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68 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland
teristic sharp angles made by the smaller erect branches with the larger horizontal
limbs.
Another photograph sent me by Mr. Ashe shows a group of Liriodendron, in
the forests of Transylvania Co., N.C., 120-140 feet high and 4-5 feet in diameter,
associated with Quercus rubra and Betula lutea which are not so tall. This
magnificent forest is, like most of those accessible to the lumbermen, rapidly
decreasing in area and beauty, owing to the growing demand for timber.
For further details of the distribution in North Carolina refer to Pinchot and
Ashe's admirable account, pp. 39-41, and to a paper by Overton Price on " Practical
Forestry in the Southern Appalachians." 1
The largest trees of this species, however, have been recorded by Professor
R. Ridgway 2 from Southern Indiana and Illinois, near Mount Carmel, Illinois, which I
had the pleasure of visiting under the guidance of Dr. J. Schneck in September 1904.
Though the largest trees recorded by him have now been cut, reliable measurements
were taken of a tulip tree which reached the astonishing height of 190 feet,
exceeding that of any non-coniferous tree recorded in the temperate regions of the
northern hemisphere. Another tree cut " 8 miles east of Vincennes, was 8 feet
"across the top of the stump, which was solid to the centre ; the last cut was 63 feet
from the first, and the trunk made 80,000 shingles." The soil here is an exceedingly
rich, deep alluvium, and the climate in summer very hot and moist.
It is stated in Garden and Forest, 1 897, p. 458, that at the Nashville Exhibition
a log of this tree was shown by the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis Railroad
Company, which measured 42 feet long, 10 feet 4 inches in diameter at the butt, ancl
7 feet at the smaller end, containing 1260 cubic feet of timber, and about 600
years old.
INTRODUCTION
The tulip tree was probably introduced, according to Evelyn, 3 by John Trades-
cant about the middle of the seventeenth century, but this is somewhat uncertain,
though it was grown by Bishop Compton at Fulham in 1688.
According to Hunter the tree which first flowered in England was in the
gardens of the Earl of Peterborough at Parsons Green, Fulham, and this he describes
in 1776 as "an old tree quite destroyed by others which overhang it." At that time
there were also some trees of great bulk at Wilton, the seat of the Earl of Pembroke
in Wilts.
CULTIVATION
Though the tree can be propagated by means of layers, and in the case of
varieties by grafting, yet as seeds are easily procured from the United States it is
much better to raise it from seed. Cobbett, who was a great admirer of the tulip
tree, gives a long account of it, and of the best means of raising it, 4 and says that if
sown in May, which he thinks the best time, it will germinate in the following May,
1 Yearbook U.S. Dept. of Agrie. ( 1900).
J Notes mi Trees of I ower Wabash, Proc. U.S. Nat. Hist. Mus. 1882, p. 49; 1894, p. 411.
•**•*! f* *f7 7 -""7TI f T ~ '
3 Evelyn's SOva, 214. Ed. Hunter (1776). 4 , Woodlands, .„ „ , par. 523 ---. (1823).
ft
Liriodendron 69
but that if sown in autumn, part will come up in the next spring and part in the
following year.
Dawson in an excellent paper on the Propagation of Trees from Seed, 1
says, " The tulip tree invariably takes two years, and as the proportion of good seed
is as i to 10, it should be sown very thickly to ensure even an ordinary crop."
Probably this opinion was based on his experience with seeds grown in New
England, where they do not ripen so well as they do in the south, for my own experience,
gained by sowing seeds received from Meehan of Philadelphia, is different. In the
spring of 1903 I sowed part of the seeds in a greenhouse, where they began to germinate
six weeks later. Of those sown in the open ground, perhaps 10 per cent germinated
in June. The following summer was cold and wet, and the seedlings in the open
ground made slow progress, being only 2-3 inches high in the autumn, whilst those
kept under glass were from 6-15 inches high at the same time. The young wood
seems to ripen better than that of most North American trees and, as the spring of
1904 was favourable, they were not checked by frost. But the seedlings are diffi
cult to transplant, owing to the fleshy and brittle nature of their roots, and are there
fore best kept in a box or large pot till they are two years old, when the roots should
be trimmed and planted out in deep sandy soil, and watered the first year; after this
they should be transplanted frequently until large enough to put in their permanent
situation, and if tall and straight grown trees are desired the young trees must be
very carefully pruned, as like the Magnolia they do not thrive so well if large
branches are cut off.
The tulip tree rarely ripens its seed in England, and that which I got from a
tree at Westonbirt in Gloucestershire in 1901 did not germinate. But I am informed
by Mr. A. C. Forbes, that a self-sown tulip tree is growing in the sand walk at
Longleat, and Colonel Thynne confirms this in December 1904, when he tells me
the young tree is 8 feet high. This, however, is the only instance I know of in
England where natural reproduction has occurred.
SOIL AND SITUATION
The tree requires a deep, moist, rich soil to bring it to perfection, preferring
heavy land to light, and apparently disliking lime in the soil. It probably prefers a
moderate amount of shade when young, and would be more likely to grow tall and
straight if surrounded by other trees. But isolated trees sometimes grow with a
clean straight stem, as at Leonardslee in Sussex (see below) even on dry soil.
In the Gardeners Chronicle for 1879 there was much correspondence on the
merits of this tree for general cultivation in England, from which I extract the
following particulars, which will be valuable to intending planters.
Most of the correspondents agree that it grows best on heavy soil, inclining to
clay, or with a clay subsoil. Sir W. Thiselton Dyer says it does not do well on
the light, dry soil of Kew Gardens.
1 Trans. Mass. Hort. Soc. 1885, p. 152.