d and uneven, while _many short limbs make their
appearance on the stem_" The italics are mine, and the sentence
italicized contains an unblushing libel upon the most beautiful of all
trees. Short branches never "appear on the stems" of old tulip-trees.
The bark, however, does grow rough and deeply seamed with age. I have
seen pieces of it six inches thick, which, when cut, showed a fine grain
with cloudy waves of rich brown color, not unlike the darkest mahogany.
But Poe, no matter how unconscionable his methods of art, had the true
artistic judgment, and he made the tulip-tree serve a picturesque turn
in the building of his fascinating story; though one would have had more
confidence in his descriptions of foliage if it had been May instead of
November.

The growth of the tulip-tree, under favorable circumstances, is strong
and rapid, and, when not crowded or shaded by older trees, it begins
flowering when from eighteen to twenty-five years old. The
blooming-season, according to the exigences of weather, begins from May
20 to June 10 in Indiana, and lasts about a week. The fruit following
the flower is a cone an inch and a half long and nearly an inch in
diameter at the base, of a greenish--yellow color, very pungent and
odorous, and full of germs like those of a pine-cone. The tree is easily
grown from the seed. Its roots are long, flexible, and tough, and when
young are pale yellow and of bitterish taste, but slightly flavored with
the stronger tulip individuality which characterizes the juice and sap
of the buds and the bark of the twigs. The leaves, as I have said, are
dark and rich, but their shape and color are not the half of their
beauty. There is a charm in their motion, be the wind ever so light,
that is indescribable. The rustle they make is not "sad" or "uncertain,"
but cheerful and forceful. The garments of some young giantess, such as
Baudelaire sings of, might make that rustling as she would run past one
in a land of colossal persons and things.

I have been surprised to find so little about the tulip-tree in our
literature. Our writers of prose and verse have not spared the magnolia
of the South, which is far inferior, both tree and flower, to our gaudy,
flaunting giantess of the West. Indeed, if I were an aesthete, and were
looking about me for a flower typical of a robust and perfect sentiment
of art, I should greedily seize upon the bloom of the tulip-tree. What a
"craze" for tulip borders and scre