YELLOW FLOWERED CUCUMBER TREE (_Magnolia acuminata cordata_) is usually considered a variety of the common cucumber tree, rather than a separate species. The most noticeable feature is the yellow blossom which gives the names by which it is generally known, among such being yellow-flowered magnolia, and yellow cucumber tree. It is not a garden variety, for it grows wild; but it has been cultivated during more than a century, and has undergone changes which are not matched by wild trees. The finest forms of the forest variety are found on the Blue Ridge in South Carolina, and in central Alabama. The cultivated tree is distinguished by its darker green leaves, and by its smaller, bright, canary-yellow flowers. The variety has no value as a timber tree, but is widely appreciated as an ornament. Cultivated trees generally remain small in size, and do not develop the long, clean trunks common with the cucumber tree under forest conditions. UMBRELLA TREE (_Magnolia tripetala_) is one of the magnolias and should not be confounded with the Asiatic umbrella tree often planted in yards. The flower is surrounded by a whorl of leaves resembling an umbrella, hence the name. It is also known as cucumber, magnolia, and elkwood. The range of the tree extends from Pennsylvania to Alabama and west to Arkansas. It prefers the margins of swamps and the rich soil along mountain streams. Leaves are eighteen inches long and half as wide. They fall in autumn. Flowers are cup-shaped and creamy-white. The fruit somewhat resembles that of the common cucumber tree, but is rose colored when fully ripe. Trees are thirty or forty feet high and a foot or more in diameter. The brown heartwood is light, soft, and weak, and is used little or not at all for commercial purposes. The tree is cultivated for ornament in the northern states and in Europe. [Illustration] YELLOW POPLAR [Illustration: YELLOW POPLAR] YELLOW POPLAR (_Liriodendron Tulipifera_) In diameter of trunk the yellow poplar is, next to sycamore, the largest hardwood tree of the United States, and if both height and trunk diameter are considered, it surpasses the sycamore in size. It belongs to a very old group of hardwoods which have come down from remote geological ages, and the species is now found only in the United States and China. Mature trees are from three to eight feet in diameter and from 90 to 180 in height.