wardens are appointed in most parishes, who are often ladies; and I am indebted to one of the most enthusiastic and active of them, Miss Emma G. Cummings of Brookline, Mass., for showing me some of the large Sassafras trees which still survive in the suburbs of Boston. These form a group on a slope on the south side of Covey Hill, the smallest being 6 feet in girth, and the largest 9 feet 7 inches and over 50 feet high. But these are far inferior to the trees in the forests of the south and west, where Ridgway measured, in the Wabash valley, a Sassafras 95 feet high by 7½ in girth, and where, he says, it sometimes attains 12 feet in circumference.
Cultivation
The Sassafras was one of the earliest American trees introduced into England, having been cultivated in 1633 in a garden near London.[1] The tree is propagated by seeds, which should be sown as soon as ripe, and by suckers and root-cuttings. When large it is difficult to transplant, as the thick fleshy roots are scantily provided with rootlets.
Cobbett,[2] who gave an interesting account of the Sassafras, and was very enthusiastic in its praise, found that the seeds rarely if ever come up in the first year, and apparently often lie over for two years. Fresh seeds gathered by me in the Arnold Arboretum and sown in autumn, only produced one seedling in the first year, and no more have since germinated. This seedling though kept in a greenhouse grows very slowly, and at three years old is only 10 inches high. But though the tree is now rare in England there is no reason why it should not be grown on rich sandy soil in those districts where the summers are warm and dry, if young trees can be procured and established.
Remarkable Trees
The only really fine specimen of this species that we have seen in England is in the garden at Claremont, the seat of H.R.H. the Duchess of Albany. This is a handsome, healthy tree which in 1907 measured 48 feet by 6 feet 8 inches at 1 foot from the ground. It forks low down, and the main stem is 4 feet 10 inches at 5 feet. This tree flowers freely in the month of May, but Mr. Burrell has observed no seeds on it (Plate 146). A tree formerly grew at Beeston Hall, near Norwich, which Grigor states to have been 38 feet high in 1840, but this, as I am informed by Mr. Wall, the gardener there, died and was taken down about 1808.
There are four small trees in Mr. Friedlander's garden at White Knights Park, Reading, which appear to be suckers from the roots of an older one now dead; and in the adjoining properties, White Knights and the Wilderness, there are also trees of which the tallest is about 35 feet by 2 feet 10 inches. There isa younger tree in Mrs. Robb's grounds at Goldenfield, Liphook, and a small one in Kew Gardens planted by Sir W.T. Thiselton-Dyer. There is also a healthy young tree at Tortworth.
