Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

Spring or early summer is the best time to study the leaves of trees. They are clean, and fresh, and new. Every tree is a great mound of green. The broad-leaved trees seem to be thatched or shingled with overlapping blades so that no sunlight can get into the darkened room, which is empty except for the bare branches that support this outer dome of leaves. A sugar maple, or a linden tree, shows best this outer thatch, which is so thick that the sun is unable to look through. The bird flying overhead sees only a solid mass of leaves. The one on its nest in a forked limb looks up and sees the inside of this leafy tree cover. She is glad for the twilight that surrounds her, and for the coolness of this shady place; but more glad that her nest is hidden from sight of hawks that sail overhead, while she keeps a close watch for sly, thieving red squirrels that may come to steal her eggs, by climbing up the branches.

What are the leaves for? Why does the tree put out in spring young shoots with rows of leaves along their sides? Why does the tree hold these branches out as far as possible from the trunk, and bend the leaf stems and the twigs so as to face the leaf blades towards the sun?

The reason is this: the life of the trees is in the green layer which we see on the surface of all green shoots, and which we can discover under the older bark of twigs, which has turned brown. Following the twig back from its tip, all of the leafy part is green. Behind it the smooth twig is no longer green, but a thumb nail easily strips off the layer of brown, and reveals the green under bark. Go a little further back, and gradually the outer bark thickens, and it is more difficult to get at the soft under layer. After a while, we shall need a knife to reach it, for old bark is hard and tough.

When the bark gets so thick that the sun cannot reach the green layer, the colour fades out. The living part of the trunk of the tree is the soft, juicy layer between the bark and wood. Through this portion of the tree the sap rises from the roots, and finally reaches the leaves. This sap needs to be changed before it can be useful to the tree as food.

The leaves are the places where these changes take place. Through little doorways in the under sides of the leaf air passes in. With it goes carbonic acid gas, an important food element. The soft green leaf pulp, which is the green juice of a bruised leaf, has a wonderful work to do. It cannot do this work unless the sun is shining upon it. On a bright day every leaf is making starch, and sending it down through the twigs and branches as food. This starch is contained in the sugary sap that flows back constantly from the leaves to the farthest root tips. It is made in the leaves out of the sap brought up from the roots and the carbonic acid gas which the leaves absorb from the air.

As long as the leaves do their work, the tree is able to grow, and to blossom, and to ripen its seeds. When the leaves have done their work the summer has passed; the tree lets go the leaves, and rests without growing all winter.

It is not easy to explain the work of the leaves, nor even to understand the wonderful work accomplished there all through the summer. When we eat, our food must go into the stomach to be changed by the processes called digestion. It is hours before the digested food is poured into the blood and carried to all parts of the body. The tree takes its food from the air, and from the soil. Neither the dirty water that rises as sap to the leaves, nor the gas which enters the leaf doorways from the air, is useful as food to the growing tree until they have been combined and changed. The leaves are, then, in a sense, the stomachs of the trees, for in them the raw foods must be “digested” before they are ready to be poured into the life blood that flows down through all the live parts of the tree. Now they are fit to feed the growing cells, which are always hungry.

LEAVES OF ALL SHAPES AND SIZES

The leaf of the tree is its visiting card. We shall learn to know trees by their leaves, as easily as if the name were written across the face of the leaf. Some leaves have a single blade of green, and for this reason the botanist calls them _simple_ leaves. This blade has a stem that unites it with the twig. A _compound_ leaf is one whose stem bears more than one blade. These small blades are called _leaflets_. There are two types of compound leaves, one feather-like, having a main stem with leaflets arranged in two rows on opposite sides of this stem. Such a leaf is feather-like. The other type has a leaf stem with all the leaflets attached at one end. The horse chestnut is the best example of this type. The leaves spread from the end of the stalk somewhat as the fingers rise from the palm of your hand.

The biggest leaves with single blades to be found in our forests grow on trees of the magnolia family. The silver-lined leaves of the large-leaved cucumber tree are over a foot in length, sometimes two and one-half feet, down South. These great leaves are about one-fourth as wide as long, and at the base each one broadens and extends backward into two rounded ear-like lobes. This gives the tree the name, ear-leaved magnolia. The whole leaf flaps in the wind, like the ear of an elephant, and, of course, the wind lashes it into strings and soon robs it of its beauty.

The Northern cucumber tree is another magnolia whose leaves are tropical-looking. This is the hardiest of the magnolia family, and its heart-shaped leaves are six to ten inches long. They are not large for a magnolia of the South, but they look larger because they grow among the small-leaved trees of the Northern states.

The tulip tree has a large leaf of peculiar form. It is broad like a maple leaf at the base, but at the tip it is cut off square as if with a pair of shears, forming a right angle with its straight sides. Sometimes the leaf is notched, as if a V-shaped piece were cut out of the square tip. These leaves are long-stemmed, their blades polished, and they flutter on the twigs with the lightness of a poplar leaf. Once we have in mind the form of the leaf of the tulip tree, we shall never forget it, for it is different from all other leaves.

The catalpa tree, which lifts its great blossom clusters above the foliage in late June, is another of the few large-leaved trees of the North. The single blade is heart-shaped, six to eight inches long, and more than half as broad. These leaves usually have plain margins, but sometimes they are wavy and notched near the base so as to produce faint side lobes. The blades hang on long, stout stems.

Among the feather-leaved trees, the walnuts and butternuts, the sumachs, and the ailanthus, furnish examples. A black walnut leaf is often two feet long, with a dozen or more leaflets on the longest ones. These leaflets are always set opposite in pairs, with an odd one on the tip of the leaf stem. Butternut leaves have the same form, but the leaves are longer. They range from fifteen to thirty inches, and have from ten to twenty leaflets, but always an odd number. The peculiar gummy feeling of these hairy leaves, and their pungent butternut odour when bruised, make it easy to know the tree wherever we meet it, through the long summer.

The hickories are cousins of the walnuts, but their leaves, though of the feather form, have larger and fewer leaflets than any walnut tree. A shagbark hickory leaf has one or two pairs of little leaflets on the stem, and above them three of larger size. The pignut has the same habit of clustering its three largest leaves at the tip of the leaf stem, and tapering off at the base with one or two pairs of decreasing size.

The largest of all the compound leaves have branched stems to which leaflets are attached. The main leaf stem’s side branches may yet branch again, forming a twice-branched framework that is set with leaflets, not large, but so numerous as to make the whole leaf surprisingly large. The greatest of these twice-compound leaves is borne by that astonishing, spiny-stemmed Hercules’ club. A single leaf is often four feet long, and nearly a yard wide. There are no leaflets on the main stem; they are on the side branches.

How shall we tell a leaf stem from a twig? Leaf stems do not look like the twigs of the tree. A little practice in looking closely and comparing these leaf stems and twigs will obviate any confusion of the two. The leaf has a bud at its base, and it breaks off easily at this joint.

Among the fine, feathery leaves that are so beautiful and light that they give great beauty to the tree tops are those of the honey locust. These leaves are of the feather type, the slender stems, with double rows of tiny leaflets. Very often we find among the single feather forms, leaves of greater size, which have branched stems. This branching multiplies the number of leaflets, and gives us, on the same trees, what the botanists call _once compound_, and _twice compound_ leaves. The simple feather and the branched feather forms add greatly to the beauty and luxuriance of the foliage of the honey locust.

The common black locust of the roadside has single leaf stems with oblong leaflets set in opposite rows upon it. Ash trees have the same feather type of leaves, the leaflets usually pointed and oval, and always an odd one at the tip. They are all larger than leaves of the locusts.

In the maple family there is a broad, simple blade, about as wide as it is long. It is a family trait to have three main veins running out from the end of the leaf stem, into the blade. Each of these veins has side branches, and they are connected with a network of smaller veins. Between the tips of these three main veins the leaf is usually notched, so as to divide it into thirds. In the red maple these notches are shallow V’s cut out, leaving triangular points. In the silver maple the leaves are cut by deeper clefts, which reach more than half-way to the leaf stalk. The three lobes are cut with jagged points into an uneven margin. The sugar maple has its three lobes separated by wide, deep clefts, and its margins are irregularly wavy. The box elder, which is a maple, is cleft so deeply that the blade is split into three distinct leaflets, each with its own short stem. This makes a compound leaf of it. It is the only maple with a leaf of more than one blade.

The tree which shows the greatest difference in the form of its leaves is the sassafras, whose oval leaves grow on the same stem with mittens and double mittens—a mitten pattern with a thumb on each side. The hawthorns have small oval leaves with variously cleft borders. There are over a hundred kinds of hawthorns in our woods, and each kind has a leaf different from all the rest; yet a single tree will often show leaves that differ so much from the others in form that we might easily suspect, if some one brought them to us, that each grew on a different tree from all the rest.

Many oak trees have the same habit of leaf variation, so that even a forester has to examine many leaves with care, and with them the buds and the acorns, to make sure that he has called the oak by its right name.

The behaviour of the leaves of a tree depends largely on the length and flexibility of their stems. If they are long, and slender, and supple, the tree-top is in a continual flutter when the wind blows. If they are thick and stiff, they do not catch the breeze as readily, and their blades lie comparatively still when other trees near by may be twinkling and trembling. Leaves with deeply cut borders, like some oaks and maples, flutter much more than leaves like the basswood, whose borders are unbroken. Oak leaves that are deeply cut will rarely lie down flat. The curving bays in its borders cause the leaf to curl, so that no matter what face is presented, the wind gets under and strikes some surface, and sets the leaf to dancing.

The flat leaf stems of the trembling aspen, one of the poplar family, are very flexible, and they are flattened at right angles to the blades of the leaves. When a breeze comes by, it may strike the edge of the leaf, but if so, it catches the flat leaf stem broadside. If it comes from any other direction the leaf trembles, because one of the blades is sure to receive the force of the wind. So the tree top is in one constant tremor, even when the breeze is scarcely sufficient to disturb broad-leaved trees which are near neighbours of the aspens.

Whatever the form and size and shape of its leaf, the tree depends upon its foliage mass for all the life it enjoys, and for all the growth it makes. The soil and the air feed the tree. The leaves and the sun do the work of digesting the food. In the porous wood and bark are the channels through which sap mounts upward to the leaves, and another set of channels which carry the prepared food back, leaving it wherever needed, along the way from tip of twig to tip of root. Whatever is not needed is stored away, to be dissolved as needed and carried to the points where the need is. In spring it is the growing buds that chiefly need this stored food. Its presence explains the miracle of the bursting of blossoms and leaves when spring comes.

One by one the trees of your own yard may be learned by name this summer. The leaves are your sure guide. Trees stay where they are. Once we recognise their leaves and call them by name, we may depend upon finding them still standing the next day we pass them, and their leaves are still held out as the sign of recognition. Every time we pass yonder red maple let us glance at its three-pointed leaf, and fix its shape indelibly in the mind. When we have done this a dozen times, I am sure that we shall be able to pick out all the red maples in town; and if we journey far from home we may find and recognise the same kind of trees by the same sign. More and more as we grow older, we find out that half the pleasure of travelling is the occasional meeting with old friends, be they people or trees.

TREE STUDIES IN THE SUMMER

TREES WITH THE LARGEST FLOWERS

If we set out to find the trees that have the largest flowers, meaning to count only trees that grow wild in our woods, it will save time to go straight south into North Carolina, and climb the foot hills of the Allegheny Mountains. Or it may be that in the fertile valleys that lie between the low ridges we shall first come upon a magnolia, called the large-leaved cucumber tree. Anywhere from North Carolina to Florida, and west to Arkansas, these remarkable trees are likely to be found, in small groups. In cultivation, they are successfully planted as far north as Boston.

Before the tree has attained more than a man’s height it is a wonder, on account of the leaves which measure more than a foot in length, and have their long, green blades lined with white. In June the flowers open—great white bowls, made of waxen petals, in a double row, the inner ones painted purple at their bases, giving the flower a purple centre.

The wind blows the leaves about, and tears them into rags, unless the tree is in a sheltered place. The silvery leaf linings, as white as the blossoms, make it difficult to see that the tree is in bloom, until one is close enough to see the petals. If the leaves were green on both sides the great blossoms, as large as a man’s head, would be seen afar off. The tree would look like a giant rose bush.

From Pennsylvania southward to the Gulf of Mexico, and west to Arkansas and Texas, the evergreen magnolia grows on stream borders, and even on uplands where the soil is not very moist. When this pyramid of shining green leaves lights all its waxen tapers, it is a sight worth a day’s journey to see. Each stiff twig is bent upward, and there a bud appears in spring. A few at a time, the flowers open, and the blooming time lasts till August.

Each blossom is a deep, creamy cup, made of six wax-like petals, surrounded by three white sepals. Inside are many stamens, purple at the base, and a cone of pistils, all grown together.

The leaves are oblong or oval, often eight inches long, thick, deep green, and bright as if polished on the upper surface. The lining is dull green, sometimes covered with rusty down. The paler green and the brighter polish on the young leaves add much beauty to the tree in summer. In winter the leaves get grimy and the tree top is sombre, for most of the foliage has seen much wear and tear.

In autumn the ends of the twigs hold up green cones, made of many furry capsules that end in curved horns. Each capsule splits when ripe, and a scarlet seed, like a berry, hangs out on an elastic thread, and swings lower and lower, until finally it is carried away. Thus the magnolia sows its seeds in winter.

The shining leaves of this magnolia come North at the Christmas season, and are used to decorate homes and churches. Holly, mistletoe, palm leaves, and the beautiful Southern smilax are other Christmas greens now commonly in use. They are all gathered with magnolia and shoots of the long-leaf pine, in the woods down South.

The swamp bay is a magnolia that grows as a shrub to New England, keeping to the swampy lands that skirt the Atlantic coast. Every spring the fragrant, creamy blossoms are to be bought from street Arabs in New York and Philadelphia. A single globular flower is surrounded by a whorl of oval leaves, bright green, but lined with a white, powdery substance that makes them look silver-lined. The flowers are deliciously fragrant, and most beautiful when not spread wide open. The seller often takes the trouble to spring the petals back, to make the blossom seem bigger. The waxy petals turn brown soon after such handling, and all their natural beauty departs.

From Florida westward to Texas this magnolia becomes a slender, tall evergreen tree. The best flowers of this tree are borne on shoots that are produced by pruning back the new growth each year. The largest leaves and flowers are also the handsomest.

The cucumber tree is the magnolia of the North. It is a fine tree in Ontario, Canada, and from this region it spreads south, its range widening like a fan, reaching from Arkansas to the Carolinas, and Mississippi, and Alabama. The tropical appearance of the tree is due to the big, heart-shaped leaves. Their tulip-like flowers are as large as garden tulips, but they make scarcely any show, because they are very much the same in colour as the yellowish-green new leaves that surround them.

The “cucumbers” are the green cones that contain the seeds. They are very lumpy and irregular in form, but when ripe the cells split open and the scarlet seed, let down on an elastic thread from each, looks like any magnolia seed.

Cucumber wood is soft, yellowish-brown, and close-grained. It is not very good lumber, though put to many uses. The tree is worth more alive than dead. It is an admirable shade tree, though not planted as much as it deserves.

The tulip tree is a close relative of the magnolias. It is one of the trees with large flowers, though, like the cucumber tree, the colour of the flowers makes them rather inconspicuous. In June the upturned twigs blossom with yellow tulips. The three sepals flare outward, the petals form the cup. A band of orange decorates the cup, and signals the bees which come for nectar hidden near the bottom of the flower cup, among the bases of the many stamens.

Many people see the gay petals of the tulip tree flowers when they fall on the sidewalk, and some wonder what these bits of colour are. A few will say: “There must be a tulip tree near by,” and look up to find the singular squared-leaf blades that belong to no other tree. There is a whole tree top fluttering with them, and this tremulous motion explains why the tree is often called the tulip poplar. The yellow wood gives the name, yellow poplar. Pulp of this wood is used for the manufacture of the ordinary postal cards. It has many other uses, and is a valuable lumber tree. For shade and ornament it is one of the best trees to plant.

The cones of the tulip tree do not set free their seeds, as those of the magnolias do. Instead of horned capsules, the cone has flat, overlapping blades, like the wing of a maple seed, and the small, closed seed case is the base of the blade. A few of these seeds are fully developed. But when the winter strips the tree of its leaves, the wind shakes the cones, and the loosened scales gradually fall. The wind catches the flat wings, and away they sail. Little tulip trees grow up where good seeds fall in favourable ground.

One day a neighbour told me that there was a tree in blossom on the side of the ravine. This was a strange story, for it was the dead of winter. We went to see this wonderful tree. What do you think it was? A tulip tree, with the seed cones half stripped of their seeds, and shining like yellow flowers on the ends of the twigs. It was not strange at all that a person who did not know the tree, and had never seen its cones in mid-winter, should make this very mistake.

The flowering dogwood invites us every spring to break off branches covered with big, white blossoms, each like a four-pointed star, with a cluster of small white buds in the centre. The trees are small and low-branching, their limbs are flat, and they spread outward and slightly downward. Who can resist cutting a few of the blossoming boughs of this lovely tree! The best part is that the tree suffers not at all if the pruning is done with some care. Take a thought for the tree; cut the branches clean with a knife. Take them off where they are thick, and you will leave the tree better in shape than when you came. Do not strip it of flowers. This will cripple it. A few sprays of dogwood, prettily arranged in a vase, are a delight to the eye. A crowded mass of them is not at all.

The four outer wings of white are not the petals of a dogwood blossom. They are colourless leaves, the full-grown scales of the winter flower buds. The notch at the tip is made by the falling off of the withered tip which in winter protected the flowers. The base grew long and broad and turned gradually white. The bees see these white banners farther, perhaps, than they can catch the faint perfume. Watch the bee as she probes the middle flowers for nectar. See the pollen on her hairy body. From one to another, she is the pollen distributor of these flowers, and she doesn’t know it.

TREES MOST SHOWY IN BLOOM

Sometimes a tree with very small flowers has such a multitude of them that it attracts more attention and admiration when in blossom than the trees with the largest flowers. A magnolia blossom as large as a cabbage head must sacrifice delicacy to size. We must see it at a distance to overlook its coarseness, and to escape its overpowering perfume.

An orchard in early May is transformed into fairyland by the opening of millions of buds. Apple trees have just begun to unfold the new leaves. They are pale green, and coated with white hairs, so that a silvery cloud rests on the tree when the white blossoms, warmed with a tinge of pink, come with a rush that takes one’s breath away.

A single apple blossom has its five flaring petals inside of five green sepals that are the bud’s green overcoat. The stamens are many; the pistils five in the centre of the flower. The plan of the flower is five. The green lump below the blossom is the apple, already forming. Inside it are the five cells of the core, and each has its seeds already forming, if the five pistils have each caught a grain of pollen for each of the embryo seeds its chamber of the core contained.

The delicate colour and rich fragrance of the apple orchard are enchanting. To the honey bees these two signals call to a feast of nectar. All unknown to them, they carry pollen on their furry bodies from flower to flower, and thus enable the pistils to set seed. If the days are damp and there are frequent showers while the apple trees are in bloom, the bees are kept at home, and there will be but a small crop of apples. Fortunately for the bees and for us, the blossoms do not all come out on the same day. The trees and the bees are hopeful till the last moment that the sun will shine, and the nectar be gathered, before the opportunity of the year passes.

Flowers much like apple blossoms in form cover the twigs of hawthorn trees. They are usually in many-flowered clusters, set off by the green leaves. Fragrance, sometimes sickening sweet, draws the bees and other insects to these trees. Nectar drips from the blossoms of some species. The thorny branches spread sidewise, holding the blossoms out in wide platforms. The red fruits, called haws, adorn the trees in late summer.

Plum and cherry trees are laden with white bloom, and heavy with fragrance. Some species haven’t a leaf when they bloom. And these are among the showiest of blossoming trees. In these flowers there are single pistils, and but a single grain of pollen is needed to set seed. The single seed is the pit, or stone, of this family known as the trees with stone fruits.

TREES THAT BLOOM IN MIDSUMMER

In spring the big chestnut tree is late in putting out its leaves. It is May before the bare limbs are clothed with green. This crown is made of long, pointed leaves, each short-stemmed, strongly ribbed, with parallel veins on each side of the midrib, polished and sharp-toothed along its margin. It is a superb dome of unusually handsome leaves.

When the flower procession is long past and the grain fields have turned yellow, and the mower and reaper are humming busily, the chestnut’s crown turns from green to gold, as if to harmonise with the landscape of midsummer. Each twig ends in a feathery yellow plume, which waves in the breezes, and sheds its yellow pollen abroad. The fertile flowers are at the base of the plume. As the yellow pollen flowers fade, the green scaly ones below them are swelling. They are the young chestnuts. The long tongue each held out to catch pollen when it was ready for use. Each flower has three nuts as its full quota to form. Failure to be pollenated may cause one of the three to fail. The husk will then contain two nuts.

In May the yellow locust trees still stand along the roadsides, or herded together along the banks of streams, bare and ugly, while the trees around them are beautifully clothed in their green garments, and adorned with blossoms. The dead pods still cling to the locust’s branches, and not even the buds are in sight to prove the twigs alive.

Suddenly the trees wake, push out their hidden buds into shoots which unfold leaves made of tiny leaflets. The leafy spray is light and graceful, pale green with a silvery sheen at first. Soon the leaves are inundated with a flood of white blossoms, fragrant with their nectar, which hang in clusters from each twig. The bees see the white cloud on the locust tree, and hurry to the feast. Each curious pea-like flower has a honey pot in its horned petal. Throughout the summer the locust trees wave their fern-like leaves, among which the young pods swing, rosy and green, and velvety soft. The two thorns at the base of each leaf are there, but they are not conspicuous, unless you grasp a limb; then they let you know where they are, and what they can do.

On a summer evening we shall see that the locust has closed its leaves, folding the opposite leaflets together, and the whole leaf drooping from its stem. It reminds us of the old-fashioned sensitive plant whose leaves resembled these, folded its leaflets and drooped whenever it was touched. Indeed, the locust tree and these plants are near relatives. The locust leaves are sensitive to the evening air. They close if a rain comes up, but open when the sun comes out again and the sky clears.

Locust trees have an insect enemy which bores into the solid wood, and ruins it for lumber. Even the twigs are swollen and distorted by these insects, which feed upon the rich sap that should go to feed the tree. It is impossible to reach this enemy with poison, so the trees are helpless.

Except for this unfortunate fact, locusts would be a profitable crop to raise for timber. Locust wood is very hard, durable, and strong. It is slow to decay when in water, so it is valuable for fence posts, and for boat building. It is used for hubs and spokes of waggon wheels, and it is an excellent fuel. The locust timber that reaches market comes from the mountain slopes, where the locust-borer is thus far unknown. The range of the tree is all over the Eastern states and west to the Rocky Mountains. We shall not find them south of the latitude of Tennessee.

The catalpa’s great heart-shaped leaves, as broad as a man’s hat, come out in May, but the leafy shoots grow a foot or more in length, and it is well along toward Independence Day before the flower buds show streaks of white above the foliage mass. The upturned twigs end in a spike of blossoms, creamy in colour, but speckled within their wide throats with purple and yellow. The rim of the flower cup is daintily scalloped, and frilled, and the tree top is even more showy than the horse chestnut a month earlier.

There is stateliness, even stiffness, in the figure of a blossoming horse chestnut—a pyramid of green holding up a thousand pyramids of white. The catalpa has a round head, and the loose flower clusters are quite informal in their arrangement. The flowers nod gracefully on their stems—a thing the horse chestnut flowers are unable to do.

Why are the dots of colour sprinkled in the throat of the flower? Why are they arranged in lines that lead to the nectar sac? To guide the bees which come in swarms in answer to the signals of colour and fragrance the flowers fling out as lures to them.

The two stamens are ripe before the pistil. The bee rubs the pollen off by crowding into the flower. Some of this dust is bound to be rubbed off on the ripe stigma of an older blossom visited by this bee. Thus, unconsciously the bee helps the tree to set good seed. Of these we will study when we come to the tree again in autumn. Only a hint of the seed vessel is given by looking at the oldest flower in a cluster, and noticing the green part at the base.

The linden or basswood holds its arms out so that the broad leaves are exposed to the sun in slanting strata, or platforms of shade, that strike downward. The tree’s frame is roofed in with them in an almost unbroken thatch of green. Cattle love to crop this foliage, and to enjoy the dense shade on a hot day.

In July the dark green is illuminated by thousands of starry white blossoms, a few at the end of a slender stem that rises out of a pale green, leaf-like blade. There is nothing like it borne on any other tree.

The news that the basswoods are in bloom reaches the hives in good time. One is able to hear the murmur of bees as far as he can see the flowers, but the fragrance travels much farther. Basswood honey is higher in price than other kinds. Is this the reason the bees are so hard at work? Small as the individual flowers are, they have an unusual supply of nectar, and the bees revel in the plenty of what will feed them and yield wax. They make honey while the sun shines, counting the basswoods their best source of the crude materials for honeymaking. It was so in the days of old. Greek poets sang of the honey-laden lindens. Honey made from linden trees in the Lithuanian forests was carried to Rome, where it sold for three times the price of ordinary honey.

Bees swarm, and the new colony often takes to the woods and sets up housekeeping in a hollow tree. This is so likely in the Southern states to be a linden that “bee tree” is a familiar name of this tree.

THE EARLY BERRIES IN THE WOODS

Robins come to our cherry trees in June, and they hunt for our strawberries under the green leaves. The blackberries come on, and the raspberries, and currants. The birds look at them with calculating eyes. An appetite for berries is inherited in them, learned in the woods, where wild berries have grown, and ripened for them, from the times long before there were gardens and cultivated fruits.

Back in the woods we shall find wild berries ripening, and birds feasting thankfully upon them. The harvest begins with the June-berries in the month of June. Serviceberries they are also called, and the tree is known also as the shadbush. We remember the lovely veil of white blossoms this tree put on before its leaves came out. In June we might not know the trees, except that they bear red berries, few on a cluster, and here the birds are feasting.

There is no other tree with berries that ripen so early, unless it be the broad-leaved mulberry. Here, too, the birds will be found in numbers. Turn back the wide, heart-shaped leaves, and you will find the single berries of all sizes, some green, some reddening and soft. They are like blackberries, each made of many tiny berries, grown together.

The beauty of the mulberry is that its fruit keeps coming on from June until August. It is a very slow, easy-going tree, in no hurry to have its harvest over. The birds like the soft, seedy berries, which to our taste are insipid.

It is a shrewd thing to plant mulberry trees on the edges of fruit gardens, and set a row of June-berry trees along the road outside the cherry orchard. It is the scarcity of wild berries that brings the birds into our gardens. Many a fruit-grower has saved his crop by planting wild berry trees for the birds.

The elders are shrubby trees with large, fern-like leaves. They lift up flat, white flower clusters, sometimes as large as dinner plates, in June, and in the middle of summer dark red berries are ripening where the flowers were. Here is another feast for the birds, and elderberry pies are the reward of boys and girls who gather the berries, and take them home to mother. Grandma thinks of elderberry wine, so good for many ailments, and if the berries are plenty it is easy to gather a bucketful to make a few pints of this old-fashioned cordial.

Among the shining green leaves of the wild red cherry tree the little fruits glow like rubies in the summer. Here is a feast for the birds. We find these small pin cherries very thin-fleshed, and sour, and the biggest of them is no larger than a pea. But how the birds love them! The bird cherry is indeed the bird’s tree. In blossom it belongs to the bees, which come in swarms for nectar. To them, unconscious carriers of pollen from flower to flower, the birds owe a debt of gratitude. They insure the setting of seed, and this means a big crop of fruit.

The wild black cherry is later with its shining clusters of dark red cherries. They come in September, when the birds’ procession has turned southward. The earliest comers hold high carnival in these trees, devour quantities of the bitter-sweet fruit, and drop the seeds near and far. The wind can do little in scattering the seeds of fruit trees. The birds are the chief agents of distribution.

THE SASSAFRAS

The sassafras is not important as a forest tree, yet I do not know another to whom so many kinds of people, of all ages, go, asking for favours this tree alone can give. Even in regions where the tree does not grow, its name is well known. Sassafras tea has a world-wide reputation as a cure for “spring fever,” otherwise known as “that tired feeling.” Drug store windows are piled high in spring with bits of the corky bark of the sassafras roots, and the buds in winter taste of the same aromatic oil, whose flavour rises from a steaming pot of sassafras tea. Many a bad-tasting medicine is made more palatable by a drop or two of oil of sassafras.

The leaves and twigs of young sassafras trees are used in the South to flavour and thicken gumbo soups. The wood of sassafras is light and tough. The long limbs are cut and stripped by country boys going fishing, who know what trees yield the best fishing rods. Sassafras posts last a long while, for the wood does not rot in contact with soil, or soaked with water. It makes good boats and barrels for this same reason.

Children know the sassafras tree. In winter they nibble the dainty green buds, or dig away the snow at the roots to get a morsel of the aromatic bark. In summer it is the leaves that are the chief charm of the tree. It is a fascinating game to look for the “mittens and double mittens,” which seem to be more numerous than the plain oval leaves on this tree. There is no other tree that has three distinct leaf shapes. The mitten form has its thumb just right, on one side. It might be used for a mitten pattern. There are lefts and rights, and mittens of all sizes. The doll-sized ones are the youngest, and they grow near the tips of the twigs. The double mittens have a thumb on each side, and the simple oval shape—the hand part with no thumb at all—is usually harder to find than either of the others.

When looking for these strange leaf shapes, there is always a chance of coming upon a strange inhabitant of the sassafras tree. A great green caterpillar is lying at ease upon a hammock of silk, which he has spun for himself. There he lies, and gazes at the startled person who discovers him. Are those really eyes, or only black spots? They probably scare away birds which are looking for worms. The effect of the two “eye spots” is almost as surprising as if two rolling eyeballs glared at the intruder, and threatened violence if he came near.

Carry home this fearsome green mummy on the leaf; put him in a cage made of wire screen, and watch him. He needs no food, for he is asleep. When he awakes his mummy case will split open, and out of it will emerge a wonderful butterfly, with banded wings of black and yellow velvet, and long, tapering points trailing behind, which gives him his name—the swallow-tailed butterfly. He has a flexible tongue, an inch or more in length, coiled like a watch spring. With it he will probe the tubes of flowers, and find the nectar at the base of each. He is hungry now, so let him go. Turn him loose in a bed of flowers, and you may see just how he feeds.

When the mother butterfly laid its tiny green egg on the face of an open leaf of the sassafras, the tree was probably in blossom. In June, delicate, starry, greenish-yellow flowers come out in clusters on the ends of twigs. The butterfly finds nectar in these fragrant and dainty blossoms. In the autumn birds come and feast upon the blue berries which look very handsome on their red stems. Indeed, it is quite usual for the trees to be stripped while the berries are still green, so hungry are the birds that stop to feed on their long journey to the South.

In the autumn the sassafras trees change colour from the brilliant green of summer. All colours of the sunset, purple, red, and golden, blend in these shining tree tops. A clump of sassafras and sweet gum trees, with here and there a tupelo and a dogwood, a scarlet oak and a hard maple, make a picture never to be forgotten. If the roadside trees were on fire, they would not show any more vivid colouring. It is their glorious good-bye to the year, before they all let their leaves fall and enter into the sleep of winter.

THE ASH FAMILY

The trees whose leaves are set opposite upon the twigs are few in the American woods compared with those whose leaves alternate. The maples have the opposite arrangement of leaves; so have the dogwoods. These trees have simple leaves. The horse chestnuts and buckeyes have their leaves set opposite, and these leaves are compound: five or seven leaflets rise from the end of the stout leaf stem. The ash family is another large group of trees, with leaves set opposite on the twigs. These leaves are compound, but of a different pattern from those of the horse chestnut. The leaf stem has the leaflets arranged in pairs along its sides. This is the feather type of compound leaf, seen in the locust family, and among walnuts and hickories.

Ash trees are recognised by their opposite compound leaves. There is another sign: the fruit has a dry seed, pointed and winged like a dart. There is no other seed exactly like those of the ash. The seed clusters hang on the bare twigs, far into winter. The twigs are stout, and set in pairs on the branches. The trees grow large, and their tops are regular and handsome. The bark is close, broken by shallow fissures into small, often diamond-shaped plates.

Our common ash trees are distinguished by colour, as the names indicate. A few well-marked differences are shown by the species, which are often found growing together in mixed woods.

The white ash is a tall, handsome, stately tree, with a trunk like a grey granite column. The white in its name is from the pale leaf linings, that illuminate the tree top in summer. The twigs are pale, and the bark is often as pale grey as that of a white oak. The slender, dart-like seeds are one to two inches long, with a wing which is twice the length of the round, tapering seed. They hang in thick clusters, paler green than the leaves, and often flushed with a rosy tinge in late summer. All winter the wind harvests the crop of seeds, and plants young white ashes wherever the darts fall on good ground.

The black ash is a slender, upright tree, with narrow head and stout twigs. The plump, leathery buds on the winter twigs are almost black, and the bark is a very dark grey. The foliage in summer is much darker green than that of any other ash, so the name is earned by buds, bark, and leaves. The seeds are flat and short, and the wing is broad and short, and deeply notched. A black ash leaf has all its leaflets stemless except the one at the tip. The white ash has a much fleecier foliage than that of the black, because each leaflet has a stem of its own.

The wood of the black ash splits readily into thin sheets, each representing the growth of a single year. The Indians taught the white men to make baskets out of black ash splints. They cut the tree down, sawed the log into the lengths required, split the blocks into pieces as wide as the splints should be. These sticks were bent over a board, and the strain separated the bands of dense, tough wood into the thin strips just right for basket weaving.

The red ash is a small, spreading tree, with a close head, slender branches, and crowded twigs. Its bark is reddish, closely furrowed, and scaly. The young twigs are covered with soft hairs. The leaves are a shiny yellow-green above, often a foot long, made of seven to nine slender leaflets, whose stems and veins have a silky down, that remains all summer.

Red ash seeds are extremely slender and long, and they hang on hairy stems.

The green ash has dark, lustrous foliage, the leaf lining green, like its upper surface. The bark is grey, and closely checked, and the twigs are smooth and slender.

This is the ash tree which grows in the regions of scant rainfall; in Utah, Arizona, and Texas. In the East it is found from Virginia to Florida. It is one of the beautiful shade trees in the regions where few trees grow well. East of the Alleghenies it is but one among many ash trees, and is little noticed; but in the far West, and on the treeless plains of Nebraska and Dakota, it is a far handsomer tree than its companions, the willows and the cottonwoods.

The blue ash is common on the rich river lands along the principal tributaries of the Mississippi. Some of the finest specimens grow on the limestone hills of the Smoky Mountains. It is a tall, graceful, grey-stemmed ash. We shall know it anywhere as an ash tree by its opposite twigs and leaves, and by its dart-like fruits. It differs from all other ash trees in having four-angled twigs. The tree has a kind of blue dye in its inner bark. Cut out a piece and put it in water, and it is as if you had added a few grains of indigo.

The blue ash ranks high as a shade tree, and its wood is quite the equal of white ash. It is used for vehicles, for flooring, and for tool handles. It is especially desired for pitchfork handles.

The native ash of Europe is a large timber tree, whose range extends through Asia Minor. The wood of this tree had a wonderful reputation for general usefulness. Its tough, thin inner bark was used to write on before paper was invented. The wood was used for lances and spears, for bows, pikes, and shields by the soldiers, during ancient times. Every tool, vehicle, and implement of the farmer and mechanic were made of this wood. “Every prudent lord of a manor should employ one acre of ground with ash to every twenty acres of other land. In as many years it would be worth more than the land itself.”

The seeds of ash trees were used for fattening pigs. They were also used as remedies for many diseases. They were called birds’ tongues, from their shape, and every apothecary kept a stock of them. Ash wood makes the best of fuel, and its ashes, rich in potash, make a splendid fertiliser, especially in orchards.

One warning the old English rhyme offers regarding this tree. It is supposed to attract lightning. Oaks have the same reputation. On the other hand, tradition holds that a beech tree is never struck by lightning. There is opportunity, where these trees grow, and where thunderstorms are frequent, to notice how true are the popular beliefs.

Have you ever been warned by this old rhyme?

“Beware of the oak, it draws the stroke;
Avoid the ash, it courts the flash;
Creep under the thorn—it will save you from harm.”

THE HORSE-CHESTNUT AND THE BUCKEYES

When an English lad speaks of a chestnut, he means the horse-chestnut, and the chances are that he does not know anything about the American trees, whose sweet nuts we gather in the woods at home after the frost has opened their spiny burs. In America the European tree is planted very commonly for ornament and shade, and it is always called horse-chestnut here, except by English cousins who may be visiting us.

They ask us why we put the word “horse” before this tree’s name. For answer we pull down a twig, snap off a leaf, and show the scar of the leaf’s attachment to the twig. It is somewhat like the print of a horse’s hoof on the ground. Even the horseshoe nails are there, for a thread from each leaflet goes down through the leaf stem, and its fibres are buried in the twig. There are five or seven of these nail prints in the scar, depending upon the number of leaflets. Five is the usual number, but seven is not at all unusual.

An old tradition states that the people of Eastern countries feed these chestnuts to their horses to cure them of cough, shortness of breath, and other lung disorders. Upon this is based a second claim for using the word “horse” before this tree’s name. The quality of the fruit, however, is probably the best answer to the question. The coarse, large nuts are not fit for human food. It is quite common to think that horses can eat things too rank for our more fastidious taste. Horse sugar is the name of a small tree whose sweetish twigs are browsed upon by cattle and horses in wooded pastures. Horse-radish and horse-mint are coarser, more rank-growing kinds of plants, than their closely related species which are used for human food.

We shall know the horse-chestnut in the dead of winter by the large buds, the large hoof-print leaf scars, and by the pyramidal form of the tree. The twigs are stout, and they turn upward so that the largest of the varnished buds are held up like candles. The main branches leave the trunk with an upward curve, then bend outward and downward, then up again to hold the buds upright. The tree looks, therefore, like a great complex candlestick, with many arms and many candles. The twigs are stout, and they come out opposite each other on the branch. This is a peculiarity of few trees. It belongs to all of the members of the horse-chestnut family, which includes the buckeye trees, our native horse-chestnuts.

In early spring, watch the horse-chestnut tree outside your windows and along the streets as they begin to swell, and until they finally open. The tree lights all its candles when the brown, varnished outer bud scales fall, and the soft, silky inner ones, yellow as a candle flame, are revealed. On the side twigs the buds are smaller than on the tips. Out of each small bud comes a bunch of leaves. Out of the big buds come the flowers.

In June a big horse-chestnut tree holds up a thousand pyramids of white blossoms. Below each flower duster is an umbrella-like circle of leaves. Each blossom of the dense spike has in its throat dashes of yellow and red. The petals form a ruffled border. The curving stamens are thrust far out. Bees come in search of pollen and nectar.