Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 September 1893 — Growth of Willow Trees. [ARTICLE]

Growth of Willow Trees.

Garden and Forest has received a photograph of a willow tree standing in Waterbury Center, Vt., the trunk of which measures twenty-four and a half feet in circumference, and whose symmetrical top shades au eighth of an acre of ground. A person who knows the early history of the willow testifies that in 1840 it wa3 a tree about six inches in diameter, which had grown from a walkingstick driven into the ground a few years before by some children. In that year it was cut down deep into the ground in the hope of killing it, but it started a new growth, and has reached its present dimensions in fifty years. The rapid growth of the willow in favorable localities is well known, and Doctor Hoskins (from whom the photograph was received) writes cf another near his home, which sprang from a cane carried by a returning soldier in 1860, and thrust into the soil in his dooryard. It is now more than four feet in diameter with an immense top, and bids fair, at an equal age, to reach tbs dimensions of tbs one spoken of.