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Conservative *
Robert Douglas
WHITE FINES.
of Waukegan , Illi
nois , was the pioneer planter of white
pines on the prairies of the Northwest
and his precious memory is as green and
perennial among tree-loverse very where
as the needles of that conifer which , in
groves of symmetrical white pines , make
eolian mnsio in praise of his great work ,
summer and winter , among the valleys ,
and on the hill tops of the Dakotas ,
Nebraska and Kansas. No single arbori
culturist accomplished so much benefi
cence and lived to see so many people
blessed by his labors.
There is no other timber-making
conifer , of the value of white pine ,
which will grow as speedily and reach
mature sawloghood in so brief a time on
the prairies of southeastern Nebraska.
Thirty-seven years ago at Arbor Lodge
THE CONSERVATIVE planted an isolated
white pine. It was an infant of two
and a half feet in height and was taken
out of a water bucket to be placed in the
f patch of ground over which it now
* A
proudly looks. But it had a slow growth.
The annual upstretching of a white pine
is recorded by itself. Every white pine
at the end of the growing season crowns
itself with a terminal bud. Around
this terminal bud , at the sides of it , are
other buds. When the growing season
begins in spring the terminal bud makes
an upward , perpendicular growth and
becomes the trunk of the tree , while the
buds about it make a lateral growth and
become the limbs of the tree. Thus each
year's growth is written , as in a diary ,
and the distance from one system of
limbs to another marks the propitious
and the unpropitious season with equal
truth. But the growth of the isolated
white pine at Arbor Lodge was not
satisfactory ; it was slow ; it lacked
energy and vigor. And now while the
tree of thirty-seven ye'ars is , at five- feet
from the ground , nearly eighteen inches
in diameter , it cannot compare with a
tree of the same age grown in a forester
or grove of density.
Every tree needs moisture for its roots.
These roots convey water , holding in
_ _ . solution certain
Why. .
mineral salts , up
into the trunk and limbs. Every tree
needs light , but the two needs are dis
tinctly different , as to different varieties
of trees. In an isolated situation , stand
ing alone , on an open plain the white
pine has to contend with constant heat
and sunshine in summer , and with
moisture-destroying winds , at intervals ,
all through the year. But the white
pine in primitive forests shades its roots
and shuts out the heat and light with
dense foliage , retails Othe earth mois
ture in coolness about its base and
spreads its mattress of cones , covering
it with a blanket of yellow needles , all
over the earth and thus conserves for its
nutrition the rainfall beneath its wide-
spreading boughs.
Trying to imitate Nature in June ,
1890 , THE CONSERVATIVE planted ten
. , , _ thousand white
. . .
A Mimic Forest. . .
pines which were
purchased of Robert Douglas & Sons.
These pines were put in rows which
were four feet apart and at a distance of
four feet from each other in the row
precisely as corn is planted with a
check-rower. The trees were about
twelve inches in height. ' They were
cultivated , both ways , for five years. In
1895 Master Wirt Morton , aged five
years , son of Carl Morton , did some
work among these pines. And his
photograph was taken , beside a Roxbury
Russet apple tree in full bloom , during
The man who teaches that all Americans , who have acquired a competence , are the enemies of all those Americans who
have not , but are trying to acquire a competence , is a public enemy.
