mmM qmRM (Ultp 0. an. Bill iCtlirarii North (Earoltna g>tatp Itmnpraity NRRC R78 1922 1^ IFOREST RESOURCES, LIBRARY FiKST PRZSBYTEIiL.N CHURCH WESTilELD. NEW YORK. ^ S00067288 V J»C ^£T£«s oo CD ST - T* ro 00 4 a DC O LU " Q d QC Z O THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE DATE INDICATED BELOW AND IS SUB- JECT TO AN OVERDUE FINE AS POSTED AT THE CIRCULATION DESK. ^I^ORESTIi k:^. LIBR/>RY 100M/7-85 TREES WORTH KNOWING .. BEND IN ilii. lU.UL Little Nature Library TREES WORTH KNOWING By JUIIA ELLEN ROGERS {Author of The Tree Book, The Tree Guide, Trees Every Child Should Know, The Book of Useful . Flants» The Shell Book, etc., etc.) With forty-eight illustrations, sixteen being in color rmST FR-^n'^TTEITTAN CHURCH WEbli IKLD, NEW YORK ^-" PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY FOR NELSON DOUBLEDAY. Inc. 1922 Copyright, 1917, by DOUBLEDAY, PaGE & CoMPANT Atl rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages^ induding the Scandinavian PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE JPRESS, GARDEN CITV, N. Y. CONTENTS VAom Introduction xi PARTI The Life OF THE Trees 5 PART II The Nut Trees «S The Walnuts; The Hickories; The Beech; The Chestnuts; The Oaks; The Horse-chestnuts; The Lindens PART III Water-loving Trees 75 The Poplars; The W^illows; The Hornbeams; The Birches; The Alders; The Sycamores; The Gum Trees; The Osage Orange PART IV Trees With Shoavy Flowers AND Fruits . . . 101 The Magnolias; The Dogwoods; The Vibur- nums; The Mountain Ashes; The Rhododendron; The Mountain Laurel; The Madrona; The Sorrel Tree; The Silver Bell Trees; The Sweet Leaf; The Fringe Twja; The Laurel Family; The Witch vi CONTENTS PACaB Hazel; The Burning Bush; The Sumachs; The Smoke Tree; The Holhes PART V Wild Relatives OF Our Orchard Trees . . . 147 The Apples; The Plums; The Cherries; The Hawthorns; The Service-berries; The Hackberries; The Mulberries; The Figs; The Papaws; The Pond Apples; The Persimmons PART VI The Pod-bearing Trees 176 The Locusts; The Acacias; Miscellaneous Species PART VII Deciduous Trees with Winged Seeds .... 193 The Maples; The Ashes; The Ehns PART vm The Cone-bearing Evergreens 217 The Pines; The Spruces; The Firs; The Douglas Spruce; The Hemlocks; The Sequoias; The Arbor- vitaes; The Incense Cedar; The Cypresses; The Junipers; The Larches PART IX The Palms 280 General Index 283 LIST OF COLORED ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Canoe or Paper Birch On Cover A Bend in the Trail Frontispiece Shagbark Hickory 6 MocKERNUT Fruit and Leaves 7 A Grove of Beeches 22 Chestnut Tree 23 Weeping Beech 30 Black Walnut 31 White Oak 38 Bur or Mossy-cup Oak Leaves and Fruit . . 39 Horse-chestnut in Blossom 54 Weeping Willow 55 Tulip Tree, Flower and Leaves 103 Flowering Dogwood 118 American Elm 215 Eastern Red Cedars and Hickory .... 230 LIST OF OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Black Walnut Shoots 70 Shagbark Hickory 71 American Linden Leaves and Fruit ... 86 Trembling Aspen Catkins and Leaves . . 86-87 Pussy Willow Flowers 86-87 American Hornbeam — A Fruiting Branch . 87 The Tattered, Silky Bark of the Birches 102 Sycamore Bark and Seed-balls .... 102-103 Bark, Seeds, and Seed-balls of the Sweet Gmi 102-103 Osage Orange Leaves, AND Flowers ... 119 Dogwood Bark, Blossom, Fruit, and Buds 134 Mountain Ash Flowers and Leaves ... 135 Sassafras Flowers, Fruit, and Leaves . . 150 Foliage and Flowers of the Smooth Slmach 150-151 Buds, Leaves, and Fruit of the Wild Crab- apple 150-151 Canada Plum — Flowers and Trunk ... 151 Wild Black Cherry — Flowers and Fruit 166 Fruiting Branch of Cockspur Thorn . . 167 Service-berry Tree in Blossom .... 182 Hackberry — Flowers, Fruit, and Leaves 183 ix X LIST OF OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Honey Locust's Trunk, and Black Locust's Flowers AND Leaves 198 Sugar Maple 19&-199 Red IMaple Flowers 198-199 Seed Keys and New Leaves of Soft or Silver Maple 199 White Ash Buds and Flowers .... 214 A Group of White Pines 214-215 Shortleaf Pine Cones and Needles . . . 214-215 The Sugar Pine 231 Leaves and Cones of Hemlock and of Nor- way Spruce 243 Blu-^ck Spruce Cones and Needles . . . 247 Spray of Arbor- vitae 262 American Larch Cones and Needles . . 263 INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION OcxjASioNALLY I meet a person who says : "I know noth- ing at all about trees/' This modest disclaimer is generally sincere, but it has always turned out to be untrue. "Oh, well, that old sugar maple, I've always known that tree. We used to tap all the sugar maples on the place every spring." Or again: "Everybody knows a white birch by its bark." "Of course, anybody who has ever been chest- nutting knows a chestnut tree." Most people know Lom- bardy poplars, those green exclamation points so com- monly planted in long soldierly rows on roadsides and boundary hues in many parts of the country. Willows, too, everybody knows are willows. The best nut trees, the shagbark, chestnut, and butternut, need no formal in- troduction. The honey locust has its striking three- pronged thorns, and its purple pods dangling in win- ter and skating off over the snow. The beech has its smooth, close bark of Quaker gray, and nobody needs to look for further evidence to determine this tree's name. So it is easily proved that each person has a good nucleus of tree knowledge around which to accumulate more. If people have the love of nature in their hearts — if things out of doors call irresistibly, at any season — it will not really matter if their lives are pinched and circumscribed. Ways and means of studying trees are easily found, even if the scant ends of busy days spent indoors are all the time at xiv INTRODUCTION command. If there is energy to begin the midertaking it will soon furnish its own motive power. Tree students, like bird students, become enthusiasts. To understand their enthusiasm one must follow their examples. The beginner doesn't know exactly how and where to begin. There are great collections of trees here and there. The Arnold Arboretum in Boston is the great dendrological Noah's Ark in this country. It contains almost all the trees, American and foreign, which will grow in that region. The Shaw Botanical Garden at St. Louis is the largest midland assemblage of trees. Parks in various cities bring together as large a variety of trees as possible, and these are often labelled with their English and botani- cal names for the benefit of the public. Yet the places for the beginner are his own dooryard, the streets he travels four times a day to his work, and woods for his holiday, though they need not be forests. Arboreta are for his delight when he has gained some acquaintance \\ath the tree families. But not at first. The trees may all be set out in tribes and families and labelled with their scientific names. They will but confuse and discourage him. There is not time to make their acquaintance. They overwhelm with the mere number of kinds. Great arboreta and parks are very scarce. Trees are every- where. The acquaintance of trees is within the reach of all. First make a plan of the yard, locating and naming the trees you actually know. Extend it to include the street, and the neighbors' yards, as you get ready for them. Be very careful about giving names to trees. If you think you know a tree, ask yourself how you know it. Sift out all the guesses, and the hearsays, and begin on a solid f ounda- INTRODUCTION xv tion, even if you are sure about only the sugar maple and the white birch. The characters to note in studying trees are: leaves, flowers, fruits, bark, buds, bud arrangement, leaf scars, and tree form. The season of the year determines which features are most prominent. Buds and leaf scars are the most unvarying of tree characters. In winter these traits and the tree frame are most plainly revealed. Winter often exhibits tree fruits on or under the tree, and dead- leaf studies are very satisfactory. Leaf arrangement may be made out at any season, for leaf scars tell this story after the leaves fall. Only three families of our large trees have opposite leaves. This fact helps the beginner. Look first at the twigs. If the leaves, or (in winter) the buds and leaf scars, stand opposite, the tree (if it is of large size) belongs to the maple, ash, or horse-chestnut family. Our native horse-chestnuts are buckeyes. If the leaves are simple the tree is a maple; if pinnately compound, of several leaflets, it is an ash; if palmately compound, of five to seven leaflets, it is a horse-chestnut. In winter dead leaves under the trees furnish this evidence. The winter buds of the horse- chestnut are large and waxy, and the leaf scars look like prints of a horse's hoof. Maple buds are small, and the leaf scar is a small, narrow crescent. Ash buds are dull and blunt, with rough, leathery scales. Maple twigs are slender. Ash and buckeye twigs are stout and clumsy. Bark is a distinguishing character of many trees — of others it is confusing. The sycamore, shedding bark in sheets from its limbs, exposes pale, smooth under bark. The tree is recognizable by its mottled appearance winter or summer. The corky ridges on limbs of sweet gmn and xvi INTRODUCTION bur oak are easily remembered traits. The peculiar hori- zontal peeling of bark on birches designates most of the genus. The prussic-acid taste of a twig sets the cherry tribe apart. The familiar aromatic taste of the green twigs of sassafras is its best winter character; the mitten- shaped leaves distinguish it in summer. It is necessary to get some book on the subject to dis- cover the names of trees one studies, and to act as teacher at times. A book makes a good staff, but a poor crutch. The eyes and the judgment are the dependable things. In spring the way in which the leaves open is significant; so are the flowers. Every tree when it reaches proper age bears flowers. Not all bear fruit, but blossoms come on every tree. In summer the leaves and fruits are there to be examined. In autumn the ripening fruits are the special features. To know a tree's name is the beginning of acquaintance — not an end in itself. There is all the rest of one's life in which to follow it up. Tree friendships are very precious things. John Muir, writing among his beloved trees of the Yosemite Valley, adjures his world-weary fellow men to seek the companionship of trees. " To learn how they live and behave in pure wildness, to see them in their varying aspects through the seasons and weather, rejoicing in the great storms, putting forth their new leaves and flowers, when all the streams are in flood, and the birds singing, and sending away their seeds in the thoughtful Indian summer, when all the landscape is glow- ing in deep, calm enthusiasm — for this you must love them and live with them, as free from schemes and care and time as the trees themselves." INTRODUCTION xvii Tree Names Two Latin words, written in italics, with a cabalistic abbreviation set after them, are a stumbling block on the page to the reader unaccustomed to scientific lore. He re- sents botanical names, and demands to know the tree's name in "plain English." Trees have both common and scientific names, and each has its use. Common names were applied to important trees by people, the world over, before science was born. Many trees were never noticed by anybody until botanists discovered and named them. They may never get common names at all. A name is a description reduced to its lowest terms. It consists usually of a surname and a descriptive adjective: Mary Jones, white oak, Quercus alba. Take the oaks, for example, and let us consider how they got their names, common and scientific. All acorn-bearing trees are oaks. Thej^ are found in Europe, Asia, and America. Their use- fulness and beauty have impressed people The Britons called them by a word which in our modern speech is oak, and as they came to know the different kinds, they added a descriptive word to the name of each. But "plain English" is not useful to the Frenchman. Chene is his name for the acorn trees. The German has his Eiclien' baum, the Roman had his Quercus, and who knows what the Chinaman and the H ndoo in far Cathay or the Ameri- can Indian called these trees .'^ Common names made the trouble when the Tower of Babel was building. Latin has always been the universal language of scholars. It is dead, so that it can be depended upon to remain un- changed in its vocabulary and in its forms and usages. Scientific names are exact, and remain unchanged, though xviii INTRODUCTION an article or a book using them may be translated into all the modern languages. The word Quercus clears awa/ difficulties. French, English, German hearers know what trees are meant — or they know just where in books of their own language to find them described. The abbreviation that follows a scientific name tells who first gave the name. "Linn." is frequently noticed, for Linnaeus is authority for thousands of plant names. Two sources of confusion make common names of trees unreliable : the application of one name to several species, and the application of several names to one species. To illustrate the first : There are a dozen iron woods in iVmeri- can forests. They belong, with two exceptions, to differ- ent genera and to at least five different botanical families. To illustrate the second: The familiar American elm is known by at least seven local popular names. The bur oak has seven. Many of these are applied to other species. Three of the five native elms are called water elm; three are called red elm; three are called rock elm. There are seven scrub oaks. Only by mentioning the scientific name can a wTiter indicate with exactness which species he is talking about. The unscientific reader can go to the botanical manual or cyclopedia and under this name find the species described. In California grows a tree called by three popular names: leatherwood, slippery elm, and silver oak. Its name is Fremontia. It is as far removed from elms and oaks as sheep are from cattle and horses. But the names stick. It would be as easy to eradicate the trees, root and branch, from a region as to persuade people to abandon names they are accustomed to, though they may concede that you have proved these names incorrect, or meaning- INTRODUCTION xix less, or vulgar. Nicknames like nigger pine, lie huckle- berry, she balsam, and bull bay ought to be dropped by all people who lay claim to intelligence and taste. With all their inaccuracies, common names have inter- esting histories, and the good ones are full of helpful sug- gestion to the learner. Many are literal translations of the Latin names. The first writers on botany wrote in Latin. Plants were described under the common name, if there was one; if not, the plant was named. The differ- ent species of each group were distinguished by the descrip- tions and the drawings that accompanied them. Linnaeus attempted to bring the work of botanical scholars to- gether, and to publish descriptions and names of all known plants in a single volume. This he did, crediting each botanist with his work. The "Species Plantarum," Linnaeus's monumental work, became the foundation of the modern science of botany, for it included all the plants known and named up to the time of its publication. This was about the middle of the eighteenth century. The vast body of information which the "SjDecies Plantarum" contained was systematically arranged. All the different species in one genus were brought together. They w^ere described, each under a number; and an adjective word, usually descriptive of some marked char- acteristic, was written in as a marginal index. After Linnaeus's time botanists found that the genus name in combination with this marginal word made a con- venient and exact means of designating the plant. Thus Linnaeus became the acknowledged originator of the binomial (two-name) system of nomenclature now in use in all sciences. It is a delightful coincidence that while Linnaeus was engaged on his great work. North America, XX INTRODUCTION that vast new field of botanical exploration, was being traversed by another Swedish scientist. Peter Kalm sent his specimens and his descriptive notes to Linnaeus, wko described and named the new plants in his book. The specimens swelled the great herbarium at the University of Upsala. Among trees unknown to science before are the Mag- nolia, named in honor of the great French botanist, Mag- nol. Robinia, the locust, honors another French botanist, Robin, and his son. Kalmia, the beautiful mountain laurel, immortahzes the name of the devoted explorer who discovered it. Inevitably, duplication of names attended the work of the early scientists, isolated from each other, and far from libraries and herbaria. Any one discovering a plant he believed to be unknown to science published a description of it in some scientific journal. If some one else had described it at an earlier date, the fact became known in the course of time. The name earliest published is retained, and the later one is dropped to the rank of a synonym. If the name has been used before to describe some other species in the same genus, a new name must be supplied. In the "Cyclopedia of Horticulture" the sugar maple is written : ^^ Acer saccharum, ISlsmsh.. (Acer sacch- arinumy Wang. Acer barbatum, Michx.)" This means that the earliest name given this tree by a botanist was that of Marshall. Wangheimer and Michaux are therefore thrown out; the names given by them are among the synonyms. Our cork elm was until recently called " Ulmus racemosa, Thomas." The discovery that the name racemosa was given long ago to the cork elm of Europe discredited it for INTRODUCTION xxi the American tree. Mr. Sargent substituted the name of the author, and it now stands ''Ulmus Thomasi, Sarg.** Occasionally a generic name is changed. The old generic name becomes the specific name. Box elder was formerly known as ''Negundo aceroides, Moench." It is changed back to ''Acer Negimdo, Linn." On the other hand, the tan-bark oak, which is intermediate in character between oaks and chestnuts, has been taken by Professor Sargent in his Manual, 1905, out of the genus Quercus and set in a genus by itself. From ''Quercus densifiora, Hook, and Arn*" it is called "Pasania densiflora, Sarg.," the specific name being carried over to the new genus. About one hundred thousand species of plants have been named by botanists. They beheve that one half of the world's flora is covered. Trees are better known than less conspicuous plants. Fungi and bacteria are just coming into notice. Yet even among trees new species are con- stantly being described. Professor Sargent described 567 native species in his "Silva of North America," published 1892-1900. His Manual, 1905, contains 630. Both books exclude Mexico. The silva of the tropics contains many unknown trees, for there are still impenetrable tracts of forest. The origin of local names of trees is interesting. History and romance, music and hard common sense are in these names — likewise much pure foolishness. The nearness to Mexico brought in the musical piflon and madrofia in the southwest. Pecanier and bois d'arc came with many other French names with the Acadians to Louisiana. The In- dians had many trees named, and we wisely kept hickory, wahoo, catalpa, persimmon, and a few others of them. Woodsmen have generally chosen descriptive names xxii INTRODUCTION which are based on fact and are helpful to learners. Bot- anists have done this, too. Bark gives the names to shag- bark hickor}^ striped maple, and naked wood. The color names white birch, black locust, blue beech. Wood names red oak, yellow-wood, and white-heart hickory. The tex- ture names rock elm, punk oak, and soft pine. The uses name post oak, canoe birch, and lodge-pole pine. The tree habit is described by dwarf juniper and weeping spruce. The habitat by swamp maple, desert willow, and seaside alder. The range by California white oak and Georgia pine. Sap is characterized in sugar maple, sweet gum, balsam fir, and sweet birch. Twigs are indicated in clammy locust, cotton gum, winged elm. Leaf hnings are referred to in silver maple, white poplar, and white bass- wood. Color of fohage, in gray pine, blue oak, and golden ^, Shape of leaves, in heart-leaved cucumber tree and ear-leaved umbrella. Resemblance of leaves to other species, in willow oak and parsley haw. The flowers of trees give names to tulip tree, silver-bell tree, and fringe tree. The fruit is described in big-cone pine, butternut, mossy-cup oak, and mock orange. Many trees retain their classical names, which have be- come the generic botanical ones, as acacia, ailanthus, and viburnum. Others modify these slightly, as pine from Finns, and poplar from Populus. The number of local names a species has depends upon the notice it attracts and the range it has. The loblolly pine, important as a lumber tree, extends along the coast from New Jersey to Texas. It has twenty-two nicknames. The scientific name is for use when accurate designation of a species is required; the common name for ordinary speech. "What a beautiful Quercus alba!^' sounds very INTRODUCTION xxiii silly and pedantic, even if it falls on scientific ears. Only persons of very shallow scientific learning use it on such in- formal occasions. Let us keep the most beautiful and fitting among com- mon names, and work for their general adoption. There are no hard names once they become familiar ones. No- body hesitates or stumbles over chrysanthemum and rhododendron, though these sonorous Greek derivatives have four syllables. Nobody asks what these names are "in plain English." TREES WORTH KNOWING TREES PART I THE LIFE OF THE TREES The swift unfolding of the leaves in spring is always a miracle. One day the budded twigs are still wrapped in the deep sleep of winter. A trace of green appears about the edges of the bud scales — they loosen and fall, and the tender green shoot looks timidly out and begins to unfold its crumpled leaves. Soon the delicate blade broadens and takes on the texture and familiar appearance of the grown- up leaf. Behold! while we watched the single shoot the bare tree has clothed itself in the green canopy of summer. How can this miracle take place. '^ How does the tree come into full leaf, sometimes within a fraction of a week.'* It could never happen except for the store of concentrated food that the sap dissolves in spring and carries to the buds, and for the remarkable activity of the cambium cells within the buds. What is a bud.'^ It is a shoot in miniature — its leaves or flowers, or both, formed with wondrous completeness in the previous summer. About its base are crowded leaves so hardened and overlapped as to cover and protect the tender shoot. All the tree can ever express of beauty or of energy comes out of these precious little *' growing points," wrapped up all winter, but impatient, as spring 3 4 TREES approaches, to accept the invitation of the south wind and sun. The protective scale leaves fall when they are no longer needed. This vernal leaf fall makes little show on the forest floor, but it greatly exceeds in number of leaves the autumnal defoliation. Sometimes these bud scales lengthen before the shoot spares them. The silky, brown scales of the beech buds sometimes add twice their length, thus protecting the lengthening shoot which seems more delicate than most kinds, less ready to encounter unguarded the wind and the sun. The hickories, shagbark, and mockemut, show scales more than three inches long. Many leaves are rosy, or lilac tinted, when they open — the waxy granules of their precious "leaf green "screened by these colored pigments from the full glare of the sun. Some leaves have wool or silk growing like the pile of velvet on their surfaces. These hairs are protective also. They shrivel or blow away when the leaf comes to its full de- velopment. Occasionally a species retains the down on the lower surface of its leaves, or, oftener, merely in the angles of its veins. The folding and plaiting of the leaves bring the ribs and veins into prominence. The delicate green web sinks into folds between and is therefore protected from the weather. Young leaves hang limp, never presenting their perpendicular surfaces to the sun. Another protection to the infant leaf is the pair of stipules at its base. Such stipules enclose the leaves of tulip and magnolia trees. The beech leaf has two long strap-like stipules. Linden stipules are green and red — two con- cave, oblong leaves, like the two valves of a pea pod. Elm THE LIFE OF THE TREES 5 stipules are conspicuous. The black willow has large, leaf-like, heart-shaped stipules, green as the leaf and saw- toothed. Most stipules shield the tender leaf during the hours of its helplessness, and fall away as the leaf matures. Others persist, as is often seen in the black willows. With this second vernal leaf fall (for stipules are leaves) the leaves assume independence, and take up their serious work. They are ready to make the living for the whole tree. Nothing contributed by soil or atmosphere — no matter how rich it is — can become available for the tree's use until the leaves receive and prepare it. Every leaf that spreads its green blade to the sun is a laboratory, devoted to the manufacture of starch. It is, in fact, an outward extension of the living cambium, thrust out beyond the thick, hampering bark, and special- ized to do its specific work rapidly and effectively. The structure of the leaves must be studied with a microscope. This laboratory has a delicate, transparent, enclosing wall, with doors, called stomates, scattered over the lower surface. The "leaf pulp" is inside, so is the framework of ribs and veins, that not only supports the soft tissues but furnishes the vascular system by which an incoming and outgoing current of sap is kept in constant circulation. In the upper half of the leaf, facing the sun, the pulp is in "palisade cells," regular, oblong, crowded together, and perpendicular to the flat surface. There are sometimes more than one layer of these cells. In the lower half of the leaf's thickness, between the pal- isade cells and the under surface, the tissue is spongy. There is no crowding of cells here. They are irregularly spherical, and cohere loosely, being separated by ample > 6 TREES air spaces, which communicate with the outside world by the doorways mentioned above. An ordinary apple leaf has about one hundred thousand of these stomates to each square inch of its under surface. So the ventilation of the leaf is provided for. The food of trees comes from two sources — ^the air and the soil. Dry a stick of wood, and the water leaves it. Bum it now, and ashes remain. The water aad the ashes came from the soil. That which came from the air passed off in gaseous form with the burning. Some elements from the soil also were converted by the heat into gases, and escaped by the chimneys. Take that same stick of wood, and, instead of burning it in an open fireplace or stove, smother it in a pit and burn it slowly, and it comes out a stick of charcoal, having its shape and size and grain preserved. It is carbon, its only impurity being a trace of ashes. What would have es~ caped up a chimney as carbonic-acid gas is confined here as a solid, and fire can yet liberate it. The vast amount of carbon which the body of a tree contains came into its leaves as a gas, carbon dioxide. The soil furnished various minerals, which were brought up in the "crude sap." Most of these remain as ashes when the wood is burned. Water comes from the soil. So the fist of raw materials of tree food is complete, and the next question is: How are they prepared for the tree's use.^^ The ascent of the sap from roots to leaves brings water with mineral salts dissolved in it. Thus potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron, sulphur, nitrogen, and phos- phorus ai-e brought to the leaf laboratories — some are use- ful, some useless. The stream of water contributes of itself to the laboratory whatever the leaf cells demand to See page S7 S1IAG15AHK IIK'KORY MOCKEBNUT FRUIT AND LEAVES See page 40 THE LIFE OF THE TREES 7 keep their own substance sufficiently moist, and those molecules that are necessary to furnish hydrogen and oxygen for the making of starch. Water is needed also to keep full the channels of the returning streams, but the great bulk of water that the roots send up escapes by evaporation through the curtained doorways of the leaves. Starch contains carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, the last two in the exact proportion that they bear to each other in water, H-0. The carbon comes in as carbon dioxide, CO-. There is no lack of this familiar gas in the air. It is exhaled constantly from the lungs of every animal, from chimneys, and from all decaying substances. It is diffused through the air, and, entering the leaves by the stomates, comes in contact with other food elements in the palisade cells. The power that runs this starch factory is the sun. The chlorophyll, or leaf green, which colors the clear protoplasm of the cells, is able to absorb in daylight (and especially on warm, sunny days) some of the energy of sunlight, and to enable the protoplasm to use the energy thus captured to the chemical breaking down of water and carbon dioxide, and the reuniting of their free atoms into new and more complex molecules. These are molecules of starch, C^H ^®0^ . The new product in soluble form makes its way into the current of nutritious sap that sets back into the tree. This is the one product of the factory — the source of all the tree's growth — for it is the elaborated sap, the food which nourishes every living cell from leaf to root tip. It builds new wood layers, extends both twigs and roots, and per- fects the buds for the coming year. Sunset puts a stop to starch making. The power is turned off till another dav. The distribution of starch 8 TREES goes on. The surplus is unloaded, and the way is cleared for work next day. On a sunless day less starch is made than on a bright one. Excess of water and of free oxygen is noticeable in this making of starch. Both escape in invisible gaseous form through the stomates. No carbon escapes, for it is all used up, and a continual supply of CO^ sets in from outside. We find it at last in the form of solid wood fibres. So it is the leaf's high calling to take the crude elements brought to it, and convert them into food ready for assimilation. There are little elastic curtains on the doors of leaves, and in dry weather they are closely drawn. This is to prevent the free escape of water, which might debilitate the starch-making cells. In a moist atmosphere the doors stand wide open. Evaporation does not draw water so hard in such weather, and there is no danger of excessive loss. "The average oak tree in its five active months evaporates about 28,000 gallons of water" — an average of about 187 gallons a day. In the making of starch there is oxygen left over — just the amount there is left of the carbon dioxide when the carbon is seized for starch making. This accumulating gas passes into the air as free oxygen, "purifying" it for the use of all animal life, even as the absorption of carbon dioxide does. When daylight is gone, the exchange of these two gases ceases. There is no excess of oxygen nor demand for carbon dioxide until business begins in the morning. But now a process is detected that the day's activities had obscured. The living tree breathes — inhales oxygen and exhales carbonic-acid gas. Because the leaves exercise the func- THE LIFE OF THE TREES 9 tion of respiration, they may properly be called the lungs of trees, for the respiration of animals differs in no es- sential from that of plants. The bulk of the work of the leaves is accomplished before midsummer. They are damaged by whipping in the wind, by the ravages of fungi and insects of many kinds. Soot and dust clog the stomates. Mineral deposits cumber the working cells. Finally they become sere and russet or "die like the dolphin," passing in all the splendor of sunset skies to oblivion on the leaf mould under the trees. TJie Groivth of a Tree The great chestnut tree on the hillside has cast its bur- den of ripe nuts, flung down the empty burs, and given its yellow leaves to the autumn winds. Now the owner has cut dowTi its twin, which was too near a neighbor for the wxll-being of either, and is converting it into lumber. The lopped limbs have gone to the woodpile, and the boards will be dressed and polished and used for the woodw^ork of the new house. Here is our opportunity to see what the bark of the living tree conceals — to study the anatomy of the tree — to learn something of grain and wood rings and knots. The most amazing fact is that tliis "too, too solid flesh" of the tree body was all made of dirty water and carbonic- acid gas. Well may we feel a kind of awe and reverence for the leaves and the cambium — the builders of this wooden structure we call a tree. The bark, or outer gar- ment, covers the tree completely, from tip of farthest root to tip of highest twig. Under the bark is the slimy, colorless living layer, the cambium, which we may define as. 10 TREES the separation between wood and bark. It seems to have no perceptible diameter, though it impregnates with its substance the wood and bark next to it. This cambium is a continuous undergarment, Hning the bark everywhere, covering the wood of every root and every twig as well as of the trunk and all its larger divisions. Under the cambium is the wood, which forms the real body of the tree. It is a hard and fibrous substance, which in cross section of root or trunk or limb or twig is seen to be in fine, but distinctly marked, concentric rings about a central pith. This pith is most conspicuous in the twigs. Now, what does the chestnut tree accomplish in a single growing season? We have seen its buds open in early spring and watched the leafy shoots unfold Many of these bore clusters of blossoms in midsumm.er, long yellow spikes, shaking out a mist of pollen, and falling away at length, while the inconspicuous green flowers developed into spiny, velvet-lined burs that gave up in their own good time the nuts which are the seeds of the tree. The new shoots, having formed buds in the angles of their leaves, rest from their labors. The tree had added to the height and breadth of its crown the exact measure of its new shoots. There has been no lengthening of limb or trunk. But underground the roots have made a season's grov/th by extending their tips. These fresh rootlets clothed with the velvety root hairs are new, just as the shoots are new that bear the leaves on the ends of the branches. There is a general popular impression that trees grow in height by the gradual lengthening of trunk and limbs. If this were true, nails driven into the trunk in a vertical line would gradually become farther apart. They do not, as THE LIFE OF THE TREES 11 observation proves. Fence wires stapled to growing trees are not spread apart nor carried upward, though the trees may serve as posts for years, and the growth in diameter may swallow up staple and wire in a short time. Normal wood fibres are inert and do not lengthen. Only the season's rootlets and leafy shoots are soft and alive and capable of lengthening by cell division. The work of the leaves has already been described. The return current, bearing starch in soluble form, flows freely among the cells of the cambium. Oxygen is there also. The cambium cell in the growing season fulfils its life mis- sion by absorbing food and dividing. This is growth — and the power to grow comes only to the cell attacked by oxygen. The rebuilding of its tissues multiplies the sub- stance of the qambium at a rapid rate. A cell divides, producing two "daughter cells." Each is soon as large as its parent, and ready to divide in the same way. A cam- bium cell is a microscopic object, but in a tree there are milKons upon millions of them. Consider how large an area of cambium a large tree has. It is exactly equivalent to the total area of its bark. Two cells by dividing make four. The next division produces eight, then sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, in geometric proportion. The cell's power and disposition to divide seems limited only by the food and oxygen supply. The cambium layer itself remains a very narrow zone of the newest, most active cells. The margins of the cambium are crowded with cells whose walls are thickened and whose protoplasm is no longer active. The accumulation of these worn-out cells forms the total of the season's growth, the annual ring of wood on one side of the cambium and the annual layer of \ark on the other. ^ 12 TREES What was once a delicate cell now becomes a hollow wood fibre, thin walled, but becoming thickened as it gets older. For a few years the superannuated cell is a part of the sap wood and is used as a tube in the system through which the crude sap mounts to the leaves. Later it may be stored full of starch, and the sap will flow up through newer tubes. At last the walls of the old cell harden and darken with mineral deposits. Many annual rings lie be- tween it and the cambium. It has become a part of the heart wood of the tree. The cells of its own generation that were crowded in the other direction made part of an annual layer of bark. As new layers formed beneath them, and the bark stretched and cracked, they lost their moisture by contact with the outer air. Finally they became thin, loose fibres, and scaled off. The years of a tree's life are recorded with fair accuracy in the rings of its wood. The bark tells the same story, but the record is lost by its habit of sloughing off the outer layers. Occasionally a tree makes two layers of wood in a single season, but this is exceptional. Sometimes, as in a year of drought, the wood ring is so small as to be hardly distinguishable. Each annual ring in the chestnut stump is distinct from its neighboring ring. The wood gradually merges from a dark band full of large pores to one paler in color and of denser texture. It is very distinct in oak and ash. The coarser belt was formed first. The spring wood, being so open, discolors by the accumulation of dust when exposed to the air. The closer summer wood is paler in color and harder, the pores almost invisible to the unaided eye. The best timber has the highest percentage of summer wood. THE LIFE OF THE TREES IS If a tree had no limbs, and merely laid on each year a layer of wood made of parallel fibres fitted on each other like pencils in a box, wood splitting would be child's play and carpenters would have less care to look after their tools. But woods differ in structure, and all fall short of the woodworker's ideal. The fibres of oak vary in shape and size. They taper and overlap their ends, making the wood less easily split than soft pine, for instance, whose fibres are regular cylinders, which lie parallel, and meet end to end without "breaking joints." Fibres of oak are also bound together by flattened bundles of horizontal fibres that extend from pith to cam- bium, insinuated between the vertical fibres. These are seen on a cross-section of a log as narrow, radiating lines starting from the pith and cutting straight through heart wood and sap wood to the bark. A tangential section of a log (the surface exposed by the removal of a slab on any side) shows these "pith rays," or "medullary rays" as long, tapering streaks. A longitudinal section made from bark to centre, as when a log is "quarter-sawed," shows a full side view of the "medullary rays." They are often an inch w-ide or more in oak; these wavy, irregular, gleam- ing fibre bands are know^n in the furniture trade as the "mirrors" of oak. They take a beautiful polish, and are highly esteemed in cabinet work. The best white oak has 20 per cent, to 25 per cent, of its substance made up of these pith rays. The horny texture of its wood, together with its strength and durability, give white oak an enviable place among timber trees, while the beauty of its pith rays ranks it high among ornamental woods. The grain of wood is its texture. Wide annual rings with large pores mark coarse-grained woods. They need 14 TREES "filling" with varnish or other substance before they can be satisfactorily poKshed. Fine-grained woods, if hard, polish best. Trees of slow growth usually have fine- grained wood, though the rule is not universal. Ordinarily wood fibres are parallel with their pith. They are straight grained. Exceptions to this rule are con- stantly encountered. The cliief cause of variation is the fact that tree trunks branch. Limbs have their origin in the pith of the stems that bear them. Any stem is nor- mally one year older than the branch it bears. So the base of any branch is a cone quite buried in the parent stem. A cross-section of this cone in a board sawed from the trunk is a knot. Its size and number of rings indicate its age. If the knot is diseased and loose, it will fall out, leaving a knot hole. The fibres of the wood of a branch are extensions of those just below it on the main stem. They spread out so as to meet around the twig and continue in parallel lines to its extremity. The fibres contiguous to those which were diverted from the main stem to clothe the branch must spread so as to meet above the branch, else the parent stem would be bare in this quarter. The union of stem and branch is weak above, as is shown by the clean break made above a twig when it is torn off, and the stub- born tearing of the fibres below down into the older stem. A half hour spent at the woodpile or among the trees with a jack-knife will demonstrate the laws by which the straight grain of wood is diverted by the insertion of limbs. The careful picking up and tearing back of the fibres of bark and wood will answer all our questions. Bass wood whose fibres are tough is excellent for illustration. When a twig breaks off, the bark heals the wound and the grain becomes straight over the place. Trees crowded THE LIFE OF THE TREES 15 in a forest early divest themselves of their lower branches. These die for lack of sun and air, and the trunk covers their stubs with layers of straight-grained wood. Such timbers arc the masts of ships, telegraph poles, and the best bridge timbers. Yet buried in their heart wood are the roots of every twig, great or small, that started out to grow when the tree was young. These knots are mostly small and sound, so they do not detract from the value of the lumber. It is a pleasure to work upon such a "stick of timber." A tree that grows in the open is clothed to the ground with branches, and its grain is found to be warped by hundreds of knots when it reaches the sawmill. Such a tree is an ornament to the landscape, but it makes inferior, unreliable lumber. The carpenter and the wood chopper despise it, for it ruins tools and tempers. Besides the natural diversion of straight grain by knots, there are some abnormal forms to notice. Wood some- times shows wavy grain under its bark. Certain trees twist in growing, so as to throw the grain into spiral lines. Cypresses and gum trees often exhibit in old stumps a veering of the grain to the left for a few years, then sud- denly to the right, producing a "cross grain" that defies attempts to split it. "BirdVeye" and "curly maple" are prizes for the furniture maker. Occasionally a tree of swamp or sugar maple keeps alive the crowded twigs of its sapling for years, and forms adventitious buds as well. These dwarfed shoots persist, never getting ahead further than a few inches outside the bark. Each is the centre of a wood swelling on the tree bod}^ The annual layers preserve all the inequalities. Dots surrounded by wavy rings are 16 TREES scattered over the boards when the tree is sawed. This is bird's-eye grain, beautiful in pattern and in sheen and coloring when polished. It is cut thin for veneer work. Extreme irregularity of grain adds to the value of woods, if they are capable of a high polish. The fine texture and coloring, combined with the beautiful patterns they dis- play, give woods a place in the decorative arts that can be taken by no other material. The Fall of the Leaves It is November, and the glory of the woods is departed. Dull browns and purples show where oaks still hold their leaves. Beech trees in sheltered places are still dressed in pale yellow. The elfin flowers of the witch hazel shine like threads of gold against the dull leaves that still cling. The trees lapse into their winter sleep. Last week a strange thing happened. The wind tore the red robes from our swamp maples and sassafras and scattered them in tatters over the lawn. But the horse- chestnut, decked out in yellow and green, lost scarcely a leaf. Three days later, in the hush of early morning, when there was not a whiff of a breeze perceptible, the signal, "Let go!" came, and with one accord the leaves of the horse-chestnut fell. In an hour the tree stood knee deep in a stack of yellow leaves; the few that still clung had con- siderable traces of green in them. Gradually these are dropping, and the shining buds remain as a pledge that the summer story just ended will be told again next year. Perhaps such a sight is more impressive if one realizes the vast importance of the work the leaves of a summer ac- complish for the tree before their surrender. The shedding of leaves is a habit broad-leaved trees have THE LIFE OF THE TREES 17 learned by experience in contact with cold winters. The swamp magnoha is a beautiful evergreen tree in Florida. In Virginia the leaves shrivel, but they cling throughout the season. In New Jersey and north as far as Glouces- ter, where the tree occurs sparingly, it is frankly deciduous. Certain oaks in the Northern states have a stubborn way of clinging to their dead leaves all winter. Farther south some of these species grow and their leaves do not die in fall, but are practically evergreen, lasting till next year's shoots push them off. The same gradual change in habit is seen as a species is followed up a mountain side. The horse-chestnut will serve as a type of deciduous trees. Its leaves are large, and they write out, as if in capital letters, the story of the fall of the leaf. It is a serial, whose chapters run from July until November. The tree anticipates the coming of winter. Its buds are well formed by midsummer. Even then signs of preparation for the leaf fall appear. A line around the base of the leaf stem indicates where the break wdll be. Corky cells form on each side of this joint, replacing tissues which in the growing season can be parted only by breaking or tearing them forcibly. A clean-cut zone of separation weakens the hold of the leaf upon its twig, and w^hen the moment arrives the lightest breath of wind — even the weight of the with- ered leaf itself — causes the natural separation. And the leaflets simultaneously fall away from their common pet- iole. There rre more important things happening in leaves in late summer than the formation of corky cells. The plump green blades are full of valuable substance that the tree can ill afford to spare. In fact, a leaf is a layer of the precious cambium spread out on a framework of veins and covered 18 TREES with a delicate, transparent skin — a sort of etherealized bark. What a vast quantity of leaf pulp is in the foliage of a large tree! As summer wanes, and the upward tide of sap begins to fail, starch making in the leaf laboratories declines pro- portionately. Usually before midsummer the fresh green is dimmed. Dust and heat and insect injuries impair the leaf's capacity for work. The thrifty tree undertakes to withdraw the leaf pulp before winter comes. But how? It is not a simple process nor is it fully understood. The tubes that carried the products of the laboratory away are bound up with the fibres of the leaf's skeleton. Through the transparent leaf wall the migration of the pulp may be watched. It leaves the margins and the net veins, and settles around the ribs and mid vein, exactly as we should expect. Dried and shrivelled horse-chestnut leaves are still able to show various stages in this marvellous retreat of the cambium. If moisture fails, the leaf bears some of its green substance with it to the earth. The "breaking down of the chlorophyll" is a chemical change that at- tends the ripening of a leaf. (Leaf ripening is as natural as the ripening of fruit.) The waxy granules disintegrate, and a j^ellow liquid shows its colors through the delicate leaf walls. Now other pigments, some curtained from view by the chlorophyll, others the products of decom- position, show themselves. Iron and other minerals the sap brought from the soil contribute reds and yellows and purples to the color scheme. As drainage proceeds, with the chemical changes that accompany it, the pageant of autumn colors passes over the woodlands. No weed or grass stem but joins in the carnival of the year. THE LIFE OF THE TREES 19 Crisp and dry the leaves fall. Among the crystals and granules that remain in their empty chambers there is little but waste that the tree can well afford to be rid of — sub- stances that have clogged the leaf and impeded its work. We have been mistaken in attributing the gay colors of autumnal foKage to the action of frost. The ripening of the leaves occurs in the season of warm days and frosty nights, but it does not follow that the two phenomena be- long together as cause and effect. Frost no doubt hastens the process. But the chemical changes that attend the migration of the carbohydrates and albuminous materials from the leaf back into twig and trunk and root for safe keeping go on no matter what the weather. In countries having a moist atmosphere autumn colors are less vivid. England and our own Pacific Coast have nothing to compare with the glory of the foliage in the forests of Canada and the Northeastern states, and with those on the wooded slopes of the Swiss Alps, and along the Rhine and the Danube. Long, dry autumns produce the finest succession of colors. The most brilliant reds and yellows often appear long before the first frost. Cold rains of long duration wash the colors out of the landscape, sometimes spoiling everything before October. A sharp freeze before the leaves expect it often cuts them off before they are ripe. They stiffen and fall, and are wet and limp next day, as if they had been scalded; all their rich cell sub- stance lost to the tree, except as they form a mulch about its roots. But no tree can afford so expensive a fertilizer, and happily they are not often caught unawares. Under the trees the dead leaves lie, forming with the snow a protective blanket for the roots. In spring the rains will leach out their mineral substance and add it to 20 TREES the soil. The abundant lime in dead leaves is active in the formation of humus, which is decayed vegetable matter. We call it "leaf mould.'* So even the waste portions have their effectual work to do for the tree's good. The leaves of certain trees in regions of mild winters per- sist until tiiey are pushed off by the swelling buds in spring. Others cling a year longer, in sorry contrast with the new foliage. Yve may believe that this is an indolent habit in- duced by climatic conditions. Leaves of evergreens cling from three to five years. Families and individuals differ; altitude and latitude pro- duce variations. An evergreen in winter is a dull-looking object, if we could compare it with its summer foliage. Its chlorophyll granules withdraw from the surface of the leaf. They seek the lower ends of the palisade cells, as far as they can get from the leaf surface, assume a dull reddish brown or brownish yellow color, huddle in clumps, their water content greatly reduced, and thus hibernate, much as the cells of the cambium are doing under the bark. In this condition, alternate freezing and thawing seem to do no harm, and the leaves are ready in spring to resume the starch-making function if they are still young. Naturally, the oldest leaves are least capable of this work, and least is expected of them. Gradually they die and drop as new ones come on. As among broad-leaved trees, the zone of foliage in evergreens is an outer dome of newest shoots ; the framework of large limbs is practically destitute of leaves. How Trees Spend the Winter Nine out of every ten intelligent people will see nothing of interest in a row of bare trees. They casually state that buds are made in the early spring. They miss seeing the THE LIFE OF THE TREES 21 strength and beauty of tree architecture which the foKage conceals in summertime. The close-knit, alive-looking bark of a living tree they do not distinguish from the dull, loose-hung garment worn by the dead tree in the row. All trees look alike to them in winter. Yet there is so much to see if only one will take time to look. Even the most heedless are struck at times wdth the mystery of the winter trance of the trees. They know that each spring reenacts the vernal miracle. Thoughtful people have put questions to these sphinx-like trees. Secrets the bark and bud scales hide have been revealed to those who have patiently and importunately inquired. A keen pair of eyes used upon a single elm in the dooryard for a whole year will surprise and inform the observer. It will be indeed the year of miracle. A tree has no centre of life, no vital organs correspond- ing to those of animals. It is made up, from twig to root, of annual, concentric layers of wood around a central pith. It is completely covered with a close garment of bark, also made of annual layers. Between bark and wood is the delicate undergarment of living tissue called cambium. This is disappointing when one comes to look for it, for all there is of it is a colorless, slimy substance that moistens the youngest layers of wood and bark, and forms the layer of separation between them. This cambium is the life of the tree. A hollow trunk seems scarcely a disability. The loss of limbs a tree can survive and start afresh. But girdle its trunk, exposing a ring of the cambium to the air, and the tree dies. The vital connection of leaves and roots is destroyed by the girdling; nothing can save the tree's Hfe. Girdle a limb or a twig and all above the in- jury suffers practical amputation. 22 TREES The bark protects the cambium, and the cambium is th« tissue which by cell multiplication in the growing season produces the yearly additions of wood and bark. Buds are growing points set along the twigs. They produce leafy shoots, as a rule. Some are specialized to produce flowers and subsequently fruits. Leaves are extensions of cambium spread in the sun and air in the season when there is no danger from frosts. The leaves have been called the stomachs of a tree. They receive crude ma- terials from the soil and the air and transmute them into starch under the action of sunlight. This elaborated sap supplies the hungry cambium cells during the growing season, and the excess of starch made in the leaf labora- tories is stored away in empty wood cells and in every available space from bud to root tip, from bark to pith. The tree's period of greatest activity is the early sum- mer. It is the time of growi:h and of preparation for the coming winter and for the spring that follows it. YV^inter is the time of rest — of sleep, or hibernation. A bear digs a hollow under the tree's roots and sleeps in it all winter, waking in the spring. In many ways the tree imitates the bear. Dangerous as are analogies between plants and animals, it is literally true that the sleeping bear and the dorr Aant tree have each ceased to feed. The sole activity of each seems to be the quiet breathing. Do trees really breathe.^ As truly and as incessantly as you do, but not as actively. Other processes are inter- mittent, but breathing must go on, day and night, winter and summer, as long as life lasts. Breathing is low in winter. The tree is not growing. There is only the necessity of keeping it alive. Leaves are the lungs of plants. In the growing season m A GROVE OF BEECHES ^fc ya ^ik^:^6l - ■• BLACK WALNUT See page SI THE WALNUTS 31 scalded . Then they are pickled whole, in spiced vinegar, and are a rare, delectable relish with meats for the winter table. A butternut tree, beside the road, or elsewhere, with room to grow, has a short trunk, and a low, broad head, with a downward droop to tlie horizontal limbs. The bark is Kght brown, the limbs grayish green, the twigs and leaves all ooze a clammy, waxy, aromatic sap, and are covered with fine hairs of velvety abundance. Because it is low and rather wayward in growth, late to leaf out in spring, and early to shed its leaves in summer, the butternut is not a good street tree. It breaks easily in the wind, and crippled trees are more common than well-grown specimens. Insect and fungous enemies beset the species, and take advantage of breaks to invade the twigs through the chambered pith. Short-lived trees they are, whose brown, satiny wood is used in cabinet work, but is not plentiful. The Black Walnut J. nigra, Linn. The black walnut (see illustratioyis, pages SI, 70) is the second species east of the Rocky Mountains, and the tree chiefly depended upon, during the century just closed, by the makers of furniture of the more expensive grades. Black walnut wood is brown, with purplish tones in it, and a silvery lustre, when polished. Its hardness and strength commend it to the boat and ship builder. Gunstock factories use quantities of this wood. In furniture and in- terior woodwork, the curly walnut, found in the old stumps of trees cut long before, is especially sought for veneering panels. Old furniture, of designs that have passed out. 32 TREES are often sold to the factories, and their seasoned wood cut thin for veneering. Walnut trees one hundred and fifty feet high were not uncommon in the forests primeval, in the basin of the Ohio and Wabash rivers. These giants held up their majestic heads far over the tops of oaks and maples in the woods. They were slaughtered, rolled together, and burned by the pioneers, clearing the land for agriculture. These men had a special grudge against walnut trees, they were so stub- born — so hard to make away with. How unfortunate it is that our ancestors had the patience to go forward and con- quer the unconquerable ones. Had they weakly sur- rendered, and let these trees stand, we should have had them for the various uses to which we put the finest lumber trees to-day. Unhappily, the growing of young trees has not been ex- tensively undertaken to replace those destroyed. The newer forestry is awake to the need, and the loss may be made good, from this time forward. The black walnut is nearly globular, deeply sculptured, with a sweet nut rich in oil, very good if one eats but a few at a time. Locally, they find their way to market, but they soon become rancid in the grocer's barrel. At home, boys spread them, in their smooth, yellow-pitted husks, on the roof of the woodshed, for instance, so the husks can dry while the nuts are seasoning. No walnut opens its husk in regular segments, as the hickories all do. But the husking is not hard. The thick shells require careful man- agement of the hammer or nut-cracker, to avoid breaking the meats. Dark as is its wood and bark, no walnut tree in full leaf is sombre. The foliage is bright, lustrous, yellow-green. THE WALNUTS 33 graceful, dancing. A majestic tree, with a luxuriant crown from May till September, this walnut needs room to display its notable contour and size. It deserves more popularity than it enjoys as a tree for parks. No tree is more interesting to watch as it grows. The bitter spongy husk deters the squirrels from gnaw- ing into the nut until the husk is dry and brittle. Hidden in the ground, the shell absorbs moisture, and winter frost cracks it, by the gentle but irresistible force of expanding particles of water as they turn to ice. So the plantlet has no hindrance to its growth when spring opens. Imitating nature, the nurseryman lays his walnuts and butternuts in a bed of sand or gravel, one layer above an- other, and lets the rain and the cold do the rest. In spring the "stratified '' nuts are ready for planting. Some- times careful cracking of the shell prepares the nut to sprout when planted. The Japanese walnuts (J. Sieboldiana and J. cordiformis) are grown to a Hmited extent in states where the EngHsh walnut is not hardy. They are butternuts, and very much superior to our native species. A Manchurian wal- nut has been successfully introduced, but few people but the pioneers in nut culture know anything about these exotic species. South America and the West Indies have native species. So we shall not be surprised, in our travels, to find walnuts in the woods of many continents. The English Walnut J. regiuy Linn. Originally at home in the forests of Persia and north- western India, the Enghsh walnut was growTi for its ex- 34 TREES cellent nuts in the warm countries of Europe and Asia. It was a tree of great reputation when Linnaeus gave it the specific name that means royal. Indeed, this is the tree which gave to all the family the name ^'Juglans,^' which means, "Jove's acorn," in the writings of Roman authors. Kings made each other presents of these nuts, and so the range of the species was extended, even to England, by the planting of nuts from the south. It became the fad of gardeners, before the fifteenth century, to improve the varieties, and to compete with others in getting the thinnest shell, the largest nut, the sweetest kernel, just as horticultiu-ists do now. In 1640 the herbalist Parkinson wrote about a variety of "French wallnuts, which are the greatest of any, within whose shell are often put a paire of fine gloves, neatly foulded up to- gether." Another variety he mentions "whose shell is so tender that it may easily be broken between one's fingers, and the nut itsself is very sweete." In England, the climate prevents the ripening of the fruit of walnut trees. But the nuts reach good size, and are pickled green, for use as a relish; or made into catsups — husks and all being used, when a needle will still puncture the fruit with ease. In America, the first importations of the walnuts came from the Mediterranean countries, by way of England, "the mother country." In contradistinction to our black walnuts and butternuts, these nuts from overseas were called by the loyal colonists "EngUsh walnuts," and so they remain to this day in the markets of this country. It was natural and easy to grow these trees in the South- ern states. But little had been done to improve them, or THE WALNUTS 35 to grow them extensively for market, until California undertook to compete with Europe for the growing Amer- ican trade. Now the crop reaches thousands of tons of nuts, and millions of dollars come back each year to the owners of walnut ranches. Hardy varieties have extended the range of nut-orcharding; and so has the grafting of tender varieties on stock of the native black walnut of California. The beauty of this Eurasian walnut tree would justify planting it merely for the adornment of parks and private grounds. Its broad dome of bright green foliage in sum- mer, and its clean gray trunk and bare branches in winter, are attractive features in a landscape that has few de- ciduous trees. A fine dooryard tree that bears delicious nuts, after furnishing a grateful shade all summer, is de- serving the popularity it enjoys with small farmers and owners of the simplest California homes. As a lumber tree, the walnut of Europe has long been commercially important. It is the staple wood for gun- stocks, and during wars the price has reached absurd heights, one country bidding against its rival to get con- trol of the visible supply. Furniture makers use quanti- ties of the curly walnut often found in stumps of old trees. The heart wood, always a rich brown, is often watered and crimped in curious and intricate patterns, that when polished blend the loveliest dark and light shades with the characteristic walnut lustre, to reward the skilled crafts- man. In the United States this wood is rarely seen, because the trees are grown for their nuts. They require several years to come into bearing, are long-lived, have few ene- mies, and need little pruning as bearing age approaches. 36 TREES THE HICKORIES Americans have a right to be proud that the twelve hickory species are all natives of this country. Eleven of the twelve are found in the eastern half of the United States; one, only, strays into the forests of Mexico. No other country has a native hickory. Indians of the x\lgonkin tribe named this tree family, and taught the early colonists in Virginia to use for food the ripe nuts of the shagbark and mockernut. After cracking the shells, the procedure was to boil and strain the mixture, which gave them a rich, soupy liquid. Into this they stirred a coarse meal, made by grinding between stones the Indian corn. The mush was cooked slowly, then made into cakes, which were baked on hot stones. No more delicious nor wholesome food can be imagined than this. Frequently the soup was eaten alone; its name, "Powco- hicora," gave the trees their English name, part of which the botanist, RaflSnesque, took, Latinized, and set up as the name of the genus. Cut a twig of any hickory tree, and you realize that the wood is close-grained and very springy. The pith is solid, with a star form in cross-section, corresponding to the ranking of the leaves on the twigs. The wind strevv^s no branches under a hickory tree, for the fibres of the wood are strong and flexible enough to resist a hurricane. (See illus- trations, pages 6, 71.) Hickory wood is unequalled for implements which must resist great strain and constant jarring. The running-ge^r of wagons and carriages, handles of pitchforks, axes, and like implements require it. Thin strips, woven into bask- THE HICKORIES 37 ets for heavy market use, are almost indestructible. No fuel is better than seasoned hickory wood. Shagbark or Shellbark d'O rU3 O/^^'fe? Hiemia ovata, Britt. The shagbark has gray bark that is shed in thin, tough, vertical strips. Attached by the middle, these strips often spring outward, at top and bottom, giving the bole a most untidy look {see illustrations , pages, 6, 71), and threatening the trousers of any boy bold enough to try cHmbing into the smooth-barked top to beat off the nuts. In spite of the ragged-looking trunk, a shagbark grown in the open is a noble tree. The limbs are angular, but they express strength to the utmost twig, as the bare ob- long of the tree's lofty head is etched against a wintry sky. The nuts are the chief blessing this tree confers upon the youngsters of any neighborhood. Individual trees differ in the size and quality of their fruit. The children know the best trees, and so do the squirrels, their chief com- petitors at harvest time. Frost causes the eager lads to seek their favorite trees, and underneath they find the four-parted husks dropping away from the angled nuts. There is no waiting, as with walnuts, for husking time to come. The tree is prompt about dropping its fruit. Spread for a few weeks, where they can dry, and thieving squirrels will let them alone, hickory nuts reach perfect condition for eating. Fat, proteid, and carbohydrates are found in concentrated form in those delicious meats. We may not know their dietetic value, but we all remember how good and how satisfying they are. No tree brings to the human family more val- S8 TREES uable offerings than this one, rugged and ragged though it be. The Big Shellbark H. lacinata, Sarg. The big shellbark, like the little shellbark, is a common forest tree in the Middle West and Middle Atlantic states. It has a shaggy trunk, stout limbs, picturesquely angular, and it bears nuts that are sweet and of delicious flavor. In winter the orange-colored twigs, large terminal buds, and persistent stems of the dead leaves are distinguishing traits. These petioles shed the five to nine long leaflets and then stay on, their enlarged bases firmly tied by fibre bundles to the scar, though the stems writhe and curve as if eager to be free to die among the fallen blades. "Ejng nuts," as the fruit of this tree is labelled in the markets, do not equal the httle hickory nuts in quality, and their thick shells cover meats very little larger. But the nut in its husk on the tree is often three inches long — • a very impressive sight to hungry nut-gatherers. In summer the downy leaf -linings and the uncommon size of the leaves best distinguish this tree from its near relative, whose five leaflets are smooth throughout, small, very rarely counting seven. The Pecan H, Pecan, Britt. The pecan tree bears the best nuts in the hickory family. This species is coming to be a profitable orchard tree in in^y sectic^QS of the South. Most of the pecan nuts in the See page J^O "WHITE OAK See page 51 BUR, OR MOSSY-CUP, OAK — LEAVES AND FRUIT THE mCKORIES 39 market come from wild trees in the Mississippi Basin. But late years have seen great strides taken to establish pecan growing as a paying horticultural enterprise in states outside, as well as within, the tree's natural range. And these efforts are succeeding. Experiment stations have tested seedling trees and selected varieties of known merit, until they know by actual experiment that pecans can be raised successfully in the Carolinas and in other states v/here the native species does not grow wild. Thin-shelled varieties, with the astringent red shell-lining almost eliminated, have been bred by selection, and propagated by building on native stock. The trees have proved to be fast-growing, early-fruiting, and easy to grow and protect from enemies. The market pays the highest price for pecans. The popularity of this nut is deserved, because by analysis it has the highest food value combined with the most deli- cate and delicious flavor. No nut is so rich in nutriment. None has so low a percentage of waste. The demand for nuts is constantly increasing as the public learns that the proteid the body needs can be obtained from nuts as well as from meat. Pecans have suffered in competition with other nuts be- cause they are diflicult to get out of the shells w^ithout breaking the meats. The old-fashioned hammer and block is not the method for them. A cracker I saw in use on the street corner in Chicago delighted me. Clamped to the nut-vendor's stall, it received the nut between two steel cups and, by the turn of a wheel, crowded it so that the shell buckled and broke where it is thinnest, around the middle, and the meat came out whole. 40 TREES The Mockernut H, alba, Britt. The mockernut is a mockery to him who hopes for nuts like those of either shagbark. The husk is often three inches long. Inside is a good-sized nut, angled above the middle, suggesting the shagbark. But what a thick, ob- stinate shell, when one attempts to "break and enter!" And what a trifling, insipid meat one finds, to repay the effort! Quite often there is nothing but a spongy remnant or the shell is empty. {See illustration, 'page 7.) As a shade tree, the mockernut has real value, showing in winter a tall, slender pyramidal form, with large termi- nal buds tipping the velvety, resinous twigs. The bark is smooth as that of an ash, with shallow, wavy furrows, as if surfaced with a silky layer of new healing tissue, thrown up to fill up all depressions. Mockernut leaves are large, downy, yellow-green, turning to gold in autumn. Crushed they give out an aroma suggesting a delicate perfume. The flowers are abundant, and yet the most surprising show of colors on this tree comes in late April, when the great buds swell. The outer scales fall, and the inner ones expand into ruddy silken sheathes that stand erect around the central cluster of leaves, not yet awake, and every branch seems to hold up a great red tulip! The sight is wonderful. Nothing looks more flower-like than these opening hickory buds, and to the unobserving passerby the transformation is nothing short of a miracle. In a day, the leaves rise and spread their delicate leaflets, lengthen- ing and becoming smooth, as the now useless red scales fall in a shower to the ground. THE HICKORIES 41 The Pignut H, glabra, Britt. The pignut deserves the better name, "smooth hickory," a more ingratiating introduction to strangers. A graceful, symmetrical tree, with spreading limbs that end in deli- cate, pendulous branches, and gray bark checked into a maze of intersecting furrows, it is an ornament to any park, even in the dead of winter. In summer the tree laughs in the face of the sun, its smooth, glossy, yellow-green leaflets, five to seven on a stem, lined with pale green or yellow. In spring the clustered fringes among the opening leaves are the green and gold stamen flowers. The curiously angled fertile flowers, at the tips of twigs, are green, with yellow stigmas. Autumn turns the foliage to orange and brown, and lets fall the pear-shaped or rounded fruit, each nut obscurely four-angled and held fast at the base by the thin, 4-ridged husk, that splits scarcely to the middle. The kernel is insipid, sometimes bitter, occasionally rather sweet. Country boys scorn the pignut trees, leaving their fruit for eager but unsophisticated nut-gatherers from the towns. Pigs used to be turned into the woods to fatten on beech- and oak-" mast." They eagerly devoured the thin-shelled nuts of H. glabra, and thus the tree earned the friendly re- gard of farmers, and a name that preserves an interesting bit of pioneer history. The range of the pignut is from Maine to Florida on the Atlantic seaboard, west to the middle of Nebraska and Texas, and from Ontario and Michigan south to the 42 TREES THE BEECH The American Beech Fagus Americanus, Sweet. One of the most widely distributed trees in our country, this is also one of the most useful and most beautiful in any forest. It is the sole representative of its genus in the Western Hemisphere. One species is a valuable timber tree in Europe. Three are natives of Asia. A genus near of kin includes the beech trees of the Southern Hemisphere, twelve species in all. There is closer resemblance, however, between our beeches and their next of kin, the chestnuts and oaks. From the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, from Florida to Texas, from New England to Wisconsin, beech trees grow; and where they grow they are very hkely to form "pure for- ests," on the slopes of mountains and rich river bottoms. The largest specimens grow in the basin of the lower Ohio River, and on the warm slopes of the Alleghany Mountains. Standing alone, with room for full development, the beech is a fine, symmetrical tree, with horizontal or sHghtly drooping branches, numerous, thickly set with slender, flexible twigs. The stout trunk supports a round or conical head of very dense foliage. One hundred and twenty feet is the maximum height, with a trunk diameter of three to four feet. (See illustrations , pages 22, 30.) The older the trees, the greater the amount of red heart wood in proportion to the white sap-wood, next to the bark. Red and white beech wood are distinguished by Imnbermen. Red beech makes suDerior floors, tool- THE BEECH 43 handles, chairs, and the like, and there is no more perfect fuel than seasoned beech wood. It is unreasonable to think that any but the blind could h ve where beech trees grow and not know these trees at a glance. The bark is close, unfurrowed, gray, often almost white, and marked with blotches, often nearly round of paler hue. The branches are dark and smooth and the twigs pol- ished to the long, pointed winter buds. Throughout, the ti*ee is a model of elegant attire, both in color and texture of the investing bark. In the growing season the leaves are the tree's chief at- traction. They are closely plaited, and covered with silvery down, w^hen the bud scales are pushed off in the spring. In a day, the protective fuzz disappears, and the full-grown leaf is seen, thin, strongly feather-veined, uni- formly green, saw-toothed. Summer shows the foliage mass almost as fresh, and autumn turns its green to pale gold. Still unblemished, it clings, often until the end of winter, lighting the woods with a ghostly glow, as the rain fades the color out. The silky texture is never quite lost. The delicate flowers of the beech tree are rarely seen, they faJe so soon; the stamen tassels drop off and the forming nuts, with their prickly burs, are more and more in evidence in the leaf angles near the ends of new shoots. With the first frost the burs open, the four walls part, re- leasing the two nuts, three-angled, like a grain of buckwheat. The name of this grain was suggested by its resemblance in form to the beechnut, or "buck mast," sweet, nutritious food of so many dwellers in the forest. Buck mast was the food of man when he Uved in caves and under the forest cover. We know that beechnuts have a rich, delicate flavor tliat offsets the disadvantages of their small size 44 TREES and the difficulty of opening their thin but leathery shells. All along the centuries European peoples have counted on this nut, and oil expressed from it, for their own food and the dried leaves for forage for their cattle in winter. The American pioneer turned his hogs into the beech woods to fatten on the beech-mast, and Thanksgiving turkeys were always finer if they competed with the wild turkey on the same fare. Birds and lesser mammals do much to plant trees when they carry away, for immediate or future use, seeds that are not winged for flight. Beechnuts are light enough to profit, to some extent, by a high wind. And beech trees in their infancy do well under the shade of other trees. So each fruiting tree is the mother of many young ones. But the seedling trees are not so numerous and important as the sapling growth that rises from the roots of parent trees. By these alone, a few isolated beeches will manage to take possession of the ground around them and to clothe it with so dense a foliage screen that all young growth, except certain ferns and grasses, dies for lack of sun. Before we can realize what is going on, the tract is a pure forest of beech, rapidly enlarging on all sides by the same campaign of extension. THE CHESTNUTS Chestnut and Chinquapin Casianea dentata, Borh., and C. pumila. Mill. Our native chestnut and its little brother, the chin- quapin, are the American cousins of the sweet chestnut of THE CHESTNUTS 45 southern Europe. Japan has contributed to American horticulture a native species which bears large but not very sweet nuts, that are good when cooked. Our two trees bear sweet nuts, of a flavor that no mode of cooking improves. In truth, there is no finer nut; and the time to enjoy it to the highest degree is a few weeks after the frost opens the burs and lets the nuts fall. "Along about Thanksgiving," they have lost some of their moisture and are prime. In foreign countries the chestnut is a rich, nourishing food, comparable to the potato. Who could go into ecstasies over a vegetable that is a staple food for the peasants of Europe, Asia, and North Africa? Our chestnut is no staple. It is a delicacy. It is treasure trove from the autumn woods, and the gathering of the crop is a game in which boys and squirrels are rivals. Ernest Thompson Seton, always a boy, knows the im- patience with which the opening of the burs is watched for, as the belated frosts keep off, and the burs hang tantahz- ingly closed. The cruel wounds made by the spines and the raw taste of the immature nuts are poor recompense for the labor of nutting before Nature gives the sign that all's ready. Here is Mr. Seton's estimate of the chestnut of "brown October's woods." "Whenever you see something kept under lock and key, bars and bolts, guarded and double-guarded, you may be sure it is very precious, greatly coveted. The nut of this tree is hung high aloft, wrapped in a silk wrapper, which is enclosed in a case of sole leather, which again is packed in a mass of shock-absorbing, vermin-proof pulp, sealed up in a waterproof, iron-wood case, and finally cased in a vege- 46 TREES table porcupine of spines, almost impregnable. There is no nut so protected; there is no nut in our woods to com- pare with it as food." What a disaster then is the newly arisen bark disease that has already killed every chestnut tree throughout large areas in the Eastern states. Scientists have thus far struggled with it in vain and it is probable that ail chest- nuts east of the Rockies are doomed. Chinquapins grow to be medium-sized trees in Texas and Arkansas, but east of the Mississippi they are smaller, and east of the Alleghanies, mere shrubby undergrowth, covering rocky banks or crouching along swamp borders. They are smaller throughout, but resemble the chestnut in leaf, flowers, and fruit. The bur contains a single nut. The chestnut tree grows large and attains great age, its sturdy, rough gray trunk crowned with an oblong head of irregular branches, hidden in summer by the abundant foliage mass. (See illustration, page 28.) The ugly cripple that lightning has maimed covers its wounds when May wakes the late-opening buds and the leaves attain full size. Each leaf tapers at both ends, its length three or four times its width. Strong-ribbed and sharp-toothed, and wavy on the midrib, dark, polished, like leather, these units form a wonderful dome, lightened in midsummer by the pencil -like plumes of the staminate flowers, with the fertile ones at their bases. As autumn comes on the leaf crown turns to gold, and the mature fruits are still green spiny balls. The first frost and the time to drop the nuts are dates that every schoolboy knows come close together. When a chestnut tree falls by the axe, the roots restore THE OAKS 47 the loss by sending up sprouts around the stump. The mouldering pile nourishes a circle of young trees, full of vigor, because they have the large tree's roots gathering food for them. No wonder their growth is rapid. Besides this mode of reproduction, chestnut trees, grow- ing here and there throughout a mixed forest, are the off- spring of trees whose nuts were put away, or dropped and lost by squirrels. When spring reheves the danger of famine, many of the rodent class abandon their winter stores before they are all devoured. Such caches add many nut trees to our native woods. THE OAKS This is the great family of the cup-bearers, whose fruit, the acorn, is borne in a scaly cup that never breaks into quarters, as does the husk that holds a chestnut, beechnut, or hickory nut. All oak trees bear acorns as soon as they come to fruiting age. This is the sign by which they are known the world over. Seldom is a full-grown oak without its little insignia, for the cups cling after the nut falls, and one grand division of the family requires two seasons to mature its fruit. For this reason, half-grown acorns are seen on the twigs after the ripe ones fall. We cannot say of oak trees that they all have sturdy trunks, rough bark, and gnarled limbs, for not all of them have these characteristics. But there is a certain likeness in oak leaves. They are simple, five-ranked, generally oval, and the margins are generally cut into lobes by deep or shallow bays. INIost oak leaves have leathery texture, strong veins, and short petioles. They are leaves that out- 48 TREES last the summer, and sometimes persist until spring growth unseats the stalks; sometimes, as in the "live oaks," they hang on three to five years. The twigs of oak trees are more or less distinctly five- angled, and the winter buds cluster at the ends. This in- sures a group of young shoots, crowded with leaves, on the ends of branches, and a dense outer dome of foliage on the tree. Nearly three hundred distinct species of oaks are recog- nized by botanists, and the Hst is growing. New species are in the making. For instance, a white oak and a bur oak grow near enough for the wind to "cross-fertilize" their pistillate flowers. The acorns of such mixed parent- age produce trees that differ from both parents, yet reveal characteristics of both. They are "hybrids," and may be called new varieties of either parent. Other species of oak are intercrossing by the same process — the interchange of pollen at the time of blossoming. This proves that the oak family is young, compared with many other families, whose members are too distantly related to intercross. Though geologically young, the oak family is one of the most important, furnishing timber of superior strength and durability for bridge-building, ship-building, and other construction work. Tanning has depended largely upon oak bark. As fuel, all oak trees are valuable. Fifty species of oak are native to North American forests. Twice as many grow east of the Rocky Moun- tains as west of the Great Divide. No species naturally passes this barrier. The temperate zone species extend southward into tropical regions, by keeping to high alti- tudes. Thus we find American oaks in the Andes and Colombia; Asiatic species occur in the Indian Archi- THE OAKS 49 pelago. No Old World species is native to America. Each continent has its own. East of the Rocky Mountains the oaks hold a place of preeminence among broad-leaved trees. They are trees of large size, and they often attain great age. They are beautiful trees, and therefore highly valued for ornamental planting. This has led to the introduction of oaks from other countries. We have set European, Japanese, and Siberian oaks in our finest parks. Europe has borrowed from our woods the red oak and many others. All coun- tries are richer by this horticultural exchange of trees. Our native oaks fall into two groups : the annual-fruit- ing and the biennial-fruiting species. The first group matures its acorns in a single season ; the second requires two seasons. It happens that annuals have leaves with rounded lobes, while biennials have leaves with lobes that end in angles and bristly tips. The bark of the annual trees is generally pale; that of the biennials, dark. Hence the white oak group and the black oak group may be easily distinguished at a glance, by the bark, the leaf, and the acorn crop. THE WHITE OAK GROUP The White Oak Quercus alba, Linn. The white oak has no rival for first place in the esteem of tree-lover and lumberman. Its broad, rounded dome, sturdy trunk, and strong arms (see illusirafiofi, page SS), and its wide-ranging roots enable a solitary tree to resist 50 TREES storms that destroy or maim other kinds. Strength and tenacity in the fibre of root and branch make it possible for individuals to live to a great age, far beyond the two cen- turies required to bring it to maturity. Such trees stir within us a feeling of reverence and patriotism. They are patriarchs whose struggles typify the pioneer's indomitable resistance to forces that destroyed all but the strong. White oak trees in the forest grow tall, lose their lower branches early, and lift but a small head to the sun. The logs, quarter-sawed, reveal the broad, gleaming "mir- rors" that make a white oak table beautiful. The botanist calls these the medullary rays — thin, irregular plates of tissue-building cells, that extend out from the central pith, sometimes quite to the sap-wood, crowding between the wood fibres, which in the heart-wood are no longer alive. A slab will show only an edge of these mir- rors. But any section from bark to pith will reveal them. The pale brown wood of the white oak distinctly shows the narrow rings of annual growth. Each season begins with a coarse, porous band of ''spring wood," followed by a narrower band of fine, close-grained ''summer wood." White oak is streaked with irregular, dark lines. These are the porous lines of spring wood, discolored by foreign matter. Count them, allow a year for each, and you know how long one white oak tree required to make an inch of wood. The supreme moment in the white oak's year comes in spring, when the gray old tree wakes, the buds swell and cast off their brown scales, and the young leaves appear. The tree is veiled, not with a garment of green, but mth a mist of rose and silver, each twig hung with soft Hmp velvety leaves, red-lined, and covered with a close mat of THE OAKS 51 silky hairs. It is a spectacle that seems unreal, because it is so lovely and gone so soon. The protecting hairs and pigments disappear, and the green leafage takes its place, brightened by the yellow tassels of the stamen flowers, and the growing season is on. In autumn the pale-lined leaves of the white oak turn slowly to sombre violet and dull purplish tones. Clinging there, after the acorns have all fallen and been gathered by squirrels, the foliage fades into the gray of the bark and may persist imtil spring growth sets in. The Bur Oak Q. macrocarpa, Michx. The bur oak {see illustration, page 39) is called the mossy- cup on account of the loose, fringed scales about the rim of the cup that holds the large acorn — largest in the whole oak family. Often the nut is completely enclosed by the cup; often it is small. This variable fruit is sweet, and it is the winter store of many furry wood-folk. The leaf has the rounded lobing of the family, with the special peculiarity of being almost cut in two by a pair of deep and wide opposite sinuses, between the broad middle, and the narrow, tapering base. Not all leaves show this odd form, but it is the prevailing pattern. The dark green blade has a pale, fuzzy lining, that lasts until the leaves turn brown and yellow. The bur oak is a ruf::ged, ragged tree, compared with the white oak. Its irreguhir form is picturesque, its wayward limbs are clothed in a loose garment of untidy, half-shed bark. The twigs are roughened with broad, corky wings. 52 TREES The trunk is brownish, with loosened flakes of gray, sep- arated by shallow fissures. The wood is classed with white oak, though darker in color. It has the same ornamental mirrors, dear to the heart of the cabinet-maker. It serves all the purposes for which a tough, strong, durable wood is needed. The range of the species is from Nova Scotia to Mon- tana, and it grows in large tracts from Winnipeg to Texas, doing well in the arid soil of western Nebraska and Dakota. Suckers from the roots spread these trees till they form the "oak openings" of the bluffs of the Missouri and other streams of Iowa and Minnesota. In Kansas it is the commonest oak tree. The largest trees of this species grow in rich bottom lands in the Ohio Valley. The Post Oak Q. minor, Sarg. The post oak has wood that is noted for its durability when placed in contact with the soil. It is in demand for fence posts, railroad ties, and for casks and boat timbers. *'Iron oak" is a name that refers to the qualities of the wood. "Knees" of post oak used to be especially in demand. In the Mississippi Basin this tree attains its largest size and greatest abundance on gravelly uplands. It is the commonest oak of central Texas, on the sandy plains and limestone hills. Farther north, it is more rare and smaller, becoming an undersized oak in New York and westward to Kansas. In winter the post oak keeps its cloak of harsh-feeling, thick, coarse- veined leaves. Tough fibres fasten them to THE OAKS 53 the twigs. In summer the fohage mass is almost black, with gray leaf-linings. The lobes and sinuses are large and squarish, the blades four or five inches long. The limbs, tortuous, horizontal, form a dense head. The Chestnut Oak Q. Prinus, Linn. The chestnut oak has many nicknames and all are descrip- tive. Its leaves are similar in outline and size to those of the chestnut. The margin is coarsely toothed, not lobed, like the typical oak leaf. "Tanbark oak" refers to the rich store of tannin in the bark, which makes this species the victim of the bark-peeler for the tanneries wherever it grows. "Rock chestnut oak" is a title that lumbermen have given to the oak with exceptionally hard w^ood, heavy and durable in soil, adapted for railroad ties, posts, and the like. Unlike other white oaks, the bark of this tree is dark in color and deeply fissured. Without a look at the leaves, one might call it a black oak. The centre of distribution for this species seems to be the foothill country of the Appalachian Mountains, in Ten- nessee and North Carolina. Here it predominates, and grows to its largest size. From Maine to Georgia it chooses rocky, dry uplands, grows vigorously and rapidly, and its acorns often sprout before falling from the cup! The chestnut oak is one of the most desirable kinds of trees to plant in parks. It is symmetrical, with handsome bark and foliage. The leaves turn yellow and keep their fine texture through the season. The acorn is one of the 54 TREES handsomest and largest, and squirrels are delighted with its sweet kernel. The Mississippi Valley Chestnut Oak Q. acuminata, Sarg. In the Mississippi Valley the chestnut oak is Q. acu- minata, Sarg., with a more slender and more finely-toothed leaf that bears a very close resemblance to that of the chestnut. The foliage mass is brilliant, yellow-green, each leaf with a pale lining, and hung on a flexible stem. "Yellow oak" is another name, earned again when in autumn the leaves turn to orange shades mingled with red. On the Wabash River banks these trees surpass one hundred feet in height and three feet in diameter. The base of the trunk is often buttressed. Back from the rich bottom lands, on limestone and flinty ridges, where water is scarce, these trees are stunted. In parks they are handsome, and very desirable. The bark is silvery white, tinged with brown, and rarely exceeds one half an inch in thickness. The Swamp White Oak Q. platanoides, Sudw. The swamp white oak loves to stand in wet ground, sometimes even in actual swamps. Its small branches shed their bark like the buttonwood, the flakes curling back and showing the bright green under layer. On the trunk the bark is thick, and broken irregularly into broad, flat ridges coated with close, gray-brown scales often tinged with red. -JJ"«^3i*'»> , See page 65 HORSE-CHESTNUT IN BLOSSOM !See page 6' J WEEPING WILLOW THE OAKS 55 In its youth the swamp white oak is comely and sym- metrical, its untidy moulting habit concealed by the abundant foliage. One botanist calls this species bicolor, because the polished yellow-green upper surfaces contrast so pleasantly with the white scurf that lines each leaf throughout the summer. Yellow is the autumn color. Never a hint of red warms this oak of the swamps, even when planted as a street or park tree in well-drained ground. The Basket Oak Q. Michauxii, Nutt. The basket oak is so like the preceding species as to be listed by some botanists as the southern form of Q. jplatanoides. They meet on a vague line that crosses Maryland, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Both have large leaves silver-lined, with undulating border, of the chestnut oak pattern. Both are trees of the waterside, tail, with round heads of gnarled limbs. The red-tinged white bark sets the basket oak apart from all others. Its head is broader and its trunk stouter than in the other species. The paired acorns are almost without stalks, the nuts large, the kernels sweet. In autumn, farmers turn their hogs into the woods to fatten on tliis oak-mast. The edibility of these nuts may account for the common name, "cow oak." The wood splits readily into thin, tough plates of the summer wood. This is because the layer formed in spring is very porous. Bushel baskets, china crates, and similar woven wares arc made of these oak splints. The wood is also used in cooperage and implement construc- tion, and it makes excellent firewood. 56 TREES The Live Oak Q. Virginiana, Mill. The live oak with its small oval leaves, without a cleft in the plain margins, looks like anything but an oak to the Northerner who walks along a street planted with this evergreen in Richmond or New Orleans. It is not especially good for street use, though often chosen. It develops a broad, rounded dome, by the lengthening of the irregular limbs in a horizontal direction. The trunk becomes massive and buttressed to support the burden. The "knees" of this oak were in keenest demand for ship-building before steel took the place of wood. In all lines of construction, this lumber ranks with the best white oak. The short trunk is the disadvantage, from the lumberman's viewpoint. Its beauty, when polished, would make it the wood 'par excellence for elegant furni- ture, except that it is difficult to work, and it sphts easily. The Spanish moss that drapes the limbs of live oaks in the South gives them a greenish pallor and an unkempt appearance that seems more interesting than beautiful to many observers. It is only when the sight is familiar, I think, that it is pleasing. Northern trees are so clean- limbed and so regular about shedding their leaves when they fade, that these patient hosts, loaded down with the pendent skeins of the tillandsia, seem to be imposed upon. In fact, the "moss" is not a parasite, sapping the life of the tree, but a lodger, that finds its own food supply with- out help. THE OAKS 57 California White Oak Q. lobatay Nee. The California white oak far exceeds the Eastern white oak in the spread of its miglity arms. The dome is often two hundred feet m breadth and the trunk reaches ten feet in diameter. Such specimens are often low in pro- portion, the trunk breaking into its grand divisions within tw^enty feet of the ground. The ultimate spray is made of slender, supple twigs, on which the many-lobed leaves taper to the short stalks. Dark green above, the blades are lined with pale pubescence. The acorns are slender, l^ointed, and often exceed two inches in length. Their cups are comparatively shallow, and they fall out when ripe. The bare framework of one of these giant oaks shows a wonderful maze of gnarled branches, whose grotesque angularities are multiplied with added years and com- plicated by damage and repair. It is hard to say whether the grace and nobility of the verdure-clad tree, or the tortuous branching system re- vealed in winter, appeals more strongly to the admiration of the stranger and the pride of the native Calif oniian, who delights in this noble oak at all seasons. Its com- paratively worthless wood has spared the trees to adorn the park-like landscapes of the wide middle valleys of the state. Pacific Post Oak Q. Garryatia, Hook. The Pacific post oak is the only oak in British Columbia, whence it follows down the valleys of the Coast Range to 58 TREES the Santa Cniz Mountains. It is a tree nearly one hundred feet high, with a broad, compact head, in western Washington and Oregon. Dark green, lustrous leaves, with paler linings, attain almost a leathery texture when full grown. They are four to six inches long and coarsely lobed. In autumn they sometimes turn bright scarlet. The wood is hard, strong, tough, and close-grained. It is employed in the manufacture of wagons and furniture, and in ship-building and cooperage. It is a superior fuel. THE BLACK OAK GROUP A large group of our native oaks require two seasons to mature their acorns; have dark-colored bark and foliage, have leaves whose lobes are sharp-angled and taper to bristly points and tough acorn shells lined with a silky -hairy coat. The Black Oak Q> velutinay Lam. The black oak of the vast region east of the Rocky Mountains is the type or pattern species. Its leathery, dark green leaves are divided by curving sinuses into squarish lobes, each ending in one or more bristly tips. The lobes are paired, and each has a strong vein from the midrib. Underneath, the leaf is always scurfy, even when the ripening turns its color from bronze to brown, yellow or dull red. Under the deep-furrowed, brown surface bark is a yellow layer, rich in tannin, and a dyestuff called quercitron. This makes the tree valuable for its bark. The wood is coarse- THE OAKS 59 grained, hard, difficult to work, and chiefly employed as fuel. A distinguishing trait of the bare tree is the large fuzzy winter bud. The unfolding leaves in spring are bright red above, with a silvery lining. The autumn acorn crop may be heavy or light. Trees have their "off years," for various reasons. But always, as leaves and fruit fall and bare the twigs, one sees, among the winter buds, the half -grown acorns waiting for their second season of growth. The pointed nut soon loosens, for the cup though deep has straight sides. The kernel is yellow and bitter. The Scarlet Oak Q. coccinea, Moench. The scarlet oak is like a flaming torch set among the dull browns and yellows in our autumnal woods. In spring the opening leaves are red ; so are the tasselled catkins and the forked pistils, that turn into the acorns later on. This is a favorite ornamental tree in Europe and our own country. Its points of beauty are not all in its colors. The tree is slender, delicate in branch, twig, and leaf — quite out of the sturdy, picturesque class in which most oaks belong. The leaf is thin, silky smooth, its lobes sep- arated by sinuses so deep that it is a mere skeleton com- pared with the black oak's. The trimness of the leaf is matched by the neat acorn, whose scaly cup has none of the looseness seen in the burly black oak. The scales are smooth, tight-fitting, and they curl in at the rim. There is lightness and grace in a scarlet oak, for its twigs are slim and supple as a willow's, and the leaves flutter on 60 TREES long, flexible stems. Above the drifts of the first snowfall, the brilliance of the scarlet foliage makes a picture long to be remembered against the blue of a clear autumnal sky. The largest trees of this species grow in the fertile up- lands in the Ohio Valley. But the most brilliant hues are seen in trees of smaller size, that grow in New England woods. In the comparatively dull-hued autumn woods of Iowa and Nebraska the scarlet oak is the most vivid and most admired tree. The Pin Oak Q. palustris, Linn. The pin oak earns its name by the sharp, short, spur- like twigs that cluster on the branches, crowding each other to death and then persisting to give the tree a bristly appearance. The tree in winter bears small resemblance to other oaks. The trunk is slender, the shaft carried up to the top, as straight as a pine's. The branches are very numerous and regular, striking out at right angles from the stem, the lower tier shorter than those directly above them, and drooping often to the ground. On the winter twigs, among the characteristic "pins," are the half-grown acorns that proclaim the tree an oak beyond a doubt, and a black oak, requiring a second sum- mer for the maturing of its fruit. It is likely that there will be found on older twigs a few of the full-grown acorns, or perhaps only the trim, shallow saucers from which the shiny, striped, brown acorns have fallen. Hunt among the dead leaves and these little acorns will be discovered for, though pretty to look at, they are bitter and squirrels leave them where they fall. THE OAKS 61 The leaves match the slender twigs in delicacy of pat- tern. Thin, deeply cut, shining, with pale linings, they flutter on slender stems, smaller but often matching the leaves of the scarlet oak in pattern. Sometimes they are more like the red oak in outline. In autumn they turn red and are a glory in the woods. One trait has made this tree a favorite for shade and ornament. It has a shock of fibrous roots, and for this reason is easily transplanted. It grows rapidly in any moist, rich soil. It keeps its leaves clean and beautiful throughout the season. Washington, D. C, has its streets planted to native trees, one species lining the sides of a single street or avenue for miles. The pin oaks are superb on the thoroughfare that reaches from the Capitol to the Navy Yard. They retain the beauty of their youth be- cause each tree has been given a chance to grow to its best estate. In spring the opening leaves and pistillate flowers are red, giving the silvery green tree- top a warm flush that cheers the passerby. In European countries this oak is a prime favorite for public and private parks. The Red Oak Q. rubra, Linn. The red oak grows rapidly, like the pin oak, and is a great favorite in parks overseas, where it takes on the rich autumnal red shades that give it its name at home. Such color is unknown in native woods in England. The head of this oak is usually narrow and rounded; the branches, short and stout, are inclined to go theh- own way, giving the tree more of picturesqueness tlian of symmetry, as age advances. Sometimes the dome is 62 TREES broad and rounded like that of a white oak, and in the woods, where competition is keen, the trunk may reach one hundred and fifty feet in height. The red oak leaf is large, smooth, rather thin, its oval broken by triangular sinuses and forward-aiming lobes, that end in bristly points. The blade is broadest between the apex and the middle, where the two largest lobes are. No oak has leaves more variable than this. Under the dark brown, close-knit bark of a full-grown red oak tree is a reddish layer that shows in the furrows. The twigs and leaf -stems are red. A flush of pink covers the opening leaves, and they are Hned with white down which is soon shed. The bloom is very abundant and conspicuous, the fringe- like pollen-bearing aments four or five inches long, droop- ing from the twigs in clusters, when the leaves are half- grown in May. The acorns of the red oak are large, and set in shallow saucers, with incurving rims. Few creatures taste their bitter white kernels. The Willow Oak Q. PhelloSy Linn. The willow oak has long, narrow, pointed leaves that suggest a willow, and not at all an oak. The supple twigs, too, are willow-like, and the tree is a lover of the waterside. But there is the acorn, seated in a shallow, scaly cup, like a pin oak's. There is no denying the tree's family con- nections. A southern tree, deservedly popular in cities for shade and ornamental planting, it is nevertheless hardy in THE OAKS 63 Philadelphia and New York; and a good little specimen seems to thrive in Boston, in the Arnold Arboretum. As a lumber tree, the species is unimportant. The Shingle, or Laurel, Oak Q. imbricaria, Michx. The shingle or laurel oak may be met in any woodland from Pennsylvania to Nebraska, and south to Georgia and Arkansas. It may be large or small; a well-grown speci- men reaches sixty feet, with a broad, pyramidal, open head. The chief beauty of the tree, at any season, is the foliage mass — dark, lustrous, pale lined, the margin usually un- broken by any indentations. In autumn the yellow, channelled midribs turn red, and all the blades to purplish crimson, and this color stays a long time. It is a wonder- ful sight to see the evening sunlight streaming through the loose, open head of a laurel oak. No wonder people plant it for shade and for the beauty it adds to home grounds and public parks. The Mountain Live Oak Q. chrysolepis, Liebm. The mountain live oak cannot be seen without chmbing the western slopes of the mountains from Oregon to Lower California, and eastward into New Mexico and Arizona. On levels where avalanches deposit detritus from the higher slopes, sufficient fertihty and moisture are found to maintain groves of these oaks, wide-domed, with massive, horizontal branches from short, buttressed trunks — the 64 TREES Western counterpart of the live oak of the South, but lack- ing the familiar drapery of pale green moss. The leaves are leathery, polished, oval blades, one or two inches in length, with unbroken margins, abundant on in- tricately divided, supple twigs, that droop with their bur- den and respond to the lightest breeze. The leaves per- sist until the bronze-green new foliage expands to replace the old, and keep the tree-tops evergreen. The acorns are large, and their thick, shallow saucers are covered with yellow fuzz. For this character, the tree is called the gold-cup oak. In June, the copious bloom is yellow. Even at an altitude of eight thousand feet the familiar gold-cup acorns are borne on shrubby oaks not more than a foot high ! The maximum height of the species is sixty feet. The wood is the most valuable oak of the West Coast. It is used for wagons and agricultural implements. The Live Oak Q, agrifolia. Nee. The live oak (Q. agrifolia, Nee.) called also "Encina," is the huge-limbed, holly-leaved live oak of the lowlands, that reaches its greatest abundance and maximum stature in the valleys south of San Francisco Bay. The giant oaks of the University campus at Berkeley stretch out ponder- ous arms, in wayward fashion, that reach far from the stocky trunk and often rest their mighty elbows on the ground. The pointed acorns, usually exceeding an inch in length, are collected by woodpeckers, and tucked away for further reference in holes they make in the bark of the same oaks. THE HORSE-CHESTNUTS 65 From the mountain slopes to the sea, and from Mendo- cino County to Lower California, groves of this semi- prostrate giant are found, furnishing abundant supply of fuel, but no lumber of any consequence, because the trunks are so short and the limbs so crooked. THE HORSE-CHESTNUTS, OR BUCKEYES The Horse-chestnut Aesculus Hippocastanum, Linn. At the head of this family stands a stately tree, native of the mountains of northern Greece and Asia Minor, which was introduced into European parks and planted there as an avenue tree when landscape gardening came into vogue. By way of England it came to iVmerica, and in Eastern villages one often sees a giant horse-chestnut, per- haps the sole remnant of the street planting of an earlier day. Longfellow's "spreading chestnut tree" was a horse- chestnut. And the boys who watched the smith at his work doubtless filled their pockets with the shiny brown nuts and played the game of "conquerors" every autumn as regularly as they flew their kites in spring. What boy has not tied a chestnut to each end of a string, whirled them round and round at a bewildering rate of speed and finally let them fly to catch on telegraph wires, where they dangle for months and bother tidy folks .^^ The glory of the horse-chestnut comes at blooming time, when the upturning branches, like arms of candel- abra, are each tipped with a white blossom-cluster, pointed 66 TREES like a candle flame. (See illustration, page 5^.) Eacli flower of the pyramid has its throat-dashes of yellow and red, and the curving yellow stamens are thrust far out of the dainty ruffled border of the corolla. Bees and wasps make music in the tree-top, sucking the nectar out of the flowers. Unhappily for us humans, caterpillars of the leopard and tussock moths feed upon the tender tissues of this tree, defacing the fohage and making the whole tree unsightly by their presence. Sidewalks under horse-chestnut trees are always littered with something the tree is dropping. In early spring the shiny, wax-covered leaf buds cast off and they stick to slate and cement most tenaciously. Scarcely have the folded leaflets spread, tent-like, before some of them, damaged by wind or late frosts or insects' injury, begin to curl and drop, and as the leaves attain full size, they crowd, and this causes continual shedding. In early autumn the leaflets begin to be cast, the seven fingers gradually loosening from the end of the leaf -stalk; then comes a day when all of the foliage mass lets go, and one may wade knee deep under the tree in the dead leaves. The tree is still ugly from clinging leaf -stems and the slow breaking of the prickly husks that enclose the nuts. With all these faults, the horse-chestnut holds its popu- larity in the suburbs of great cities, for it lives despite smoke and soot. Bushey Park in London has ^lyq rows of these trees on either side of a wide avenue. When they are in bloom the fact is announced in the newspapers and all London turns out to see the sight. Paris uses the tree ex- tensively; nearly twenty thousand of them line her streets, and thrive despite the poverty of the soil. The American buckeyes are less sturdy in form and less THE HORSE-CHESTNUTS C7 showy in flower than tlie European species, but they have the horse-shoe print with the nails in it where the leaf- stalk meets the twig. The brown nuts, with the dull white patch which fastens them in the husk, justifies the name "buckeye." One nibble at the nut will prove to any one that, as a fruit, it is too bitter for even horses. Bitter, astringent bark is characteristic of the family. The Ohio Buckeye Ae. glabra, Willd. The Ohio buckeye has five yellow-green leaflets, smooth when full grown, pale, greenish yellow flowers, not at all conspicuous, and bitter nuts in spiny husks. The whole tree exhales a strong, disagreeable odor. The wood is peculiarly adapted to the making of artificial limbs. The great abundance of this little tree in the Ohio Valley accounts for Ohio being called the "Buckeye State." The Sweet Buckeye Ae. octandra. Marsh. The sweet buckeye is a handsome, large tree with green- ish yellow, tubular flowers and leaves of five slender, elliptical leaflets. Cattle will eat the nuts and paste made from them is preferred by bookbinders; it holds well, and book-loving insects will not attack it. These trees grow on mountain slopes of the Alleghanies from western Pennsylvania southward, and west to Iowa and Texas. 68 TREES The California Buckeye Ae. californica, Nutt. The California buckeye spreads wide branches from a squat trunk, and clothes its sturdy twigs with unmistak- able horse-chestnut leaves and pyramids of white flowers. Sometimes these are tinted with rose, and the tree is very beautiful. The brown nuts are irregular in shape and en- closed in somewhat pear-shaped, two-valved husks. This western buckeye follows the borders of streams from the Sacramento Valley southward; they are largest north of San Francisco Bay, in the canyons of the Coast Range. Shrubby, red-flowered buckeyes, often seen in gardens and in the shrubbery borders of parks, are horticultural crosses between the European horse-chestnut and a shrubby, red-flowered native buckeye that occurs in the lower Mississippi Valley. THE LINDENS, OR BASSWOODS This tropical family, with about thirty -five genera, has a single tree genus, tilia, in North America. This genus has eighteen or twenty species, all told, with representa- tives in all temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, with the exception of Central America, Central Asia, and the Himalayas. Tilia wood is soft, pale-colored, light, of even grain, adaptable for wood-carving, sounding-boards of pianos, woodenwares of all kinds, and for the manufacture of THE LINDENS 69 paper. The inner bark is tough and fibrous. It has been used since the human race was young, in the making of ropes, fish nets, and lilve necessities. It was a favorite tying material in nurseries and greenhouses until the more adaptable raflia came in to take its place. The bark of young trees is stripped in spring to make the shoes of the Russian peasantry. An infusion of basswood flowers has long been a home remedy for indigestion, nervousness, coughs, and hoarseness. Experiments in Germany have successfully extracted a table oil from the seed-balls. A nutritious paste resembling chocolate has been made from its nuts, which are delicious when fresh. In winter the buds, as well as the tiny nuts, stand between the lost trap- per and starvation. The flowers yield large quantities of nectar, and honey made near linden forests is unsurpassed in delicacy of flavor. About the time of Louis XIV, the French fashion arose of planting avenues to lindens, where horse-chestnuts had formerly been the favorite tree. The fashion spread to England of bordering with "lime trees" approaches to the homes of the gentry. "Pleached alleys" were made wit); these fast-growing trees that submitted so successfully to severe pruning and training. All sorts of grotesque figures were carved out of the growing lime trees in the days before topiary work in gardens submitted to the rules of land- scape art, and slower growing trees were chosen for such purposes. In cultivation, lindens have the virtues of swift growth, superb framework, clean, smooth bark, and late, profuse, beautiful and fragrant bloom, which is followed by interest- ing seed clusters, winged with a pale blade that lightens the foliage mass. One fault is the early dropping of the 70 TREES leaves, which are usually marred by the wind soon after they reach mature size. Propagation is easy from cut- ,tings and from seed. The American Linden, or Basswood Tilia Americana^ Linn. The American linden or basswood is a stately spreading tree reaching one hundred and twenty feet in height and a trunk diameter of four feet. The bark is brown, furrowed, and scaly, the branches gray and smooth, the twigs ruddy. The alternate leaves are obliquely heart-shaped, saw- toothed, with prominent veins that branch at the base, only on the side next to the petiole. (See illustration, page 86.) Occasionally the leaf blades are eight inches long. A dense shade is cast by a linden tree in midsum- mer. The blossoms, cream-white and clustered on pale green> leaf-like blades, open by hundreds in June and July, actually dripping with nectar, and illuminating the plat- forms of green leaves. A bird flying overhead looks down upon a tree covered with broad leaf blades overlapping like shingles on a roof. It must look underneath to see the flowers that delight us as we look up into the tree-top from our station on the ground. In midsummer the linden foliage becomes coarse and wind- whipped; the soft leaf -substance is attacked by insects that feed upon it; plant lice deface them with patches of honey-dew, and the sticky surfaces catch dust and soot. Riddled and torn, they drop in desultory fashion, their faded yellow not at all lik€ the satisfying gold of beech and hickory leaves. Str i,Uijc Jl Till'; l'.l.\('K WAl.N'UT The youii^ ^Ik.oIs arc vclvcly aii