153 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
MUNICIPAL CONTROL OF STREET TREES 
Address by A. T. Erwin, Iowa State Col- 
lege, Before Iowa League of Municipalities 
There are two distinct points of 
view concerning the care and owner- 
ship of street trees. The one may 
be termed the individualistic, and the 
second, the collective. In the first in- 
stance its title and property rights 
are vested in the owner in front of 
whose lot it chances to be planted. 
It stands on the same basis as his 
house, or the cherry trees in his gar- 
den. Its presence or absence is pri- 
marily a matter of his own concern 
only. It is his privilege to have trees 
or not, as he may choose, to plant 
many or few, and of whatever kind he 
prefers. 
From the other point of view street 
trees are regarded as strictly a part 
of the street itself, and as such are 
distinctly public property. Under this 
plan it is assumed that it is the pub- 
lic primarily rather than the individu- 
al that is most concerned. 
To secure a well planted street 
there are certain conditions which 
must be met. First of all there inust 
be the exercise of judgment as to 
the proper kinds for planting. This 
entails a knowledge of trees as to 
their comparative hardiness, rate of 
growth, readiness with which they are 
transplanted, immunity from insects 
and diseases, etc. The hard maple, 
for example, is a splendid tree in most 
parts of Iowa, but a failure in the re- 
gions from Cherokee west to the Mis- 
souri River. The sycamore withstands 
the smoky, gaseous atmosphere of the 
factory district much better than most 
species, and so I might continue to 
enumerate. These are only minor de- 
tails, yet they often determine the 
success or failure of the enterprise, 
and their application presupposes the 
knowledge of trees which the average 
citizen does not have, and cannot be 
expected to possess. 
In the next place there should be 
uniformity as to kind. A given street 
should be planted entirely to one va- 
riety. Under individual ownership 
the. effect of the street planting as a 
whole is often nothing more than a 
hodge-podge, and sometimes repre- 
sents as many different species of 
trees as there are lot owners. One 
even occasionally notices the use of 
cedar trees and other evergreens for 
this purpose. Frequently an owner in 
his anxiety to get somethin'g started 
plants a box elder, which is really a 
scrub, and not a tree at all. 
A good example of the finished 
product under a unified plan may be 
seen in the city of Washington, where 
Indiana Avenue, for example, is 
planted with white elm, another with 
the plane tree, etc. Under these con- 
ditions even the most casual observer 
must be impressed with the idea that 
here we have first of all a unified plan 
to work by and that the treatment is 
comprehensive, and dignified and the 
results better in every way. 
The centralized control also ad- 
mits of uniformity as to distance 
apart and the correct alignment as re- 
gards width from the parking. In this 
connection we would remark, that 
probably the majority of our streets 
are planted too closely. The amateur 
sees only the young sapling rather 
than the full grown specimen, and 
crowds in two trees where there is 
room for only one. None of our 
larger trees such as the wdiite elm 
should be planted closer than 40 feet 
apart, and if it covered this point 
only the matter of municipal control 
would be well worth while. 
Various insect pests are making 
trouble with our shade trees and the 
time is not far distant when we shall 
have to enter upon a definite warfare 
against them if the trees are to be 
preserved. The most of these pests 
can be effectively combated, but the 
spraying apparatus required for this 
work is entirely too expensive for any 
one individual to supply, and the most 
effective period for fighting them is 
usually at a stage of their growth 
when they are not at all conspicuous 
and when they would be the least no- 
ticed by the general public. In most 
instances when a private citizen be- 
gins to complain about some insect 
on his trees its work has been done 
and the really effective period for de- 
stroying it has past. 
One of the most important reasons 
for the municipal control of street 
trees is in the interest of their pro- 
tection. The growing of a tree is a 
long termed proposition, and the work 
of years can be destroyed in an hour. 
The ruthless destruction and butch- 
ery of rows of our hard maple and 
elm by telephone companies is a burn- 
ing shame and represents an indiffer- 
ence to public interests and a crudity 
which a more advanced society would 
not tolerate for a minute. Most of 
our Iowa towns seem to be helpless, 
or, rather, indifferent in this matter, 
and there is serious need of regula- 
tion and control. 
In some instances there is also need 
of regulation to protect the tree own- 
er from his own follies. In the spring 
about the time the buds begin to swell 
it is a natural instinct of human na- 
ture to want to get out of doors and 
do something. More than one man 
seeks for the pruning saw and under 
the delusion that he is improving 
them tops his trees and dismembers 
them in the worst kind of fashion. If 
he is too busy to do it himself he 
falls the ready victim of the pro- 
fessional tree pruner, whose pay is de- 
pendent upon the amount of brush he 
leaves behind. Every one should un- 
derstand that the leaf system of a 
tree performs a most necessary and 
useful function in the work of nutri- 
tion; that the leaves correspond in a 
measure to the lungs and stomach of 
an animal, and that the topping of a 
large tree is about as sensible as the 
removal of both lungs from a healthy 
robust person. 
Iowa is classed as a prairie or tree- 
less country. The natural conditions 
for tree growth are not the most fa- 
vorable here, and common sense 
would therefore dictate that we exer- 
cise all the more care in an effort to 
counteract so far as possible these 
natural obstacles. In point of fact, 
however, conditions are quite the re- 
verse in this regard, and generally 
speaking, there is less attention given 
to this subject here on the part of 
either the individual or the municipal 
authorities than in timbered sections 
where trees grow much more readily. 
The matter of gas plants is an item 
of discussion in many of our Iowa 
tow'ns, and the number of plants is 
sure to multiply within the next few 
years. A careful reading of the fran- 
chises recently voted on in an Iowa 
town reveals the fact that there is 
not a single line relating to. the mat- 
ter of leaky mains or stipulations as 
to the kind of calking-to use to avoid 
this, etc. In the older cities, at least, 
the destruction of street trees from 
this source has become a very serious 
matter. In the Massachusetts Gas 
Commission Report of 1905 the state- 
ment is made that fully 10 per cent 
of the gas which enters the mains 
escapes in this fashion before it 
reaches the house meters. Gas injury 
