New York and western Pennsylvania, through southern Ontario and southern Michigan to the valley of the Minnesota River and to eastern Nebraska, eastern Kansas, south-west Arkansas, the Indian territory, and central Tennessee.
The tree is noted[1] in America for its habit of suckering from the roots when it is cut down. After a tree is felled the ground around to a distance of often 100 feet becomes filled with numerous suckers; and this is one of the ways in which the trees are reproduced in the American forests. The tree never develops any epicormic branches, and is very seldom attacked by any insect or fungus. (A.H.)
An article by Sargent in Garden and Forest, ii. p. 75, gives an excellent account of this tree, and states that by far the largest and handsomest that he has seen was planted in 1804 directly in front of the historical Verplanck mansion at Fishkill-on-Hudson, and was, in 1889, 75 feet high and a little over 10 feet in girth below the point where it divides into three stems at 3 feet from the ground. Though it was struck by lightning in 1887, the tree is an extremely graceful and well-shaped one, as the picture shows.
The tree grows well as far north as Ottawa, where I saw two spreading trees about 4o feet high, planted in front of Rideau Hall, the residence of the Governor-General. The gardener informed me that they were the latest trees to come into leaf, and, though they flowered in good seasons, produced no fruit.
At Mount Carmel, Illinois, I measured a tree in the forest 92 feet by 8 feet, one of the few remaining relics of the splendid trees described by Ridgway, one of which was 109 feet high, with a clear stem 76 feet to the first limb, but only 20 inches across the stump. Dr. Schneck has measured one in the same locality no less than 129 feet high. It is, however, nowhere an abundant tree in this district, but grows scattered through the richer bottoms.
The tree from which a specimen log in the Jessup collection in the American Museum of Natural History was cut, grew not far from St. Louis, and although only 18 inches in diameter was 105 years old. This represents the average rate
of increase of the tree growing naturally in the forest, cultivated trees in favourable conditions growing much more rapidly.
Cultivation
Gymnocladus canadensis was introduced into England by Archibald, Duke of Argyll, who had a tree in cultivation[2] at Whitton in 1748. This tree was afterwards removed to Kew, on the establishment of the gardens there by the Princess of Wales, mother of George III., who obtained it and many other interesting trees as a present from the Duke of Argyll in 1762. This tree died[3] about 1870; and as old trees reported by Loudon at Syon and elsewhere cannot now be found, it goes to show that the tree lives little over 100 years in England.
