The planertree has a history. If the terms which the Roman historian Tacitus applied to people, could be applied to trees, it might be said of this species, as he said of certain tribes: “The cowards fly the farthest and are the last survivors.” The planertree is now found only in certain southern swamps, from North Carolina to Florida, and west to Missouri and Texas. In former periods, as is shown by the records of geology, there were several species, and they had a wide range over portions of the northern hemisphere. They appear to have been a strong group of trees, able to hold their ground with the best inhabitants of the forest. They were in the Rocky Mountains, and far north in Alaska. They were in Europe also, or were represented there by some very similar species. For some reason which is not definitely known, they lost out when competition with other trees became keen, and in the course of long periods of time they disappeared from their former ranges in the North and West. They took to the swamps, just as the tribes of which Tacitus spoke, took to the morasses when they could no longer face their enemies on open ground. It was a far cry from Alaska to the Chattahoochee swamps in Florida, yet that was where A. H. Curtis and Charles Mohr went to procure typical planertree specimens for the tests which Sargent made of American woods. It has been suggested that tree species which have lost out in competition for ground, have been those which were at some decided disadvantage in the matter of getting their seeds properly scattered and planted. The case has not been proved, because there are as many facts and as much argument against that hypothesis as for it. The bigtrees of California are a noted example of a species which lost out and retreated to a corner, yet their seeds fly like birds. Plainly, something besides winged seeds is needed to keep the species in the fight. However, it is not difficult to see that the planertree, with wingless seeds and of so little use as food that no bird or rodent will carry them or bury them, has been much handicapped in the long contest which has crowded it from the arctic circle to the cotton belt. It has the habits of the subdued and conquered tree. It has adapted itself to swamps where few species can grow, and where competition for light and room is reduced to a minimum. Yet, even there, it is content to take the leavings of more ambitious species. The crowns make little effort to rise up to the light, for which many other trees battle during their whole existence. The planertree’s low, broad top of contorted branches places it perpetually in the shade of any other trees which overtop it.