Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 January 1916 — IS KING OF URBAN TREES [ARTICLE]

IS KING OF URBAN TREES

Elm Famous for Developing Fine Symmetry When Allowed to Grow Alone. “The elm is essentially a self-suffi-cient tree. It does not thrive In groves,” Walter Prichard Eaton writes in the Century. “It has a standard type of its own, and it either attains this type or is lost to view. The elm which comes to maturity is usually the one which has lodged in a favored spot where there is no competition, such as a river meadow, where the spring freshets have dropped the seed on fertile soil and the roots can get down to water. “We all know the type, the noble trunk of massive girth tapering very gradually upward to the first spring of branches, and then dissolving in those branches as a water jet might dissolve in many upward and outcurvIng streams, till the whole is lost ih the spray of the foliage. Like many other trees that grow alone, it develops an exquisite symmetry; but with the elm this symmetry is not only one of general contour, but of individual limbs Not only is the silhouette symmetrical, but the skeleton also, branch balancing branch. That is what gives It its remarkable fitness to comport with architectural lines, with geometrically designed vistas. It has a formal structure and a consequent dignity which makes it the logical shade for a village street, a chapel, a library, the scholarly procession in cap and gown. Add to that dignity its arched and airy lightness and its splendid size, and you have the king of urban trees.”