Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1886 [PAGE 275]

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267 This seed was planted in the spring of 1869 and the seedlngs were transplanted two by four feet apart in 1871. Having a crooked and much branched top, this was cut off near the ground in the spring of 1872^ and a single shoot allowed to grow from each. This latter often -attained six feet or more in height the first season—a straight, clean, unbranched stem. In five years the average height was sixteen feet and the average diameter of the stem two and onefourth inches. These trees, one-fourth of an acre, occupy a strip of land by the side of the Scotch Pine and upon the same kind of soil. The present (1886) average height is twenty-eight feet three inches, and the average circumference of trunk twenty and two-thirds inches. None of the trees have escaped injury by frost. Usually the wood of certain annual growths of the trunk is dead and decaying while many of tho limbs, not unfrequently the terminal portion of the "leader," have been killed, making the subsequent growth irregular and crooked. When the trees were two and a half inches in diameter every other one was removed and used as grape stakes. They were cut in the spring and immediately driven into the ground by the side of a vine. Notwithstanding the known durability of this wood in the earth, these stakes rotted so badly that many had to be replaced after the first year, while none lasted longer than three to four years. But it must be remembered that the wood was in part already injured by winter killing and that the stakes were used while green. The sap wood soon decays in the earth under favorable circumstances, and since in poles of this size there is a large proportion of sap, it is to be expected that such stakes will soon become more or iess reduced by rot. But they last much longer if seasoned before setting in the ground and especially if cut in late springtime when the bark peels readily. Alternate rows were removed six years after planting, so that the trees now stand about four by eight feet apart. (Catalpa speclosa.) The seeds from which these trees came were planted in nursery May, 1876. When two years old the young trees were moved to the permanent plantation and set in rows eight feet apart four feet apart in the rows. From the first these seedlings took an upright growth quite different from those of the tender variety. The land is the highest and is accounted the poorest in the plantation. It is the same as that occupied by the portion of the European Larch which has succeeded so well. As was the case with the other Catalpa all the young trees grew—not one died in either case. Notwithstanding the transplanting a growth four feet in height wras made the first season. Good cultivation was given the first year, but nothing was done with trees or soil the second season on account of the pressure of business in other quarters. The third year again the ground was kept in good order, after which little attention was given to it. The trees continued from the beginning to grow luxuriantly, forming straight trunks, furnished with coarse and distant, but symmetrical branches. Not a bud*or branch has been noticeably injured

HARDY CATALPA,