in variety of beauty, in usefulness as a shade tree, in cleanliness, or 
in healthfulness. Worms on the foliage, and borers in the wood, 
love the tree and kill it. It has become so unhealthy that it is not 
safe to plant one near the house, where its dirty fallen leaves would 
be annoying even were it a healthy tree free from worms. But its 
club-like form, and the vertical shadow lines of its foliage, are so 
unique, and contrast so picturesquely now and then with round- 
headed groups of trees, that we must still use it, away from the 
house, in ornamental plantations. And it may be that the plagues 
which have infested it will diminish, and yet leave the Lombardy 
poplar with its normal beauty. In Italy, and in England, it is one 
of the loftiest of trees, attaining a height of from one hundred to 
