One occurs to me, growing on a wide street of my home town, opposite a church with a graceful spire. This white or silver-leaved poplar has for many years been a regular prey of the gang of tree-trimmers, utterly without knowledge of or regard for trees, that infests this town. They hack it shamefully, and I look at it and say, "Well, the old poplar is ruined now, surely!" But a season passes, and I look again, to see that the tremendous vigor of the tree has triumphed over the butchers; its sores have been concealed, new limbs have pushed out, and it has again, in its unusual height, assumed a dignity not a whit inferior to that of the church spire opposite.
Winter aspect of the cottonwood tree
Lombardy poplar
This white poplar is at its best on the bank of a stream, where its small forest of "suckers" most efficiently protects the slope against the destructive action of floods. One such tree with its family and friends I saw in full bloom along the Susquehanna, and it gave an impression of solidity and size, as well as of lusty vigor, and I have always liked it since. The cheerful bark is not the least of its attractions—but it is a tree for its own place, and not for every place, by reason of the tremendous colonizing power of its root-sprouts.
I wonder, by the way, if many realize the persistence and vigor of the roots of a tree of the "suckering" habit? Some years ago an ailanthus, a tree of vigor and beauty of foliage but nastiness of flower odor, was cut away from its home when excavation was being made for a building, which gave me opportunity to follow a few of its roots. One of them traveled in search of food, and toward the opportunity of sending up a shoot, over a hundred feet!
The impending scarcity of spruce logs to feed the hungry maws of the machines that make paper for our daily journals has turned attention to several forms of the rapid-growing poplar for this use. The aspen is acceptable, and also the Carolina poplar, and these trees are being planted in large quantities for the eventual making of wood-pulp. Even today, many newspapers are printed on poplar, and exposure to the rays of the truth-searching sun for a few hours will disclose the yellowness of the paper, if not of the tree from which it has been ground.
Few whose eyes are turned upward toward the trees have failed to note that exclamation-point of growth, the Lombardy poplar. Originating in that portion of Europe indicated by its common name, and, indeed, a botanical form of the European black poplar, it is nevertheless widely distributed in America. When it has been properly placed, it introduces truly a note of distinction into the landscape. Towering high in the air, and carrying the eye along its narrowly oval contour to a skyward point, it is lofty and pleasing in a park. It agreeably breaks the sky-line in many places, and is emphatic in dignified groups. To plant it in rows is wrong; and I say this as an innocent offender myself. In boyhood I lived along the banks of the broad but shallow Susquehanna, and enjoyed the boating possible upon that stream when it was not reduced, as graphically described by a disgusted riverman, to merely a heavy dew. Many times I lost my way returning to the steep bluff near my home after the sun had gone to rest, and a hard pull against the swift current would ensue as I skirted the bank, straining eyes for landmarks in the dusk. It occurred to me to plant six Lombardy poplars on the top of the bluff, which might serve as easily recognized landmarks. Four of them grew, and are now large trees, somewhat offensive to a quickened sense of appropriateness. Long since the old home has been swallowed up by the city's advance, and I suppose none who now see those four spires of green on the river-bank even guess at the reason for their existence.