Chapter XIV: Preface (7)

The Sumachs are not the objects of any special admiration. They are not the favorites of nature or of art, neither adding dignity to the landscape nor expression to the canvas of the painter. But they blend their fine pinnate foliage with the wayside shrubbery, varying its appearance by their original habit of growth; and they are seen springing in little groups upon sandy plains, where they relieve the eye that might otherwise be wearied with the monotonous waste of sorrel and tufted andropogons. They display many of the characters of the tropical plants in their long compound leaves, and in the exuberant growth of their recent branches. They are distinguished by their milky, resinous, and in some cases poisonous sap.

THE VELVET SUMACH.

The most common and conspicuous species in New England is the Staghorn, or Velvet Sumach, the largest of the genus. Its name is derived from a certain likeness of its crooked branches, when deprived of their leaves, to a stag’s horn. This Sumach rises to the dignity of a tree in favorable situations, and soon becomes a handsome standard, if the suckers about the roots have no chance to grow. Though its branches are crooked and irregular, and form a spray that is absolutely ugly, the tree is very comely when wearing its leafy garniture and decked with conical bunches of crimson fruit.

The Sumach is sometimes very ornamental in situations that permit the whole ground to be occupied by it. Its natural habit of growth is in clumps, gradually spreading over a wide extent of surface. So prone is this tree to throw up suckers from its long roots, that if it meets with no opposition it is apt to monopolize the whole ground. The most appropriate places for it are the banks of railroads and other similar slopes, which are rendered firm by the network of its numerous roots. There is no other plant that would in so short a time cover a gravelly bank with wood and foliage.

The Smooth Sumach is a smaller shrub, averaging only three or four feet in height. It affects similar localities, being common on the borders of dry fields and the sides of old roads that pass over a sandy and gravelly plain. It is not readily distinguished from the larger species; but its fruit and flowers are borne in loose panicles, and its bunches have none of that downy substance that characterizes the Velvet Sumach.

THE POISON SUMACH, OR DOGWOOD.

I come now to speak of the Bohon Upas of our land,—the Poison Sumach. This is confessedly a dangerous plant, and is allied to the shrub from which the celebrated Wourali poison is made by the natives of Guiana. The poisonous properties of the sap are said to be dissipated by boiling. Hence the varnish prepared by the Chinese from the sap of this plant is free from its injurious properties. Hence also the danger of being exposed to its fumes, when its branches are burned with other brush.

The Poison Sumach is a very elegant shrub. It is prim and slender, and draws attention by its want of resemblance to other trees and shrubs in our woods. The main stems and principal branches are of an ashen-gray color, though the recent shoots, before they harden into wood, and the leaf-stems are of a fine crimson or purple. The leaves are beautifully pinnate, of a light green hue with purple veins. The flowers and fruit are greenish, inconspicuous, and without any beauty. This plant, unlike the other species, is found only in low boggy situations.

There are some unaccountable facts connected with the poisonous qualities of this tree. While some persons are affected with dangerous swellings and inflammation on the least exposure to it, others handle it, breathe its burning fumes, and even chew its leaves and branches with impunity. Some are rendered more susceptible by having been once poisoned; others, who were often injuriously affected by it in their youth, outgrow their susceptibility, and may afterwards handle the plant without danger. As certain persons are exempt from the malignant effects of this plant, there is occasionally an instance of similar effects suffered by individuals from other plants. I am acquainted with a lady who has been frequently poisoned by handling the branches of the black wild cherry. Such isolated facts serve to increase the mystery attending the subject.

A notion prevails in the country, that the recent shoots of the pitch-pine, if frequently chewed, will render any one safe from the effects of this poison. The forest undoubtedly abounds in antidotes to the injurious action of the Poison Sumach and other similar plants; and I have often thought that the impunity with which the goat browses upon narcotic herbs may be caused by the counteracting effects of other plants among the many species which he devours in the field and pasture. It is admitted that persons who spend much of their time in the woods are not liable to be affected by this poison. They may, in some way or other, become inoculated with its antidotes. I have never suffered in the least degree from it, though I have passed a considerable part of my lifetime in the forest. Catesby mentions a fact, which he says was well attested, of an Indian who daubed himself with the juice of the purple bindweed, and then handled a rattlesnake with his naked hands with impunity. Some high authority may be quoted to sustain any similar improbable fact or absurd opinion.

THE ELDER.

Everybody is familiar with the Elder, with its large corymbs of white flowers, hanging over ditches and watercourses, rivalling the linden in sweetness and equalling the balm in its healing virtues. It is common in all wet fallows, flowering in the latter part of June. No shrub is so generally known, both as a tenant of the fields and as an ingredient in the packages of the simpler. We have seen its dried flowers in nice paper bags, neatly done up by some benevolent hands for the benefit of the sick, and we breathed their odors as they were wafted from the vessel in which they were steeped, before we ever saw them in the fields. The Elder is one of the flowering shrubs that first attracts our attention after the blossoms of the orchard have faded. The bee is seen to hunt for it before the vine is in blossom, leaving the flowers of the garden for these abundant stores of native sweets. In autumn we have seen the fences and brooksides laden with its fruit, while the purple clusters were stripped day after day by the robin and catbird, until not one was left to fall to the ground. When the leaves are gone, the branches are sought by children, who use its hollow wood for making various juvenile implements.

“The Elder,” says Barnard, speaking of the English plant, “is common, almost universal, in cottage gardens, hedge-rows, and ruins. It is in fact a thoroughly domesticated tree, and seldom is it found in England far from human habitation, although I have seen it in the wildest valleys of the Pyrenees, when it appeared to have the richest scarlet berries, instead of black.” The species seen in the Pyrenees is probably identical with the American panicled Elder, a rare species in New England, bearing its flowers in spikes, and producing scarlet berries.

The Elder has not much beauty when unadorned either with flowers or fruit. Its pinnate leaves are of a dull green, and seldom add any tints to the glory of autumn. Its flowers, borne in large flat cymes, are very showy, and emit a peculiar though agreeable odor, and are used in Europe to give to wine the flavor of Frontignac. The berries of the European Elder, which is believed by Michaux to be the same as the American common Elder, differing only in its superior size, are said to be poisonous to poultry. But the fruit of the American shrub possesses no such properties. It is eagerly devoured by the insectivorous birds, and is used in the manufacture of a harmless dietetic wine, whose benefits have been very generally appreciated by nostrum venders.

THE HEATH.

There are no heaths in New England, or on the American Continent. We know them only as they are described in books, or as they are displayed in greenhouses. We are strangers to those immense assemblages that furnish an uninterrupted vegetable covering to the earth’s surface, from the plains of Germany to Lapland on the north, and to the Ural Mountains on the east. These plains, called heaths or heathlands, are a kind of sandy bogs, which are favorable to the growth of the Heath, while other plants with these disadvantages of soil cannot compete with them. The tenacity with which they maintain their ground renders them a great obstacle to agricultural improvement. They overspread large districts to the almost entire exclusion of other vegetation, rendering the lands unfit to be pastured, and useless for any purpose except to furnish bees with an ample repast but an inferior honey.

It is often lamented by the lovers of nature that the Heath, the poetical favorite of the people, the humble flower of solitude, the friend of the bird and the bee, affording them a bower of foliage and a garden of sweets, and furnishing a bulwark to larks and nightingales against the progress of agriculture,—it is often lamented that this plant should be unknown as an indigenous inhabitant of the New World. But if its absence be a cause for regret to those who have learned to admire it as the poetic symbol of melancholy, and as a beautiful ornament of the wilds, the husbandman may rejoice in its absence. We have in America the whortleberry, whose numerous species and varieties occupy, like the heaths of Europe, those lands which have not been reduced to tillage, without depriving them of their usefulness to man. They become in their beneficent products a source of profit to thousands of indigent gleaners of the pastures, and of simple luxury to all our inhabitants. Though Nature has denied us the barren flower, and left the imagination unrequited, she has given us, in the place of it, a simple fruit that furnishes annual occasions for many a delightful excursion to the youths and children of our land, and is a simple blessing to the poor.

The farmers of Eastern Massachusetts, who have seen the dyer’s broom spread itself over the hills, occupying the whole ground, and entirely displacing all valuable herbs and grasses, may form some idea of the mischiefs attending the spread of the Heath in Europe. The heaths might be described as tree-mosses, bearing a multitude of minute campanulate flowers of various colors. They are not exceeded by any other plants, except mosses, in the uniform delicacy of their structure. Hence they are admired by florists, who find among them those multitudinous varieties which, in other plants, are produced by culture.

THE ANDROMEDA.

The plants of New England which are most nearly allied to the heath are the different species of Andromeda. These plants vary in height from one foot to seven or eight feet. They resemble the whortleberry in their general appearance, and in their leaves and flowers, but their fruit is a dry capsule, not a berry, and their foliage is not tinted in the autumn. They are, I believe, without an English name. Several species are indigenous in New England, but only two or three of them are common. One of the most beautiful, though extremely rare, is the Water Andromeda, which is found near the edges of ponds. This is the species which suggested to Linnæus the name given by him to the genus. He describes it in his “Tour of Lapland” as “decorating the marshy grounds in a most agreeable manner. The flowers are quite blood-red before they expand; but when full-grown the corolla is of a flesh-color. Scarcely any painter’s art can so happily imitate the beauty of a fine female complexion; still less could any artificial color upon the face itself bear a comparison with this lovely blossom.” He thought of Andromeda as described by the poets, and traced a fancied resemblance between the virgin and the plant, to which it seemed to him her name might be appropriately given.

One of the most common of our small water shrubs, very homely when viewed from a distance, but neat and elegant under close inspection, is the Dwarf Andromeda. It covers in some parts of the country wide tracts of swampy land, after the manner of the heath, and is not very unlike it in botanical characters, with its slender branches and myrtle-like foliage. It opens its flowers very early in spring, arranged in a long row, like those of the great Solomon’s-seal, extending almost from the roots to the extremities of the branches. The flowers all lean one way, each flower proceeding from the axil of a small leaf. Though an evergreen, the verdure of its foliage is so dull and rusty that it is hardly distinguished in the meadows which are occupied by it.

Another remarkable species is the panicled Andromeda, a tall and very common shrub in Eastern Massachusetts, distinguished from the whortleberry by its large compound clusters of densely crowded white flowers of a nearly globular shape. These flowers are much neater and more beautiful on examination than those of the blueberry, and resemble clusters of white beads. They are succeeded by a dry capsular fruit, bearing a superficial resemblance to white peppercorns. The fishermen of our coast have always employed the branches of this shrub, with those of the clethra, on account of their firmness and durability, as coverings to the “flakes” which are used for the spreading and drying of codfish. These two shrubs were formerly distinguished by them as the “black and the white pepper-bush,” one having berries of a lighter color than the other.

THE ROSE.

In my description of flowering trees and shrubs, I must not omit the Rose, the most celebrated and the most beautiful of flowers: the delight of mankind in all ages and in every country; the pride of all gardens, and the chief ornament of the field and woodside; the poetic emblem of love and the symbol of truth, inasmuch as its beauty is accompanied by the virtues of sweetness and purity. In every language have its praises been sung, and poets have bestowed upon it all the epithets that could be applied to a direct gift from Heaven. From its graces, too, they borrow those images they would bestow upon the living objects of their idolatry. The modest blush of innocence is but the tint of the Rose; its hues are the flush of morning and the “purple light of love.” The nightingale is supposed to have become the chief of singing birds by warbling the praises of the Rose, inspired by the beauty of this flower with that divine ecstasy which characterizes his lay. In all ages the Rose has had part in the principal festivities of the people, the offering of love and the token of favor; the crown of the bride at bridal feasts, and the emblem of all virtue and all delight.

So important a shrub as the Rose cannot be an inconspicuous feature either in our wild or our domestic scenery. Every wood contains one or two species in their wild state, and every enclosure in our villages some beautiful foreign roses, which are equally familiar to our sight. I have nothing to say of the multitude of improved varieties lately introduced by florists. There is a point of perfection that cannot be surpassed in the improvement of any species of plant. An additional number of petals does not always increase the beauty of a flower. In the scale of all kinds of perfection, both physical and moral, there is a degree beyond which improvement is only the addition of insipidity.

THE EGLANTINE, OR SWEETBRIER.

The Eglantine is the poetical name of one of the most charming species of rose, generally known in this country as the Sweetbrier, noted for its scented foliage and its multitude of thorns. This species seems to occupy a mean between the tree-roses and the climbers. It often mounts to a considerable height, supporting its position by its thorns. I have seen a Sweetbrier growing wild upon a juniper to the height of fifteen feet, and covering the whole tree. The flowers are small and of a pale crimson, having less sweetness than the common rose. The American Sweetbrier has paler flowers and a smaller leaf; the English plant has larger flowers of a deeper color, and more luxuriant foliage. The American species, however, attains the greater height; it is more fragrant, and more abundant in flowers.

THE SWAMP ROSE.

There is not a sweeter or more beautiful plant, in its native fields, than the common Wild Rose of our meadows. It flowers early in June, clustering in all wild pastures and in all neglected fields, forming beautiful spontaneous hedge-rows by the sides of fences, and groups and beds of shrubbery in all wild lands. The Swamp Rose varies in height, according to the quality of the soil it occupies. I have seen it from four to five feet in height on the alluvial borders of streams, while in uplands it seldom exceeds two feet. This shrub has a fine glossy pinnate foliage, and flowers of a deep crimson, somewhat larger than those of the sweetbrier. Occasionally a variety is seen with white flowers. The Wild Rose is very common near footpaths through the fields, forming natural clumps, often extending into the enclosures of some rustic cottage. In winter it is easily recognized by the fine purple hue of its smaller branches.

But this shrub finds no favor except from the lovers of nature. I have seen men employed in “grubbing up” the Wild Rose-bushes that skirted the lanes extending from their enclosures to an adjoining wood. A similar vandalism causes them to whitewash their stone-walls and the trunks of shade-trees, as if beauty consisted in a gloss of art spread over all the works of nature. If we were to carry out the idea of these improvers, we should destroy every wilding in the borders of our fields, and plant florists’ flowers in spots of spaded earth cut out of the turf. It is fashion alone that causes the florists’ roses to be admired more than the wild roses of the fields and brooksides. They are, it is true, more splendid and full. But who would be pleased to find these petted favorites of gardeners in the rustic lane or the solitary wood-path? Let them continue to be admired in the parterre; but let not our admiration of their artificial beauty cause us to neglect or despise the simple denizens of the field and forest.

THE MAPLE.

In New England and the adjoining States, the maples are among the most conspicuous and important families of our indigenous trees. Their wood is used for various purposes in the arts, and their product of sugar is of incalculable value. Two of the European maples are cultivated here, distinguished from the American species by their larger leaves and flowers and their darker verdure. I prefer the latter, because they have a smaller leaf, and consequently a more lively and airy appearance, and because they are more beautiful in autumn.

Besides the three most remarkable species in our native woods, there are several smaller maples in New England, not rising much above the height of shrubs, but distinguished by their elegance and beauty. One of the most common of these is the Striped Maple, sometimes called Moosewood. It is a tree of singular grace and beauty, and in Maine and New Hampshire it is abundant, intermixed with the undergrowth of the forest. It is one of the earliest trees in putting forth its flowers. The leaves are large, broad, not deeply cleft, and finely variegated in their tints in autumn. The protection of the forest seems needful to this tree, for it is seldom found among the border shrubbery of fields and waysides. Mr. Emerson thinks it deserving of cultivation. “I have found it,” he remarks, “growing naturally twenty-five feet high, and nineteen or twenty inches in circumference; and Mr. Brown, of Richmond, tells me he has known it to attain the height of twenty-five feet. It well deserves careful cultivation. The striking, striated appearance of the trunk at all times, the delicate rose-color of the buds and leaves on opening, and the beauty of the ample foliage afterwards, the graceful pendulous racemes of flowers, succeeded by large showy keys not unlike a cluster of insects, will sufficiently recommend it. In France, Michaux says it has been increased to four times its natural size by grafting on the sycamore.”

The Mountain Maple is another small and elegant species of similar habits to those of the Moosewood, being almost entirely confined to the forest, variegated with red and purple tints in autumn. If it is ever seen by the roadside, it is only when the road is bordered by the forest.

THE SUGAR MAPLE.

The Rock Maple is distinguished from the red maple by its larger leaves, which are entire at the margin, and not serrate, having generally three lobes, sometimes five, separated by a smooth sinus instead of a notch. The flowers are greenish, and come out at the same time with the foliage. This tree is larger than any of the other species, it has a more vigorous growth, and affords a denser shade, but it is difficult to distinguish them when divested of their leaves. It is the most abundant species in all the North-eastern States, including the British Provinces, where it serves more than any other tree, except the white pine, to give character to the wood-scenery. It is rare in Eastern Massachusetts, and is not found below this latitude, except among the Alleghanies.

Dr. Rush, speaking of this tree, remarks: “These trees are generally found mixed with the beech, hemlock, ash, linden, aspen, butternut, and wild cherry-trees. They sometimes appear in groves, covering five or six acres in a body; but they are more commonly interspersed with some or all of the forest trees above mentioned. From thirty to fifty trees are generally found upon an acre of land.” Major Strickland says of it: “The Sugar Maple is probably the most common tree among the hard-wood species of Canada West. It is found generally in groves of from five to twenty acres; these are called by the settlers sugar-bushes, and few farms are without them.”

Though I consider the red maple a more beautiful tree, having more variety in its ramification, and a greater range of hues in its autumnal dress, than the Rock Maple, it must be confessed that the latter surpasses it in some important qualities. The Rock Maple has a deeper green foliage in summer, and is generally more brilliant in its autumnal tints, which, on account of the tenacity of its foliage, last from a week to ten days after the red maple has dropped all its leaves.

THE RIVER MAPLE.

By far the most graceful tree of this genus is the River Maple, to which the cockneyish epithet of “silver” is applied, from the whitish under surface of its leaves. It is not found in the woods near Boston, but is a favorite shade-tree in all parts of New England. It abounds in the Connecticut Valley and on the banks of some of the rivers in Maine. It is rather slender in its habit, with very long branches, that droop considerably in old and full-grown trees. The foliage of this tree is dull and whitish, but it hangs so loosely as to add grace to the flowing negligence of its long slender branches. The leaves are very deeply cleft, like those of the scarlet oak, so that at a considerable distance they resemble fringe; but they are seldom very highly tinted in autumn.

THE DARK PLAINS
CONTAINING MY FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF A FOREST.

In our early days, when all the scenes about us are full of mysteries, and even the adjoining country is an unexplored region, we feel the liveliest impressions from nature and our own imagination. Those who pass their childhood in the woods, and become acquainted with their inconveniences and their dangers, learn to regard them as something to be avoided. The Western pioneer destroys immense tracts of forest to make room for agriculture and space for his buildings. The inhabitant of the town, on the contrary, sees the woods only on occasional visits, for pleasure or recreation, and acquires a romantic affection for them and their scenes, unfelt by the son of the pioneer or the forester. The earliest period of my life was passed in a village some miles distant from an extensive wood, which was associated in my mind with many interesting objects, from the infrequency of my visits. It was at a very early age, and when I first began to feel some interest in natural objects beyond my own home, that I heard my mother describe the “Dark Plains,” a spacious tract of sandy country, covered with a primitive growth of pines and hemlocks, such as are now seen only in the solitudes of Canada and the northern part of Maine.

The very name of this wooded region is highly significant and poetical, and far removed from the disagreeable character of names vulgarly given to remarkable places. What eccentric person, among the unpoetic society of Puritans and pedlers, could have felt sufficient reverence for Nature to apply to one of her scenes a name that should not either degrade it or make it ridiculous! The very sound of this name sanctifies the place to our imagination; and it is one of the very few applied to natural objects, if the original Indian appellation has been lost, that is not either vulgar or silly. Nothing can be more solemn or suggestive, nothing more poetical or impressive, than the name of this remarkable forest.

I attached a singular mystery to this region of Dark Plains. When I first heard the words spoken, they brought to mind all that I have since found so delightful in the green solitudes of nature,—their twilight at noonday; their dark sombre boughs and foliage, full of sweet sounds from unknown birds, whose voices are never heard in the garden and orchard; the indistinct moaning of winds among their lofty branches, like a storm brewing in the distant horizon, sublime from its seeming distance and indistinctness, though not loud enough to disturb the melody of thrushes and sylvias. All these things had been described to me by her to whom I looked, in that early time of life, for all knowledge and the solution of all mysteries. I had never visited a wood of great extent, and the Dark Plains presented to my imagination a thousand indefinable ideas of beauty and grandeur.

It has often been said that the style of the interior arches of a Gothic cathedral was indicated by the interlacing and overarching boughs of the trees as they meet over our heads in a path through the woods. I think also that the solemnity of its dark halls and recesses, caused by the multiplicity of arches and the pillars that support them, closely resembles that of the interior of a forest; and that the genius of the original architect must have been inspired by the contemplation of those grand woods that pervaded the greater part of Europe in the Middle Ages. The solemn services of the Roman Catholic religion found a people whose imagination having been stimulated by their druidical rites looked upon these wonderful temples as transcending nature in grandeur; and they bowed before the Cross with still greater devotion than they had felt when they made sacrifices under the oak.

There is an indefinable charm in a deep wood, even before we have learned enough to people it with nymphs and dryads and other mythical beings. Groups of trees that invite us to their shade and shelter, in our childhood, on a sultry summer noon, yield us a foretaste of their sensible comfort; and a fragment of wild wood, if we see nothing more spacious, with its cawing crows, its screaming jays, and its few wild quadrupeds, gives us some conception of the immensity of a pathless forest that never yet resounded with the woodman’s axe. I was already familiar with these vestiges of nature’s greatness, enough to inspire me with feelings that do not become very definite until the mind is matured.

The time had come at last when I was to visit one of these solemn temples of the gods. I was between eight and nine years of age, and was to accompany my parents on a journey from Beverly to Concord, my mother’s native town, in New Hampshire. I give this narrative of personal experience, to prove that our love of nature is an innate feeling, which is exalted, but not created, by the imagination. Nothing ever occupied my mind so intensely as the thought of visiting these Dark Plains. Other objects seen on our journey were amusing and attractive; but this wood was the only one that excited in me a passionate interest. All my thoughts were obscure and indefinite, associated with some dreary conceptions of beauty and grandeur; for in our early years we aspire after more exalted feelings than the common scenes of Nature can awaken.

When at length we entered upon the road that led through this forest, the sweetest music had never held me so completely entranced as when I looked up to these lofty trees, extending their branches beyond my ken, with foliage too dense for the sun to penetrate, and all the mysterious accompaniments of the wood, its silence and darkness, its moanings and its echoes. I watched the scenes as we rode slowly by them,—the immense pillars that rose out of a level plain, strewed with brown foliage, and interspersed with a few bushes and straggling vines; the dark summits of the white pines that rose above the round heads of the other species which were the prevailing timber; the twilight that pervaded these woods even at high noon; and I thought of their seemingly boundless extent, of their mysterious solitude, and their unspeakable beauty. Certain religious enthusiasts speak of a precise moment when they feel a certain change that places them in communication with Heaven. If one is ever in a similar manner baptized with the love of nature, it was at this moment I felt that hidden influence which, like the first emotion of love, binds the heart with an unceasing devotion.

I did not at this early age examine individual objects. Yet now and then the note of some solitary bird, or the motions of a squirrel on the outer trees of the wood, held my attention while I was absorbed in a revery of delight. An occasional clearing, containing a cottage with its rustic appendages, opened the sunshine into our path, and made the wood cheerful by this pleasant contrast. When at length we emerged from this gloomy region into the brightness and cheerfulness of the open country, I still dwelt upon the quiet grandeur of its solitudes, and have never forgotten the impressions I had received from them, nor the passionate interest awakened in me before my journey.

About thirty years afterwards I revisited this wood, and traversed the greater part of it, accompanied by an old friend of the generation that had passed before me. From him I learned that the original growth of timber had been mostly felled, and a second growth of inferior height and dimensions occupied its place. He pointed out to me how the whole character of the wood was changed by the simple act of felling the primitive trees. The ground was not so wet as formerly; the standing waters did not occupy so wide a space; the forest contained more openings, the barren elevations not having been supplied with a new growth of trees. In the place of them were a few scrub oaks, some whortleberry-bushes, and other native shrubs; the trees were smaller, and there was a greater predominance of pitch-pine in all the more sandy parts of the tract, and numerous white birches had sprung up among them.

“Such is the change,” he remarked, “which is gradually taking place over the whole continent.” He seemed to regret this change, and thought the progress of the civilized arts, though it rendered necessary the clearing of the greater part of the wooded country, ought not to be attended with such universal devastation. Some spacious wood ought to remain, in every region, in which the wild animals would be protected, and where we might view the grounds as they appeared when the wild Indian was lord of this continent. Even at that time I found some acres of forest which had been unmolested still retaining those grand, wild, and rugged features that entitled the region to the poetic name of Dark Plains.

THE RED MAPLE.

Not dainty of its soil, but thriving equally well in a bog or upon a fertile river-bank, by the side of a stream or upon a dry eminence; coming forth in the spring, like morning in the east, arrayed in crimson and purple; bearing itself not proudly, but gracefully, in modest green, among the more stately trees in summer; and, ere it bids adieu to the season, stepping forth in robes of gold, vermilion, crimson, and variegated scarlet, stands the queen of the American forest, the pride of all eyes and the delight of every picturesque observer of nature,—the Red Maple. There are but few trees that surpass it in general beauty of form and proportion, and in the variety and splendor of its autumnal tints it is not equalled by any known tree. Without this species, the American forest would hardly be distinguished from that of Europe by any superiority of tinting. It stands among the occupants of the forest like Venus among the planets, the brightest in the midst of brightness, and the most beautiful in a constellation of beauty.

The Red Maple is a tree of second magnitude, very comely at all periods of its growth, producing many branches, forming a somewhat pyramidal top while young, but expanding into a round head as it grows old. It is very evenly subdivided, the central shaft seldom being distinguished above the lower junction of its principal branches. The leaves are palmate, of rather a pale green, and the spray, though neat and elegant, does not equal that of the lime or the birch. We associate this tree with the valleys and lowlands, but a wet soil is not necessary for its prosperity. Some of the finest single trees I have known were standing upon a dry soil; but a forest of them is always located in a swamp.

The Red Maple is one of the most common trees in the southern parts of New England, and it occupies a very wide geographical range. In the North it first appears in the latitude of Quebec. It seems to avoid the company of the rock maple, and forms no large assemblages above the northern boundary of Massachusetts, below which the kindred species becomes rare in New England. The Red Maple is abundant in all the Atlantic States, as far as Florida, and there is no other tree that occupies so large a proportion of the wet lands in the Middle States. According to Michaux, it is the last tree which is found in swamps, as we approach the boundary of vegetation.

Preference is generally given to the other two species for planting by waysides and in pleasure-grounds in Massachusetts, because they are more luxuriant in their growth. Perhaps they are chosen for the sake of variety, being less common in the woods of this State than the Red Maple; and being planted from nurseries, and costly, they are found chiefly in dressed grounds. But the Red Maple is far more interesting and beautiful than any other species, and its lighter foliage, more airy habit, and more delicate spray bring it into better harmony with wild and rude scenery, as the paler and less luxuriant wild flowers better adorn a wood-path than the more showy denizens of the garden. The Red Maple bears a profusion of crimson flowers in the spring, and from them it derives its name. When the flowers have dropped their petals, the keys, or fruit-pods, that succeed them, retain the same crimson hue for some days, gradually fading into brown as they mature.

THE WHITE BIRCH.

On the sandy plains of many parts of New England, some of the most prominent objects are coppices of slender White Birch trees, intermingled with pitch-pine. These trees are seldom more than four or five inches in diameter, rising to the height of about twenty feet, with a grayish-white trunk, and, as may be observed in winter, a dense and dark-colored spray. This species is called Poplar Birch, from the tremulous habit of the foliage, but is never assembled in large forest groups. Like the alder, it is employed by Nature for the shading of her living pictures, and for producing those gradations which are the charm of spontaneous wood-scenery. In all the Northern States, a pitch-pine wood is generally fringed with White Birches, and outside of them is a still more humble growth of hazels, cornels, and vacciniums, uniting them imperceptibly with the herbage of the plain.

The White Birch is remarkable for its elegance. It seldom divides the main stem, which extends to the summit of the tree, giving out from all parts numerous slender branches, forming a very neat and beautiful spray, of a dark chocolate-color, contrasting finely with the whiteness of the trunk. This tree, when growing as a standard, has more of a pyramidal shape than in a wood; but it does not attain in this country the magnitude of the same species in Europe. The durability of the bark of the White Birch is said to be unsurpassed by that of any other vegetable substance. Selby records a fact related by Du Hamel, which is remarkable. In the ruins of Dworotrkoi, in Siberia, a piece of birch wood was found changed into stone, while the outer bark, white and shining, remained in its natural state.

So many of the most delightful scenes of nature are in my own mind allied with the different birches, that there is not one that does not immediately call up some charming scenery and impress my mind with pleasant memories. He who in his early days was a rambler in the woods is familiar with the White Birch trees. They have shaded him in his sylvan researches and his solitary musings, his social walks in quest of flowers with the sex for whom the flowers seemed to be created, or with his male companions in pursuit of game. When journeying, these graceful trees, in company with the fragrant pitch-pines, have offered him their flickering shade, and along the sandy plains have defended him from the scorching heat of the sun, and spread a leafy canopy over his rustic path. In the sultry heat of summer noonday, I have often followed the course of some humble cart-path through their tangled undergrowth, gathering wild fruits from bush and bramble, or watching the singing birds that nestled in their boughs and blended their wild notes with the sound of the green rustling leaves.

All the birches are graceful trees. Their branches are finely divided, like those of the elm and the lime, and many of them incline to a drooping habit. There is a remarkable airiness in their slender feathery spray, rendered still more lively in the White Birch by its small tremulous leaves. This species is found in the highest latitude in which any tree can live. It is the last deciduous tree in the northern boundaries of vegetation in America and Europe, before we reach the Arctic Circle, and the last that appears when we ascend high mountains, occupying the belt just below the line of perpetual snow. It is worthy of notice that the small White Birch in this country, though considered identical with the White Birch of Europe, is greatly inferior to it in size. In America, however, the white canoe birch, a very similar species, equally surpasses the European White Birch. It seems as if the thrifty habit of the canoe birch had some mysterious influence in dwarfing the other species in America.

THE CANOE BIRCH.

Some of the most beautiful assemblages of wood in high latitudes on this continent consist of the Canoe Birch. It is seen in Massachusetts and Connecticut only in occasional groups; but in the States of Maine and New Hampshire, on the sandy river-banks and diluvial plains, it forms woods of great extent and unrivalled beauty. With their tall shafts resembling pillars of polished marble, supporting a canopy of bright green foliage, they form one of the picturesque attractions of a Northern tour. Nature indicates the native habitat of this noble tree by causing its exterior to display the whiteness of snow. The foliage of the Canoe Birch is of a very bright green, and exceeds that of all the family in the depth of its golden tints in autumn. We never see in the foliage of the birches any of that glaucous or pea-green color so common in the maples. The leaves of the Canoe Birch deviate from the ovate form and approach the heart shape. Its bark is almost purely white, and attracts the attention of every visitor of the woods. The clean white shafts of a Canoe Birch wood, towering upward among the other trees of the forest, present a scene with which nothing else is comparable. The uses which have been made of the bark of this tree are so numerous and so familiar to all that it would be idle to enumerate them. Indeed, it would be difficult to estimate its importance to the aboriginal inhabitants of America.

RELATIONS OF TREES TO BIRDS AND INSECTS.

“My neighbors,” said my philosophic friend, “are the cause of more than half the injury my crops receive from caterpillars and other insects. They will not allow the birds a harbor of wood and shrubbery upon their own grounds, and they shoot those which I endeavor to entice by offering them a shelter in my farm. It is strange they cannot understand the mischievous character of their operations of smoothing and grubbing. That little rising ground you see before you, covered with trees and shrubs, is hardly more than a bare rock. It occupies about an eighth of an acre; but no other possible use could be made of it, except as a quarry. The little grove, or coppice, that stands upon it, is the most beautiful object in sight from my house. I have never allowed it to be disturbed or frequented by social assemblages. I keep it sacred for the use of the birds, and it is a perfect aviary. The birds that feed upon the destructive insects that infest my grounds are raised in that temple of the gods, which is watered by numerous little springs that ooze from the crevices of the rock. While they are rearing their young, all species, even if they live exclusively upon seeds after they have left their nest, feed their offspring upon larvæ, which they collect from the nearest ground that affords them a supply. Hence I consider that bare rock, with its trees and shrubbery, the most profitable division of my farm, from the shelter it affords the birds, which are in an important sense my most profitable stock.”

I have often thought of my neighbor’s remarks, especially when I have observed the diligence of our farmers in destroying upon their grounds every acceptable harbor for the birds. When we are traversing a wood, if we discover an apple-tree growing in a little clearing or open space, we find it invariably exempt from the ravages of the common apple-borer. The same exemption is observed in those fruit-trees that stand very near a wild wood, or any wood containing a spontaneous undergrowth. The explanation of this fact is that the wood affords a harbor to the birds that destroy these insects in all their forms. Orchards and gardens, on the contrary, which are located at any considerable distance from a wood, have not this security. Robins, it is true, are very abundant in orchards, which are their breeding-places; but robins, though the most useful birds that are known to exist, take all their food from the ground. They destroy vast quantities of cutworms and chrysalids buried in the soil, but they take no part of their insect food from the trees. The birds that perform this work are the sylvias, woodpeckers, creepers, and other species that live only in woods and thickets. Hence an orchard that is nearly surrounded by a wild wood of much extent is not badly infested by borers and other injurious insects.

All species of insects multiply in cultivated grounds, while the birds, with a few exceptions, that feed upon them, can find a nursery and protection only in the woods. “The locust,” says George P. Marsh, “which ravages the East with its voracious armies, is bred in vast open plains, which admit the full heat of the sun to hasten the hatching of the eggs, gather no moisture to destroy them, _and harbor no bird to feed upon their larvæ_. It is only since the felling of the forests of Asia Minor and Cyrene that the locust has become so fearfully destructive in those countries; and the grasshopper, which now threatens to be almost as great a pest to the agriculture of North American soils, breeds in seriously injurious numbers only where a wide extent of surface is bare of woods.”

Some men destroy trees and shrubbery in their borders, because they are supposed to harbor insects. But if this be true, it is because they are not sufficient in extent to shelter the birds that feed upon them. The insects that multiply upon our lands deposit their eggs some in the soil, some on the branches of trees and upon fences and buildings. They are nowise dependent on a wild growth of wood and shrubbery. These pests of agriculture need nothing better than the under edge of a clapboard or a shingle whereon to suspend their cocoons or lay their eggs. So minute are the objects that will afford them all the conveniences they need, when hatching and when passing through all their transformations, till they become perfect insects, that no artifice or industry of man can deprive them of their nurseries, or appreciably lessen their numbers. All inventions and appliances used to rid the trees and grounds of these pests never destroyed more than one in a million of their whole number. It is not in the power of man, with all his science, unassisted by birds, to prevent the multiplication of insects from being the cause of his own annihilation. But the farmer, when he destroys the border shrubbery in his fields and the coppice and wood on his hills, exterminates the birds by hosts, while the mischievous boy with his gun destroys only a few individuals. The clipped hedge-row, which is often substituted for a border of wild shrubbery, may assist in breeding insects; but the birds never build their nests in a hedge-row, unless it be a long-neglected one.

I have in another essay spoken of the scarcity of birds and other animals in the primitive forest. They are not numerous there, because the forest would yield them only a scanty subsistence. The forest border is their nursery and their shelter, but their best feeding-places are the cultivated grounds. There is not a single species whose means of subsistence are not increased by the clearing of the forest and the cultivation of the land; but they require a certain proportion of wild wood for their habitation. Very few species build their nests in the trees and shrubbery of our gardens, unless they are near a wood. In that case the catbird often nestles in the garden, that during the rearing of its young it may be near the grounds that produce larvæ. Most of the woodpeckers, the sylvias, and the small thrushes, including some of our most valuable birds, cannot rear their young except in a wild wood. Yet all these, solitary as they are in their habits, increase under favorable circumstances with the multiplication of insects consequent upon the culture of the soil. It may be affirmed as an indisputable truth, that if their increase were not checked by the sporting habits of men and boys, and the clearing and grubbing habits of “model farmers,” birds of every species would increase in the same ratio with the multiplication of their insect food, and proportionally diminish their ravages.

THE BLACK OR CHERRY BIRCH.

The epithets “black,” “white,” “red,” and “yellow,” which are so commonly misapplied to certain trees for specific distinction,—a misapplication very remarkable with reference to the poplar,—are very well applied to the different species of birch, and serve as intelligible marks of identity. The Black Birch, for example, is clothed with a dark-colored bark, which comes nearer a pure black than any other color. No person would dispute the color of the white birches; that of the yellow birch, though not pure, would never be mistaken for anything but yellow; and the bark of the red birch, though nearly white, is so thoroughly stained with red as to demonstrate the propriety of its name.

The Black Birch is also named the Cherry Birch, from the resemblance of the tree to the American black cherry. Its inner bark has the flavor of checkerberry, and its wood some of the colors of mahogany; and it has received names corresponding with these characters, such as Sweet Birch and Mahogany Birch, and was formerly a favorite material for cabinet furniture. The bark of this species and of the yellow birch has very little of that leathery or papyraceous quality which is so remarkable in that of the white birches. This species does not extend so far north as the others, but has a wider geographical range in and below the latitude of New England.

The Black Birch puts forth its flowers very early in the year, of a deep yellow and purple and sensibly fragrant. The foliage also appears early. The leaves are finely serrate, oval, with conspicuous veins, turning yellow in the autumn. Not one of the birches ever shows a tint approaching to red or purple in its foliage. The Black Birch delights in moist grounds, and commonly occupies a stand on mountain slopes and on the banks of rivers. When growing singly on a plain, or in an open space, it takes a hemispherical shape, with its terminal and lower branches drooping to some extent like those of the elm. This tree is conspicuous on craggy precipices, among the mountains, where it extends its roots into the crevices of the rocks, and spreads its branches over chasms and hollows. On these sites it displays a variety of picturesque forms, corresponding with the rudeness and the wildness of the scenery around it. Nature has furnished this tree with a chaffy or winged seed, which is soon wafted and sown by the winds upon mountain-sides and among inaccessible rocks, where the soil collected in thin fissures supplies it with sustenance.

THE YELLOW BIRCH.

The Yellow Birch, named _excelsa_ by botanists, from its superior height, is perhaps the most beautiful of the genus. Its branches are extremely numerous, long and slender, corresponding with the superior length of its trunk, and they are prone, like those of the elm, to equality in size, and to divergency from nearly a common centre. Indeed, where this tree has grown as an isolated standard, it commonly displays a very symmetrical head, differing in form from a perfect elm only by less inclination to droop. The leaves of this species have much of the same quality which I have remarked as peculiar to the beech, every leaf standing erect upon its stem. The flexible appearance of the tree is derived entirely from its slender flowing branches.

The Yellow Birch is very abundant in Maine and New Brunswick, and formerly constituted the greater part of the wood which was brought into Massachusetts for fuel. Many of the logs were of immense size before the primitive forest was removed. At the present day we seldom find one more than eighteen inches in diameter, though many slender individuals still occupy our woods. It delights in cold, damp soils, and I have seen the finest standards near springs on an open hillside. The Yellow Birch derives its name from the golden hue of the bark that covers the trunk and larger limbs. This silken bark, which is rolled into multitudes of soft ringlets, is peculiar to this tree.

THE RED BIRCH.