Stat philyra; haud omnes formosior altera surgit
Inter hamadryades; mollissima, candida, lævis,
Et viridante comâ, & beneolenti flore superba,
Spargit odoratam latè, atque æqualiter umbram.
Couleii, l. 6, Pl.
CHAPTER XIV.
Of the Poplar, Aspen, and Abele.
1. Populus. I begin this second class (according to our former distribution) with the poplar, of which there are several kinds; white, black, &c. (which in Candy ’tis reported bears seed) besides the aspen. The white (famous heretofore for yielding its umbram hospitalem) is the most ordinary with us, to be rais’d in abundance by every set or slip. Fence the ground as far as any old poplar-roots extend, they will furnish you with suckers innumerable, to be slipp’d from their mothers, and transplanted the very first year: But if you cut down an old tree, you shall need no other nursery. When they are young, their leaves are somewhat broader and rounder (as most other trees are) than when they grow aged. In moist and boggy places they will flourish wonderfully, so the ground be not spewing; but especially near the margins and banks of rivers,
Populus in fluviis..........
and in low, sweet, and fertile ground; yea, and in the dryer likewise. Also trunchions of seven or eight foot long, thrust two foot into the earth, (a hole being made with a sharp hard stake, fill’d with water, and then with fine earth pressed in, and close about them) when once rooted, may be cut at six inches above ground; and thus placed at a yard distant, they will immediately furnish a kind of copp’ce. But in case you plant them of rooted trees, or smaller sets, fix them not so deep; for though we bury the trunchions thus profound, yet is the root which they strike, commonly but shallow. They will make prodigious shoots in 15, or 16 years; but then the heads must by no means be diminish’d, but the lower branches may, yet not too far up; the foot would also be cleansed every second year. This for the white. The black poplar is frequently pollar’d when as big as one’s arm, eight or nine foot from the ground, as they trim them in Italy, for their vines to serpent and twist on, and those they poll, or head every second year, sparing the middle, streight, and thrivingest shoot, and at the third year cut him also. There be yet that condemn the pruning of this poplar, as hindring their growth.
2. The shade of this tree is esteemed very wholsome in Summer, but they do not become walks, or avenues by reason of their suckers, and that they foul the ground at fall of the leaf; but they would be planted in barren woods, and to flank places at distance, for their increase, and the glittering brightness of their foliage: The leaves are good for cattel, which must be stripp’d from the cut boughs before they are faggoted. This to be done in the decrease of October, and reserv’d in bundles for winter-fodder. The wood of white poplar is sought of the sculptor, and they saw both sorts into boards, which, where they lie dry, continue a long time. Of this material they also made shields of defence in sword and buckler-days. Dioscorides writes, that the bark chopt small, and sow’d in rills, well and richly manur’d and watered, will produce a plentiful crop of mushrooms; or warm water, in which yest is dissolv’d, cast upon a new-cut stump: It is to be noted, that those fungi, which spring from the putrid stumps of this tree are not venenous (as of all, or most other trees they are) being gathered after the first autumnal rains. There is a poplar of a paler green, and is the properest for watry ground: ’Twill grow of trunchions from two, or eight foot long, and bringing a good lop in a short time, is by some preferr’d to willows.
For the setting of these, Mr. Cook advises the boring of the ground with a sort of auger, to prevent the stripping of the bark from the stake in planting: A foot and half deep, or more if great, (for some may be 8 or 9 foot) for pollards, cut sloping, and free of cracks at either end: Two or three inches diameter, is a competent bigness, and the earth should be ramm’d close to them.
Another expedient is, by making drains in very moist ground, two spade deep, and three foot wide, casting up the earth between the drains, sowing it the first year with oats to mellow the ground, the next Winter setting it for copp’ce, with these, any, or all the watry sorts of trees; thus, in four or five years, you will have a handsome fell, and so successively: It is in the former author, where the charge is exactly calculated, to whom I refer the reader. I am inform’d, that in Cheshire there grow many stately and streight black poplars, which they call peplurus, that yield boards and planks of an inch and half thickness; so fit for floaring of rooms, by some preferr’d to oak, for the whiteness and lasting, where they lie dry.
3. They have a poplar in Virginia of a very peculiar shap’d leaf, as if the point of it were cut off, which grows very well with the curious amongst us to a considerable stature. I conceive it was first brought over by John Tradescant, under the name of the tulip-tree, (from the likeness of its flower) but is not, that I find, taken much notice of in any of our herbals: I wish we had more of them; but they are difficult to elevate at first.