NO. 10 
NEW SERIES VOL. IX 
ARNOLD ARBORETUM 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
BULLETIN 
OF 
POPULAR INFORMATION 
JAMAICA PLAIN, MASS. JUNE 22. 1923 
The Yellow Wood or Virgilia, common names of Cladrastris lutea, 
has been covered during the past week with long drooping clusters of 
pure white pea-shaped flowers which make it one of the most beautiful 
trees in the forests of eastern North America. It is a round-topped 
tree sometimes sixty or seventy feet in height, with pale smooth bark 
which resembles that of the American Beech-tree, and large light green 
compound leaves which turn clear yellow in the autumn before falling. 
In the forest this is a rare and local tree, and is found growing, usu¬ 
ally on river cliffs, from western North Carolina to Tennessee, Ken¬ 
tucky and northern Alabama, and in southern Missouri and northern 
Arkansas. It is most abundant probably in the neighborhood of Nash¬ 
ville, Tennessee. Sent to France by its discoverer, the elder Michaux, 
it has been in cultivation for more than a century. One of the first, 
and perhaps the first specimen planted in the United States was stand¬ 
ing a few years ago in the grounds of the Philadelphia Cricket Club near 
that city. The Yellow Wood was planted in Massachusetts, where it is 
perfectly hardy, at least eighty years ago. This tree flowers well in 
France and Germany, but rarely produces flowers in Great Britain where 
the sun is not hot enough to ripen sufficiently the flowering wood. 
Here the trees flower only once in two years and, with few exceptions, 
all individuals planted in the northern states flower the same year. 
Although one of the handsomest trees that can be used for the decora¬ 
tion of parks and gardens in the eastern states, the Virgilia seems to 
be less commonly used here than it was seventy-five years ago. Fortu¬ 
nately it can still be obtained in a few American gardens. 
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