Jump to content

Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 42.djvu/68

From Wikisource
This page has been validated.
58
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Of the small white mulberry growing on the grounds of the Department of Agriculture at Washington, Mr. Sudworth says: "The conditions are essentially the same as those noted in the case of the linden, except that the mulberry is perhaps more seriously injured, a considerable portion of the trunk having been destroyed by decay. The adventitious roots observed spring from the free border of a longitudinal crack where the trunk forks, the edges of the wound having been healed for some time, while the subsequent decomposition of the inner layers of wood formed a quantity of mold, which, lying in contact with the

Fig. 1.—Portion of Trunk of Linden; growing in Boston, Mass. (Sketched by the writer.) From the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club. Fig. 2.—Portion of Trunk of Norway Maple, growing near State College, Pennsylvania. (Sketched by William A. Buckhout.) From the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club.

healed borders, seems to have induced the growth of adventitious roots from one side into the decayed mass."[1]

To this list may now be added another mulberry (Fig. 3) observed by the writer during the past winter in Thomasville, Ga. Its owner, Dr. T. S. Hopkins, says of it: "I have had an intimate acquaintance with this grand old tree for thirty years. I do not know how old it was when I first knew it. Some fifteen years ago it was uprooted by a storm. I carefully amputated its limbs and re-erected its body. It lived and improved, and to-day furnishes as much shade as it did before its fall and the surgical operation made necessary by it." In point of size, extent of decay,


  1. In a letter dated July 26, 1892, Prof. B. E. Fernow, Chief of the Forestry Division at Washington, informs me that while in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, he saw a most interesting and well-developed example of self-rooting capacity in a paper mulberry (Broussonettia papyrifera). The tree stands opposite to No. 31 South Front Street in that city.