Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, February 1899: Volume LIV, No. 4, February 1899Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, February 1899: Volume LIV, No. 4, February 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
In a recent paper on Tree Planting in the Streets of Washington, Mr.
W.P. Richards, surveyor of the District of Columbia, remarks that,
under the plan adopted, "tree planting has never been at an
experimental stage" in that city. "Washington was a city of young
trees during the seventies, and in the spring of 1875 more than six
thousand trees were planted, consisting of silver maples, Norway
maples, American elms, American and European lindens, sugar maples,
tulip trees, American white ash, scarlet maples, various poplars, and
ash-leaved maples.... A careful count was made of the trees in 1887,
and by comparing this with the number of trees since planted and those
removed, there is found to be more than seventy-eight thousand trees,
which if placed thirty feet apart would line both sides of a boulevard
between Washington and New York. These consist of more than thirty
varieties." Mr. Richards adds: "The planting and care of trees in
Washington grows from year to year, and the future will probably
demand more skill and judgment than in years past. About twenty
thousand dollars is spent annually, most of it in the care of old
trees. From one to three thousand young trees are planted during the
spring and fall of each year. The nursery has several thousand of the
best varieties ready for planting."
The opinions of these authorities and the success of the work in
Washington, now extending over a quarter of a century, determine
beyond all question the feasibility and practicability of successfully
cultivating trees in the streets of cities. And if any one doubts the
power of trees cultivated in the streets to change the temperature of
a city let him calculate the amount of foliage which the seventy-eight
thousand trees, when full-grown, will furnish the city of Washington,
taking as his basis the fact that a single tree, the Washington elm,
at Cambridge, Massachusetts, when in full leafage, equals five acres
of foliage, and that one acre of grass emits into the atmosphere 6.400
quarts of water in twenty-four hours, a powerfully cooling process.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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