America has much that is unique in plant and tree growth, as one learns who sees first the collections of American plants shown with pride by acute gardeners and estate owners in England and on the European Continent. Many a citizen of our country must needs confess with some shame that his first estimation of the singular beauty of the American laurel has been born in England, where the imported plants are carefully nurtured; and the European to whom the rhododendrons of his own country and of the Himalayas are familiar is ready to exclaim in rapture at the superb effect and tropical richness of our American species, far more lusty and more truly beautiful here than the introductions which must be heavily paid for and constantly coddled.

For no trees, however, may Americans feel more pride than for our American elms and our no less American tulip, the latter miscalled tulip “poplar.” Both are trees practically unique to the country, both are widespread over Eastern North America, both are thoroughly trees of the people, both attain majestic proportions, both are long-lived and able to endure much hardship without a full giving up of either beauty or dignity.

The American elm how shall I properly speak of its exceeding grace and beauty! In any landscape it introduces an element of distinction and elegance not given by any other tree. Looking across a field at a cluster of trees, there may be a doubt as to the identity of an oak, a chestnut, a maple, an ash, but no mistake can be made in regard to an elm it stands alone in the simple elegance of its vase-like form, while its feathery branchlets, waving in the lightest breeze, add to the refined and classic effect. I use the word “classic” advisedly, because, although apparently out of place in describing a tree, it nevertheless seems needed for the form of the American elm.

The elm is never rugged as is the oak, but it gives no impression of effeminacy or weakness. Its uprightness is forceful and strong, and its clean and shapely bole impresses the beholder as a joining of gently outcurving columns, ample in strength and of an elegance belonging to itself alone. If I may dare to compare man-made architectural forms with the trees that graced the garden of Eden, I would liken the American elm (it is also the water elm and the white elm, and botanically Ulmus Americana) to the Grecian types, combining stability with elegance, rather than to the more rugged works of the Goths. Yet the free swing of the elm’s wide-spreading branches inevitably suggests the pointed Gothic arch in simplicity and obvious strength.

It is difficult to say when the American elm is most worthy of admiration. In summer those same arching branches are clothed and tipped with foliage of such elegance and delicacy as the form of the tree would seem to predicate. The leaf itself is ornate, its straight ribs making up a serrated and pointed oval form of the most interesting character. These leaves hang by slender stems, inviting the gentlest zephyr to start them to singing of comfort in days of summer heat. The elm is fully clothed down to the drooping tips of the branchlets with foliage, which, though deepest green above, reflects, under its dense shade, a soft light from the paler green of the lower side. It is no wonder that New England claims fame for her elms, which, loved and cared for, arch over the long village streets that give character to the homes of the descendants of the Puritan fathers. The fully grown elm presents to the sun a darkly absorbent hue, and to the passer-by who rests beneath its shade the most grateful and restful color in all the rainbow’s palette.

Then, too, the evaporative power of these same leaves is simply enormous, and generally undreamed of. Who would think that a great, spreading elm, reaching into the air of August a hundred feet, and shading a circle of nearly as great diameter, was daily cooling the atmosphere with tons of water, silently drawn from the bosom of Mother Earth!

Like many other common trees, the American elm blooms almost unnoticed. When the silver maple bravely pushes out its hardy buds in earliest spring or often in what might be called latest winter the elm is ready, and the sudden swelling of the twigs, away above our heads in March or April, is not caused by the springing leaves, but is the flowering effort of this noble tree. The bloom sets curiously about the yet bare branches, and the little brownish yellow or reddish flowers are seemingly only a bunch of stamens. They do their work promptly, and the little flat fruits, or “sámaras,” are ripened and dropped before most of us realize that the spring is fully upon us. These seeds germinate readily, and I recall the great pleasure with which a noted horticultural professor showed me what he called his “elm lawn,” one summer. It seemed that almost every one of the thousands of seeds that, just about the time his preparations for sowing a lawn were completed, had softly fallen from the great elm which guards and shades his dooryard, had found good ground, and the result was a miniature forest of tiny trees, giving an effect of solid green which was truly a tree lawn.

But, after all, I think it is in winter that the American elm is at its finest, for then stand forth most fully revealed the wonderful symmetry of its structure and the elegance of its lines. It has one advantage in its great size, which is well above the average, for it lifts its graceful head a hundred feet or more above the earth. The stem is usually clean and regular, and the branches spread out in closely symmetrical relation, so that, as seen against the cold sky of winter, leafless and bare, they seem all related parts of a most harmonious whole. Other great trees are notable for the general effect of strength or massiveness, individual branches departing much from the average line of the whole structure; but the American elm is regular in all its parts, as well as of general stateliness.

As I have noted, the people of the New England States value and cherish their great elms, and they are accustomed to think themselves the only possessors of this unique tree. We have, however, as good elms in Pennsylvania as there are in New England, and I hope the day is not far distant when we shall esteem them as highly. The old elm monarch which stands at the gingerbread brownstone entrance of the Capitol Park in Pennsylvania’s seat of government has had a hard battle, defenseless as it is, against the indifference of those whom it has shaded for generations, and who carelessly permitted the telegraph and telephone linemen to use it or chop it at their will. But latterly there has been an awakening which means protection, I think, for this fine old landmark.

The two superb elms, known as “Paul and Virginia,” that make notable the north shore of the Susquehanna at Wilkesbarre, are subjects of local pride; which seems, however, not strong enough to prevent the erection of a couple of nasty little shanties against their great trunks. There can be no doubt, however, that the sentiment of reverence for great trees, and of justice to them for their beneficent influence, is spreading westward and southward from New England. It gives me keen pleasure to learn of instances where paths, pavements or roadways have been changed, to avoid doing violence to good trees; and a recent account of the creation of a trust fund for the care of a great oak, as well as a unique instance in Georgia, where a deed has been recorded giving a fine elm a quasi-legal title to its own ground, show that the rights of trees are coming to be recognized.

I have said little of the habitat, as the botanist puts it, of the American elm. It graces all North America east of the Rockies, and the specimens one sees in Michigan or Canada are as happy, apparently, as if they grew in Connecticut or in Virginia. Our increasingly beautiful national Capital, the one city with an intelligent and controlled system of tree-planting, shows magnificent avenues of flourishing elms.

But I must not forget some other elms, beautiful and satisfactory in many places. It is no discredit to our own American elm to say that the English elm is a superb tree in America. It seems to be characteristically British in its sturdy habit, and forms a grand trunk.

The juicy inner bark of the red or “slippery” elm was always acceptable, in lieu of the chewing-gum which had not then become so common, to a certain ever-hungry boy who used to think as much of what a tree would furnish that was eatable as he now does of its beauty. Later, the other uses of the bark of this tree became known to the same boy, but it was many years before he came really to know the slippery elm. One day a tree branch overhead showed what seemed to be remarkable little green flowers, which on examination proved to be, instead, the very interesting fruit of this elm, each little seed securely held inside a very neat and small flat bag. Looking at it earlier the next spring, the conspicuous reddish brown color of the bud-scales was noted.

I have never seen the “wahoo,” or winged elm of the South, and there are several other native elms, as well as a number of introductions from the Eastern Hemisphere, with which acquaintance is yet to be made. All of them together, I will maintain with the quixotic enthusiasm of lack of knowledge, are not worth as much as one-half hour spent in looking up under the leafy canopy of our own preeminent American elm a tree surely among those given by the Creator for the healing of the nations.

The tulip-tree, so called obviously because of the shape of its flowers, has a most mellifluous and pleasing botanical name, Liriodendron Tulipifera is not that euphonious? Just plain “liriodendron” how much better that sounds as a designation for one of the noblest of American forest trees than the misleading “common” names! “Tulip-tree,” for a resemblance of the form only of its extraordinary blooms; “yellow poplar,” probably because it is not yellow, and is in no way related to the poplars; and “whitewood,” the Western name, because its wood is whiter than that of some other native trees. “Liriodendron” translated means “lily-tree,” says my learned friend who knows Greek, and that is a fitting designation for this tree, which proudly holds forth its flowers, as notable and beautiful as any lily, and far more dignified and refined than the gaudy tulip. I like to repeat this smooth-sounding, truly descriptive and dignified name for a tree worthy all admiration. Liriodendron! Away with the “common” names, when there is such a pleasing scientific cognomen available!

By the way, why should people who will twist their American tongues all awry in an attempt to pronounce French words in which the necessary snort is unexpressed visually and half the characters are “silent,” mostly exclaim at the alleged difficulty of calling trees and plants by their world names, current among educated people everywhere, while preferring some misleading “common” name? Very few scientific plant names are as difficult to pronounce as is the word “chrysanthemum,” and yet the latter comes as glibly from the tongue as do “geranium,” “rhododendron,” and the like. Let us, then, at least when we have as good a name as liriodendron for so good a tree, use it in preference to the most decidedly “common” names that belie and mislead.

I have said that this same tulip-tree which I will call liriodendron hereafter, at a venture is a notable American tree, peculiar to this country. So believed the botanists for many years, until an inquiring investigator found that China, too, had the same tree, in a limited way. We will still claim it as an American native, and tell the Chinamen they are fortunate to have such a superb tree in their little-known forests. They have undoubtedly taken advantage, in their art forms, of its peculiarly shaped leaves, if not of the flowers and the curious “candlesticks” that succeed them.

Let us consider this liriodendron first as a forest tree, as an inhabitant of the “great woods” that awed the first intelligent observers from Europe, many generations back. Few of our native trees reach such a majestic height, here on the eastern side of the continent, its habitat. Ordinarily it builds its harmonious structure to a height of seventy or a hundred feet; but occasional individuals double this altitude, and reach a trunk diameter of ten feet. While in the close forest it towers up with a smooth, clean bole, in open places it assumes its naturally somewhat conical form very promptly. Utterly dissimilar in form from the American elm, it seems to stand for dignity, solidity and vigor, and yet to yield nothing in the way of true elegance. The botanists tell us it prefers deep and moist soil, but I know that it lives and seems happy in many soils and in many places. Always and everywhere it shows a clean, distinct trunk, its brown bark uniformly furrowed, but in such a manner as to give a nearly smooth appearance at a little distance. The branches do not leave the stem so imperceptibly as do those which give the elm its very distinct form, but rather start at a right angle, leaving the distinct central column of solid strength unimpaired. The winter tracery of these branches, and the whole effect of the liriodendron without foliage, is extremely distinct and pleasing. I have in mind a noble group of great liriodendrons which I first saw against an early April sky of blue and white. The trees had grown close, and had interlaced their somewhat twisty branches, so that the general impression was that of one great tree supported on several stems. The pure beauty of these very tall and very stately trees, thus grouped and with every twig sharply outlined, I shall always remember.

The liriodendron is more fortunate than some other trees, for it has several points of attractiveness. Its stature and its structure are alike notable, its foliage entirely unique, and its flowers and seed-pods even more interesting. The leaf is very easily recognized when once known. It is large, but not in any way coarse, and is thrust forth as the tree grows, in a peculiarly pleasing way. Sheathed in the manner characteristic of the magnolia family, of which the liriodendron is a notable member, the leaves come to the light practically folded back on themselves, between the two protecting envelopes, which remain until the leaf has stretched out smoothly. Yellowish green at first, they rapidly take on the bright, strong green of maturity. The texture is singularly refined, and it is a pleasure to handle these smooth leaves, of a shape which stamps them at once on the memory, and of a coloring, both above and below, that is most attractive. They are maintained on long, slender stems, or “pétioles,” and these stems give a great range of flexibility, so that the leaves of the liriodendron are, as Henry Ward Beecher puts it, “intensely individual, each one moving to suit himself.”

Of course all this moving, and this out-breaking of the leaves from their envelopes, take place far above one’s head, on mature trees. It will be found well worth while, however, for the tree-lover to look in the woods for the rather numerous young trees of the tulip, and to observe the very interesting way in which the growth proceeds. The beautiful form and color of the leaves may also be thus conveniently noted, as also in the autumn the soft, clear yellow early assumed.

It is the height and spread of the liriodendron that keep its truly wonderful flowers out of the public eye. If they were produced on a small tree like the familiar dogwood, for instance, so that they might be nearer to the ground, they would receive more of the admiration so fully their due. In Washington, where, as I have said, trees are planted by design and not at random, there are whole avenues of liriodendrons, and it was my good fortune one May to drive between these lines of strong and shapely young trees just when they were in full bloom. The appearance of these beautiful cups, each one held upright, not drooping, was most striking and elegant. Some time, other municipalities will learn wisdom from the example set in Washington, and we may expect to see some variety in our street trees, now monotonously confined for the most part to the maples, poplars, and a few good trees that would be more valued if interspersed with other equally good trees of different character. The pin-oak, the elm, the sweet-gum, or liquidambar, the ginkgo, and a half-dozen or more beautiful and sturdy trees, do admirably for street planting, and ought to be better known and much more freely used.

I have seen many rare orchids brought thousands of miles and petted into a curious bloom indeed, often more curious than beautiful. If the bloom of the liriodendron, in all its delicate and daring mingling of green and yellow, cream and orange, with its exquisite interior filaments, could be labeled as a ten-thousand-dollar orchid beauty from Bornéo, its delicious perfume would hardly be needed to complete the raptures with which it would be received into fashionable flower society. But these lovely cups stand every spring above our heads by millions, their fragrance and form, their color and beauty, unnoticed by the throng. As they mature into the brown fruit-cones that hold the seeds, and these in turn fall to the ground, to fulfil their purpose of reproduction, there is no week in which the tree is not worthy of attention; and, when the last golden leaf has been plucked by the fingers of the winter’s frost, there yet remain on the bare branches the curious and interesting candlestick-like outer envelopes of the fruit-cones, to remind us in form of the wonderful flower, unique in its color and attractiveness, that gave its sweetness to the air of May and June.

These two trees the elm and the liriodendron stand out strongly as individuals in the wealth of our American trees. Let all who read and agree in my estimate, even in part, also agree to try, when opportunity offers, to preserve these trees from vandalism or neglect, realizing that the great forest trees of our country are impossible of replacement, and that their strength, majesty and beauty are for the good of all.