PARK AND CEMETERY. 
G6G 
PLANTING AND CARE OF STREET TREES 
An Address Before the American Association of Park Superintendents 
by J. J.Levison, B. A., M. F., Forester in the Parks of Brooklyn and Queens 
The park superintendent of to-day 
is facing a new problem. Those old 
neglected street trees are now grad- 
ually becoming his care and the peo- 
ple are even more particular about 
them than they are about the parks, 
because in the street tree the citizen 
taks a proprietary interest. It is his 
tree: he sees it daily, is directly bene- 
fitted by it and expects it to be thrifty 
and sightly. The park superinten- 
dent must meet this problem and if 
he meets it well it is that much to 
his credit. What then are the funda- 
mental principles of street tree plant- 
ing and care and how shall he go 
about the problem? 
Street trees as well as the park 
trees should be controlled by the 
municipality and placed under the 
jurisdiction of a single head. Muni- 
cipal control is the only way of se- 
curing uniformity in planting — ^very 
essental on streets— it is the only way 
of controlling insect and fungus in- 
vasions over large areas and of do- 
ing anything systematically and at 
the right time. Co-ordination of ef- 
fort, that is, combining all city tree 
work into one bureau, is also the only 
way of insuring the absolute eradi- 
cation of insect and fungus pests, of 
securing uniformity and efficiency in 
methods, material and apparatus and 
of getting the work done at the least 
possible cost. All city tree problems 
both in the parks and on the streets 
are interdependent and divided effort 
would mean loss of time, money and 
trees. 
With the work co-ordinated, place 
the responsibility of all tree matters 
on a professional forester, a man 
trained in the science of forestry and 
arboriculture and one of considerable 
experience in park work. His duties 
will be to see to all planting, spray- 
ing, pruning and cultivating. He will 
establish a municipal nursery, test the 
various insecticides and fungicides, 
install the best apparatus and enforce 
the city tree ordinances. He will or- 
ganize the office work, plot the street 
trees on a map and advise citizens on 
their tree problems. He will issue 
permits for tree removals and private 
tree pruning, study the local tree 
problems, collect tree statistics and 
promote public interest through lec- 
tures and writing. 
The enactment of a good city tree 
ordinance is the ne.xt step. There 
are a number of cities that now have 
such ordinances in force and the new 
one may be modeled from those. 
Your tools to work with are thus pro- 
vided and if your trained expert is a 
good one, you can leave the details 
of carrying out the work to him. 
Oversee his work occasionally, give 
him the benefit of your wider experi- 
ence and back him when necessary, 
because in the beginning of all such 
work there frequently appear many 
cases of opposition from citizens who 
either for selfish motives or otherwise 
try to force their own views in the 
matter of handling technical tree prob- 
lems. 
The attention of the forester will 
first probably be directed to the care 
of the existing trees rather than to 
the addition of new ones. 
Spraying for leaf-eating insects may 
be his first work. Street trees, grow- 
ing under less favorable conditions 
than park trees, are naturally weaker 
and more susceptible to insect at- 
tack. Street elms without care very 
seldom escape attack from the elm 
leaf beetle and such trees as the horse 
chestnut and linden are titbits for 
leaf eating caterpillars. Let all such 
spraying be done early while the in- 
sect is young and susceptible to the 
poison. It is also important to look 
into the chemical and physical value 
of the insecticide you are using. 
A few years ago I found one of the 
best known brands of arsenate of 
lead to contain as little as 4 per cent 
of arsenic oxide, whereas it should 
have been 15 per cent or more to be 
the least effective. Since then, we 
have been purchasing our spraying ma- 
terial subject to chemical and physical 
tests and have been paying consid- 
erably less than what we have been 
paying before. 
Sucess in spraying will moreover 
depend not only on the value of the 
insecticides and upon how early in 
its feeding stage the insect is at- 
tacked, but also on the thoroughness 
with which the work is done. The 
kind of apparatus used will also make 
an appreciable difference, for a bar- 
rel pump is too slow for the amount 
of labor invested to operate it and a 
very heavy wooden tank such as is 
commonly used for woodland spray- 
ing would prove too sluggish and 
cumbersome in going about the city- 
streets. 
In late summer and early fall, prun- 
ing will be in season. The men 
should then be trained in the funda- 
mental principles of the work and 
furnished with printed hints on the 
necessary precautions in climbing 
trees and removing branches. We 
have had little booklets published on 
such topics for our men and find 
them very helpful. Close cuts and 
application of coal tar to the wounds 
should always be insisted upon and 
above everything else, do not let them 
prune more than is necessary. The 
tendency on street trees has gener- 
ally been the other way to the great 
detriment of the trees. 
Cavities caused by some old neg- 
lected horsebitten wound or by an im- 
properly made cut, are more common 
m street trees than in park trees and 
the present tendency is to indiscrim- 
inately fill them all with cement. 
This work is expensive and in many 
cases unjustified. It is particularly 
true of trees on the street, because 
there, the trees are frequently of poor 
species and the cavities so neglected 
that the absolute elimination of dis- 
eased wood is utterly impossible. 
There the decay would keep on de- 
veloping after treatment with the 
same rapidity as before treatment. 
