Acknowledgments - The author acknowledges with gratitude the wise counsel of Professor Benjamin B. Stout of the Department of Forestry, Rutgers University, and his colleague, Professor Ernest G. Christ, chief Rutgers pomologist. Also helpful were Howard Nielson, C.T.E., of Bernardsville, N.J.; John Savary, tree surgeon, of Phillipsburg, N.J.; and William Flemer HI and George S. Harris of Princeton Nurseries.

Warm thanks for many courtesies and much patience are tendered to Dr. Luther Arrington and his staff in the Rutgers agriculture library.

01. Your Trees - There they stand, the Trees, by far the largest living things we know, rooted fast in the earth with their heads raised to heaven. And they are there, or so we may tell ourselves, for our special benefit.

Close contemplation of a tall tree can arouse animal awe, if not reverence, in the most heedless mind. Put your hands on the massive bole. Look up through the soaring complex of limbs and fingers stretching aloft and outward for sunlight.

02. The Wildwood - As this book is begun, across the writer's memory passes a panorama of American homes from New England to California and from the Adirondacks to South Carolina. Six have been his own homes, three suburban, three truly rural. Most belong to people who have sought professional advice about their trees, in grounds ranging from segments of raw "developments" to expansive, manicured estates laid out in unspoiled countryside.

03. Aloft - That fifty-foot tree that stands in your front lawn—you think of it as a hard column of wood with rigid limbs branching into flexible boughs and finer twigs, from which the leaves stem out more or less toughly. It is, in short, a large and intricate complex of cellulose fibers.

Your picture is perfectly correct so far as the structural solids of your tree are concerned. But to comprehend the tree more fully, another picture is necessary.

04. Down Under - The upper parts of a tree inevitably monopolize our attention. The trunk and crown, the leaves, flowers and fruit, are what we can see and enjoy. When they think about their trees' care, owners are prone to ignore the root systems—out of sight, out of mind. And this imbalance of emphasis is not confined to laymen. The scientific study of roots has lagged far behind other branches of dendrology.

05. Pruning Shade Trees - "Prune my yard trees?" the old fanner snorts. "Heck, they prune themselves!"

And it isn't just one old farmer. Lots of heedless home owners take the same view. Of course, they are quite right, too. Nature does see to it that trees shed members that have become excessive or shaded out or badly damaged. The forest floor is strewn with kindling wood. But the very fact that Nature does so provide only proves that pruning is necessary. Without question, man can do a better job.

06. Repairing Wounds - Like light pruning, the repair of wounds and cavities, and the bracing of trees' weak spots, are good things for the home owner to practice on a small scale, or to study and supervise, if only because they will help him to recognize the larger needs of his major trees when he does call in professionals.

What a scalpel is to an M.D. a jackknife is to a tree owner: his tool for preliminary work on wounds of all degrees. Pocket arsenals can be bought which contain every weapon from a can opener to a farrier's awl, but for tree repair only two knife blades are needed.

07. Pests And Parasites - Within the wonderful world of trees lies another world— that of the organisms which harbor in trees as pests and parasites. Of these there is no end in numbers or variety. New home owners are scarcely to be blamed for becoming dismayed, as they often do, upon encountering one invader after another for the first time. This writer's counsel to clients undergoing such baptism has always been: Cheer up, few kinds of attack on trees are fatal. Study of the trees' foes-learning to anticipate and counteract them—is a sporting proposition in itself.

08. The Naked Acre - To everyone their own Eden. People who carve their home into a wildwood will feel like pioneers. Those who begin from scratch on a naked lot will, when they have brought their own trees there and reared them to a design, feel like creative artists. Each specimen will be theirs by choice, not chance, and they may feel more free than the wildwood folks to alter their composition as it develops: to erase mistakes and improve improvisations.

09. Trees As Futures - Twelve years is a ripe age for a dog or cat, eighteen for a cow, twenty-five for a horse, thirty for a mule, sixty for an elephant. Modern medicine has extended man's life expectancy to about seventy-five years. Certain parrots, tamed wild geese, and snapping turtles are said to have lived 150 years and more. In comparison to such brief life spans, many trees are "immortal."

It took Donna in September 1960—one of the worse hurricanes in recorded U.S. weather history—finally to lay low the Thorndale Oak, a red giant at Millbrook, N.Y., measuring 24 feet 9 inches in girth, whose age was gauged at 353 years.

10. Fruits + Nuts - For new home owners, some of their happiest dreams and saddest disillusionments have to do with food trees. On the land they have bought will stand some specimens which, as a rule, are alleged to bear bounteously. Or in the warm glow that comes with planning and planting their first home grounds, the newcomers will set out young stock, usually fruit trees, and sit back with every expectation of luscious harvests to come. When blossoms appear, hope soars.

11. Arboreal Geriatrics - When people buy a run-down rural or suburban dwelling, usually at much less cost than building for themselves, they derive a special kind of satisfaction from renovating their old "bargain," or so remodeling as to make it truly their own, not just a hand-me-down. Money and effort so spent seem to them doubly creative, as indeed they are. In proportion as the house is ancient, the newcomers are preserving history, and converting to their own comfort a valid remnant of human experience.

12. Pirates + Gypsies - I well remember my boyhood introduction to tree surgery.

Father had bought a few wooded acres on the outskirts of Winnetka, Illinois, our native heath, and there built a modest home. Mother now had happy scope for her love of gardening and of wild flowers, birds, and trees. We boys helped dig beds, plant borders, cut paths, and thin out the wild shrubbery.

With or without Father's knowledge, Mother called in a company then newly and widely advertised throughout the Midwest, to come and trim her trees.

Appendix - Without expanding this book beyond a size proportionate to its purpose it was impossible to deal at any length with the special tree problems and tree values of special regions like Florida or Southern California. It would have been nice to include mention of Alaska's graceful and valuable balsam poplar and yellow cedar, and of sandalwood in Hawaii and experiments in those islands with English oak and other exotics as sources of lumber. But there simply was not room for such tempting frills.

THE END