1I believe the undermost of the two divisions of the leaf represents vegetable tissuereturningfrom the extremity. See Lindley’sIntroduction to Botany(1848), vol. i. p. 253.2For farther notes on this subject, see myElements of Drawing, p. 286.
1I believe the undermost of the two divisions of the leaf represents vegetable tissuereturningfrom the extremity. See Lindley’sIntroduction to Botany(1848), vol. i. p. 253.
2For farther notes on this subject, see myElements of Drawing, p. 286.
CHAPTER V.
LEAF ASPECTS.
§ 1. Beforefollowing farther our inquiry into tree structure, it will rest us, and perhaps forward our work a little, to make some use of what we know already.
It results generally from what we have seen that any group of four or five leaves presenting itself in its natural position to the eye, consists of a series of forms connected by exquisite and complex symmetries, and that these forms will be not only varied in themselves, but every one of them seen under a different condition of foreshortening.
The facility of drawing the group may be judged of by a comparison. Suppose five or six boats, very beautifully built, and sharp in the prow, to start all from one point, and the first bearing up into the wind, the other three or four to fall off from it in succession an equal number of points,1taking each, in consequence, a different slope of deck from the stem of the sail. Suppose, also, that the bows of these boats were transparent, so that you could see the under sides of their decks as well as the upper;—and that it were required of you to draw all their five decks, the under or upper side, as their curve showed it, in true foreshortened perspective, indicating the exact distance each boat had reached at a given moment from the central point they started from.
If you can do that, you can draw a rose-leaf. Not otherwise.
§ 2. When, some few years ago, the pre-Raphaelites began to lead our wandering artists back into the eternal paths of all great Art, and showed that whatever men drew at all, ought to be drawn accurately and knowingly; not blunderingly nor by guess (leaves of trees among other things): as ignorant pride onthe one hand refused their teaching, ignorant hope caught at it on the other. “What!” said many a feeble young student to himself. “Painting is not a matter of science then, nor of supreme skill, nor of inventive brain. I have only to go and paint the leaves of the trees as they grow, and I shall produce beautiful landscapes directly.”
Alas! my innocent young friend. “Paint the leaves as they grow!” If you can paintoneleaf, you can paint the world. These pre-Raphaelite laws, which you think so light, lay stern on the strength of Apelles and Zeuxis; put Titian to thoughtful trouble; are unrelaxed yet, and unrelaxable for ever. Paint a leaf indeed! Above-named Titian has done it: Correggio, moreover, and Giorgione: and Leonardo, very nearly, trying hard. Holbein, three or four times, in precious pieces, highest wrought. Raphael, it may be, in one or two crowns of Muse or Sibyl. If any one else, in later times, we have to consider.
§ 3. At least until recently, the perception of organic leaf form was absolutely, in all painters whatsoever, proportionate to their power of drawing the human figure. All the great Italian designers drew leaves thoroughly well, though none quite so fondly as Correggio. Rubens drew them coarsely and vigorously, just as he drew limbs. Among the inferior Dutch painters, the leaf-painting degenerates in proportion to the diminishing power in figure. Cuyp, Wouvermans, and Paul Potter, paint better foliage than either Hobbima or Ruysdael.
§ 4. In like manner the power of treating vegetation in sculpture is absolutely commensurate with nobleness of figure design. The quantity, richness, or deceptive finish may be greater in third-rate work; but in true understanding and force of arrangement the leaf and the human figure show always parallel skill. The leaf-mouldings of Lorenzo Ghiberti are unrivalled, as his bas-reliefs are, and the severe foliage of the Cathedral of Chartres is as grand as its queen-statues.
§ 5. The greatest draughtsmen draw leaves, like everything else, of their full-life size in the nearest part of the picture. They cannot be rightly drawn on any other terms. It is impossible to reduce a group so treated without losing much of its character; and more painfully impossible to represent by engraving any good workman’s handling. I intended to haveinserted in this place an engraving of the cluster of oak-leaves above Correggio’s Antiope in the Louvre, but it is too lovely; and if I am able to engrave it at all, it must be separately, and of its own size. So I draw, roughly, instead, a group of oak-leaves on a young shoot, a little curled with autumn frost: Plate 53. I could not draw them accurately enough if I drew them in spring. They would droop and lose their relations. Thus roughly drawn, and losing some of their grace, by withering, they, nevertheless, have enough left to show how noble leaf-form is; and to prove, it seems to me, that Dutch draughtsmen do not wholly express it. For instance, Fig. 3, Plate 54, is a facsimile of a bit of the nearest oak foliage out of Hobbima’s Scene with the Water-mill, No. 131, in the Dulwich Gallery. Compared with the real forms of oak-leaf, in Plate 53, it may, I hope, at least enable my readers to understand, if they choose, why, never having ceased to rate the Dutch painters for their meanness or minuteness, I yet accepted the leaf-painting of the pre-Raphaelites with reverence and hope.
§ 6. No word has been more harmfully misused than that ugly one of “niggling.” I should be glad if it were entirely banished from service and record. The only essential question about drawing is whether it be right or wrong; that it be small or large, swift or slow, is a matter of convenience only. But so far as the word may be legitimately used at all, it belongs especially to such execution as this of Hobbima’s—execution which substitutes, on whatever scale, a mechanical trick or habit of hand for true drawing of known or intended forms. So long as the work is thoughtfully directed, there is no niggling. In a small Greek coin the muscles of the human body are as grandly treated as in a colossal statue; and a fine vignette of Turner’s will show separate touches often more extended in intention, and stronger in result, than those of his largest oil pictures. In the vignette of the picture of Ginevra, at page 90 of Roger’s Italy, the forefinger touching the lip is entirely and rightly drawn, bent at the two joints, within the length of the thirtieth of an inch, and the whole hand within the space of one of those “niggling” touches of Hobbima. But if this work were magnified, it would be seen to be a strong and simple expression of a hand by thick black lines.
§ 7. Niggling, therefore, essentially means disorganized and mechanical work, applied on a scale which may deceive a vulgar or ignorant person into the idea of its being true:—a definition applicable to the whole of the leaf-painting of the Dutch landscapists in distant effect, and for the most part to that of their near subjects also. Cuyp and Wouvermans, as before stated, and others, in proportion to their power over the figure, drew leaves better in the foreground, yet never altogether well; for though Cuyp often draws a single leaf carefully (weedy ground-vegetation especially, with great truth), he never felt the connection of leaves, but scattered them on the boughs at random. Fig. 1 in Plate 54 is nearly afacsimileof part of the branch on the left side in our National Gallery picture. Its entire want of grace and organization ought to be felt at a glance, after the work we have gone through. The average conditions of leafage-painting among the Dutch are better represented by Fig. 2, Plate 54, which is a piece of the foliage from the Cuyp in the Dulwich Gallery, No. 163. It is merely wrought with a mechanical play of brush in a well-trained hand, gradating the color irregularly and agreeably, but with no more feeling or knowledge of leafage than a paperstainer shows in graining a pattern. A bit of the stalk is seen on the left; it might just as well have been on the other side, for any connection the leaves have with it. As the leafage retires into distance, the Dutch painters merely diminish theirscaleof touch. The touch itself remains the same, but its effect is falser; for though the separate stains or blots in Fig. 2, do not rightly represent the forms of leaves, they may not inaccurately represent the number of leaves on that spray. But in distance, when, instead of one spray, we have thousands in sight, no human industry, nor possible diminution of touch can represent their mist of foliage, and the Dutch work becomes doubly base, by reason of false form, and lost infinity.
§ 8. Hence what I said in our first inquiry about foliage, “A single dusty roll of Turner’s brush is more truly expressive of the infinitude of foliage than the niggling of Hobbima could have rendered his canvas, if he had worked on it till doomsday.” And this brings me to the main difficulty I have had in preparing this section. That infinitude of Turner’s execution attachesnot only to his distant work, but in due degree to the nearest pieces of his trees. As I have shown in the chapter on mystery, he perfected the system of art, as applicable to landscape, by the introduction of this infiniteness. In other qualities he is often only equal, in some inferior, to great preceding painters; but in this mystery he stands alone. He could not paint a cluster of leaves better than Titian; but he could a bough, much more a distant mass of foliage. No man ever before painted a distant tree rightly, or a full-leaved branch rightly. All Titian’s distant branches are ponderous flakes, as if covered with seaweed, while Veronese’s and Raphael’s are conventional, being exquisitely ornamental arrangements of small perfect leaves. See the background of the Parnassus in Volpato’s plate. It is very lovely, however.
§ 9. But this peculiar execution of Turner’s is entirely uncopiable; least of all to be copied in engraving. It is at once so dexterous and so keenly cunning, swiftest play of hand being applied with concentrated attention on every movement, that no care in facsimile will render it. The delay in the conclusion of this work has been partly caused by the failure of repeated attempts to express this execution. I see my way now to some partial result; but must get the writing done, and give undivided care to it before I attempt to produce costly plates. Meanwhile, the little cluster of foliage opposite, from the thicket which runs up the bank on the right-hand side of the drawing of Richmond, looking up the river, in the Yorkshire series, will give the reader some idea of the mingled definiteness and mystery of Turner’s work, as opposed to the mechanism of the Dutch on the one side, and the conventional severity of the Italians on the other. It should be compared with the published engraving in the Yorkshire series; for just as much increase, both in quantity and refinement, would be necessary in every portion of the picture, before any true conception could be given of the richness of Turner’s designs. A fragment of distant foliage I may give farther on; but, in order to judge rightly of either example, we must know one or two points in the structure of branches, requiring yet some irksome patience of inquiry, which I am compelled to ask the reader to grant me through another two chapters.
1I don’t know that this is rightly expressed; but the meaning will be understood.
1I don’t know that this is rightly expressed; but the meaning will be understood.
CHAPTER VI.
THE BRANCH.
§ 1. Wehave hitherto spoken of each shoot as either straight or only warped by its spiral tendency; but no shoot of any length, except those of the sapling, ever can be straight; for, as the family of leaves which it bears are forced unanimously to take some given direction in search of food or light, the stalk necessarily obeys the same impulse, and bends itself so as to sustain them in their adopted position, with the greatest ease to itself and comfort for them.
In doing this, it has two main influences to comply or contend with: the first, the direct action of the leaves in drawing it this way or that, as they themselves seek particular situations; the second, the pressure of their absolute weight after they have taken their places, depressing each bough in a given degree; the leverage increasing as the leaf extends. To these principal forces may frequently be added that of some prevalent wind, which, on a majority of days in the year, bends the bough, leaves and all, for hours together, out of its normal position. Owing to these three forces, the shoot is nearly sure to be curved in at least two directions;1that is to say, not merely as the rim of a wine-glass is curved (so that, looking at it horizontally, the circle becomes a straight line), but as the edge of a lip or an eyebrow is curved, partly upward, partly forwards, so that in no possible perspective can it be seen as a straight line. Similarly, no perspective will usually bring a shoot of a free-growing tree to appear a straight line.
§ 2. It is evident that the more leaves the stalk has to sustain, the more strength it requires. It might appear, therefore,not unadvisable, that every leaf should, as it grew, pay a small tax to the stalk for its sustenance; so that there might be no fear of any number of leaves being too oppressive to their bearer. Which, accordingly, is just what the leaves do. Each, from the moment of his complete majority, pays a stated tax to the stalk; that is to say, collects for it a certain quantity of wood, or materials for wood, and sends this wood, or what ultimately will become wood,downthe stalk to add to its thickness.
§ 3. “Down the stalk?” yes, and down a great way farther. For, as the leaves, if they did not thus contribute to their own support, would soon be too heavy for the spray, so if the spray, with its family of leaves, contributed nothing to the thickness of the branch, the leaf-families would soon break down their sustaining branches. And, similarly, if the branches gave nothing to the stem, the stem would soon fall under its boughs. Therefore, by a power of which I believe no sufficient account exists,2as each leaf adds to the thickness of the shoot, so each shoot to the branch, so each branch to the stem, and that with so perfect an order and regularity of duty, that from every leaf in all the countless crowd at the tree’s summit, one slender fibre, or at least fibre’s thickness of wood, descends through shoot, through spray, through branch, and through stem; and having thus added, in its due proportion, to form the strength of the tree, labors yet farther and more painfully to provide for its security; and thrusting forward into the root, loses nothing of its mighty energy, until, mining through the darkness, it has taken hold in cleft of rock or depth of earth, as extended as the sweep of its green crest in the free air.
§ 4. Such, at least, is the mechanical aspect of the tree. The work of its construction, considered as a branch tower, partlypropped by buttresses, partly lashed by cables, is thus shared in by every leaf. But considering it as a living body to be nourished, it is probably an inaccurate analogy to speak of the leaves being taxed for the enlargement of the trunk. Strictly speaking, the trunk enlarges by sustaining them. For each leaf, however far removed from the ground, stands in need of nourishment derived from the ground, as well as of that which it finds in the air; and it simply sends its root down along the stem of the tree, until it reaches the ground and obtains the necessary mineral elements. The trunk has been therefore called by some botanists a “bundle of roots,” but I think inaccurately. It is rather a messenger to the roots.3A root, properly so called, is a fibre, spongy or absorbent at the extremity, which secretes certain elements from the earth. The stem is by this definition no more a cluster of roots than a cluster of leaves, but a channel of intercourse between the roots and the leaves. It can gather no nourishment. It only carries nourishment, being, in fact, a group of canals for the conveyance of marketable commodities, with an electric telegraph attached to each, transmitting messages from leaf to root, and root to leaf, up and down the tree. But whatever view we take of the operative causes, the external and visible fact is simply that every leaf does send down from its stalk a slender thread of woody matter along the sides of the shoot it grows upon; and that the increase of thickness in stem, proportioned to the advance of the leaves, corresponds with an increase of thickness in roots, proportioned to the advance of their outer fibres. How far interchange of elements takes place between root and leaf, it is not our work here to examine; the general and broad idea is this, that the whole tree is fed partly by the earth, partly by the air;—strengthened and sustained by the one, agitated and educated by the other;—all of it which is best, in substance, life, and beauty, being drawn more from the dew of heaven than the fatness of the earth. The results of this nourishment of the bough by the leaf in external aspect, are the object of our immediate inquiry.
§ 5. Hitherto we have considered the shoot as an ascending body, throwing off buds at intervals. This it is indeed; but thepart of it which ascends is not seen externally. Look back to Plate 51. You will observe that each shoot is furrowed, and that the ridges between the furrows rise in slightly spiral lines, terminating in the armlets under the buds which bore last year’s leaves. These ridges, which rib the shoot so distinctly, are not on the ascending part of it. They are the contributions of each successive leaf thrown out as it ascended. Every leaf sent down a slender cord, covering and clinging to the shoot beneath, and increasing its thickness. Each, according to his size and strength, wove his little strand of cable, as a spider his thread; and cast it down the side of the springing tower by a marvellous magic—irresistible! The fall of a granite pyramid from an Alp may perhaps be stayed; the descending force of that silver thread shall not be stayed. It will split the rocks themselves at its roots, if need be, rather than fail in its work.
So many leaves, so many silver cords. Count—for by just the thickness of one cord, beneath each leaf, let fall in fivefold order round and round, the shoot increases in thickness to its root:—a spire built downwards from the heaven.
And now we see why the leaves dislike being above each other. Each seeks a vacant place, where he may freely let fall the cord. The turning aside of the cable to avoid the buds beneath, is one of the main causes of spiral curvature, as the shoot increases. It required all the care I could give to the drawing, and all Mr. Armytage’s skill in engraving Plate 51, to express, though drawing them nearly of their full size, the principal courses of curvature in even this least graceful of trees.
§ 6. According to the structure thus ascertained, the body of the shoot may at any point be considered as formed by a central rod, represented by the shaded inner circle,a, Fig. 36, surrounded by as many rods of descending external wood as there are leaves above the point where the section is made. The first five leaves above send down the first dark rods; and the next above send down those between, which, being from younger leaves, are less liable to interstices; then the third group sending down the side, it will be seen at aglance how a spiral action is produced. It would lead us into too subtile detail, if I traced the forces of this spiral superimposition. I must be content to let the reader peruse this part of the subject for himself, if it amuses him, and lead to larger questions.
§ 7. Broadly and practically, we may consider the whole cluster of woody material in Fig. 36 as one circle of fibrous substance formed round a small central rod. The real appearance in most trees is approximately as inb, Fig. 36, the radiating structure becoming more distinct in proportion to the largeness and compactness of the wood.4
Now the next question is, how this descending external coating of wood will behave itself when it comes to the forking of the shoots. To simplify the examination of this, let us suppose the original or growing shoot (whose section is the shaded inner circle in Fig. 36) to have been in the form of a letter Y, and no thicker than a stout iron wire, as in Fig. 37. Down the arms of this letter Y, we have two fibrous streams running in the direction of the arrows. If the depth or thickness of these streams be such as atbandc, what will their thickness be when they unite ate? Evidently, the quantity of wood surrounding the vertical wire atemust be twice as great as that surrounding the wiresbandc.
§ 8. The reader will, perhaps, be good enough to take it on my word (if he does not know enough of geometry to ascertain), that the large circle, in Fig. 38, contains twice as much area as either of the two smaller circles. Putting these circles in position, so as to guide us, and supposing the trunk to be bounded by straight lines, we have for the outline of the fork that in Fig. 38. How, then, do the two minor circles change into one large one? The section of the stem atais a circle; and atb, is a circle; and atc, a circle. But what is it ate? Evidently, if the two circles merely united gradually, without change of formthrough a series of figures, such as those at the top of Fig. 39, the quantity of wood, instead of remaining the same, would diminish from the contents of two circles to the contents of one. So for every loss which the circles sustain at this junction, an equal quantity of wood must be thrust out somehow to the side. Thus, to enable the circles to run into each other, as far as shown atb, in Fig. 39, there must be a loss between them of as much wood as the shaded space. Therefore, half of that space must be added, or rather pushed out on each side, and the section of the uniting branch becomes approximately as inc, Fig. 39; the wood squeezed out encompassing the stem more as the circles close, until the whole is reconciled into one larger single circle.
§ 9. I fear the reader would have no patience with me, if I asked him to examine, in longitudinal section, the lines of the descending currents of wood as they eddy into the increased single river. Of course, it is just what would take place if two strong streams, filling each a cylindrical pipe, ran together into one larger cylinder, with a central rod passing up every tube. But, as this central rod increases, and, at the same time, the supply of the stream from above, every added leaf contributing its little current, the eddies of wood about the fork become intensely curious and interesting; of which thus much the reader may observe in a moment by gathering a branch of any tree (laburnum shows it better, I think, than most), that the two meeting currents, first wrinkling a little, then rise in a low wavein the hollow of the fork, and flow over at the side, making their way to diffuse themselves round the stem, as in Fig. 40. Seen laterally, the bough bulges out below the fork, rather curiously and awkwardly, especially if more than two boughs meet at the same place, growing in one plane, so as to show the sudden increase on the profile. If the reader is interested in the subject, he will find strangely complicated and wonderful arrangements of stream when smaller boughs meet larger (one example is given in Plate 3, Vol. III., where the current of a smaller bough, entering upwards, pushes its way into the stronger rivers of the stem). But I cannot, of course, enter into such detail here.
§ 10. The little ringed accumulation, repelled from the wood of the larger trunk at the base of small boughs, may be seen at a glance in any tree, and needs no illustration; but I give one from Salvator, Fig. 41 (from his own etching,Democritus omnium Derisor), which is interesting, because it shows the swelling at the bases of insertion, which yet, Salvator’s eye not being quick enough to detect the law of descent in the fibres, he, withhis usual love of ugliness, fastens on this swollen character, and exaggerates it into an appearance of disease. The same bloated aspect may be seen in the example already given from another etching, Vol. III., Plate 4, Fig. 8.
§ 11. I do not give any more examples from Claude. We have had enough already in Plate 4, Vol. III., which the reader should examine carefully. If he will then look forward to Fig. 61 here, he will see how Turner inserts branches, and with what certain and strange instinct of fidelity he marks the wrinkled enlargement and sinuous eddies of the wood rivers where they meet.
And remember always that Turner’s greatness and rightness in all these points successively depend on no scientific knowledge. He was entirely ignorant of all the laws we have been developing. He had merely accustomed himself to see impartially, intensely, and fearlessly.
§ 12. It may, perhaps, be interesting to compare, with the rude fallacies of Claude and Salvator, a little piece of earliest art, wrought by men who could see and feel. The scroll, Fig. 42, is a portion of that which surrounds the arch in San Zeno ofVerona, above the pillar engraved in theStones of Venice, Plate 17, Vol. I. It is, therefore, twelfth, or earliest thirteenth century work. Yet the foliage is already full of spring and life; and in the part of the stem, which I have given of its real size in Fig. 43, the reader will perhaps be surprised to see at the junctions the laws of vegetation, which escaped the sight of all the degeneratelandscape-painters of Italy, expressed by one of her simple architectural workmen six hundred years ago.
We now know enough, I think, of the internal conditions which regulate tree-structure to enable us to investigate finally, the great laws of branch and stem aspect. But they are very beautiful; and we will give them a separate chapter.
1See the note on Fig. 11, at page 17, which shows these two directions in a shoot of lime.2I find that the office and nature of cambium, the causes of the action of the sap, and the real mode of the formation of buds, are all still under the investigation of botanists. I do not lose time in stating the doubts or probabilities which exist on these subjects. For us, the mechanical fact of the increase of thickness by every leaf’s action is all that needs attention. The reader who wishes for information as accurate as the present state of science admits, may consult Lindley’sIntroduction to Botany, and an interesting little book by Dr. Alexander Harvey onTrees and their Nature(Nisbet & Co., 1856), to which I owe much help.3In the true sense a “mediator,” (μεσίτης).4The gradual development of this radiating structure, which is organic and essential, composed of what are called by botanists medullary rays, is still a great mystery and wonder to me.
1See the note on Fig. 11, at page 17, which shows these two directions in a shoot of lime.
2I find that the office and nature of cambium, the causes of the action of the sap, and the real mode of the formation of buds, are all still under the investigation of botanists. I do not lose time in stating the doubts or probabilities which exist on these subjects. For us, the mechanical fact of the increase of thickness by every leaf’s action is all that needs attention. The reader who wishes for information as accurate as the present state of science admits, may consult Lindley’sIntroduction to Botany, and an interesting little book by Dr. Alexander Harvey onTrees and their Nature(Nisbet & Co., 1856), to which I owe much help.
3In the true sense a “mediator,” (μεσίτης).
4The gradual development of this radiating structure, which is organic and essential, composed of what are called by botanists medullary rays, is still a great mystery and wonder to me.
CHAPTER VII.
THE STEM.
§ 1. Wemust be content, in this most complex subject, to advance very slowly: and our easiest, if not our only way, will be to examine, first, the conditions under which boughs would form, supposing them all to divide in one plane, as your hand divides when you lay it flat on the table, with the fingers as wide apart as you can. And then we will deduce the laws of ramification which follow on the real structure of branches, which truly divide, not in one plane, but as your fingers separate if you hold a large round ball with them.
The reader has, I hope, a clear idea by this time of the main principle of tree-growth; namely, that the increase is by addition, or superimposition, not extension. A branch does not stretch itself out as a leech stretches its body. But it receives additions at its extremity, and proportional additions to its thickness. For although the actual living shoot, or growing point, of any year, lengthens itself gradually until it reaches its terminal bud, after that bud is formed, its length is fixed. It is thenceforth one joint of the tree, like the joint of a pillar, on which other joints of marble may be laid to elongate the pillar, but which will not itself stretch. A tree is thus truly edified, or built, like a house.
§ 2. I am not sure with what absolute stringency this law is observed, or what slight lengthening of substance may be traceable by close measurement among inferior branches. For practical purposes, we may assume that the law is final, and that if we represent the state of a plant, or extremity of branch, in any given year under the simplest possible type, Fig. 44,a, of two shoots, with terminal buds, springing from one stem, its growth next year may be expressed by the type, Fig. 44,b, in which, the original stems not changing or increasing, the terminal budshave built up each another story of plant, or repetition of the original form; and, in order to support this new edifice, have sent down roots all the way to the ground, so as to enclose and thicken the inferior stem.
But if this is so, how does the original stem, which never lengthens, ever become the tall trunk of a tree? The arrangement just stated provides very satisfactorily for making it stout, but not for making it tall. If the ramification proceeds in this way, the tree must assuredly become a round compact ball of short sticks, attached to the ground by a very stout, almost invisible, stem, like a puff-ball.
For if we take the form above, on a small scale, merely to see what comes of it, and carry its branching three steps farther, we get the successive conditions in Fig. 45, of which the last comes already round to the ground.
“But those forms really look something like trees!” Yes, if they were on a large scale. But each of the little shoots is only six or seven inches long; the whole cluster would but be three or four feet over, and touches the ground already at its extremity. It would enlarge if it went on growing, but never rise from the ground.
§ 3. This is an interesting question: one, also, which, I fear, we must solve, so far as yet it can be solved, with little help. Perhaps nothing is more curious in the history of human mind than the way in which the science of botany has become oppressed by nomenclature. Here is perhaps the first question which an intelligent child would think of asking about a tree: “Mamma, how does it make its trunk?” and you may open one botanical work after another, and good ones too, and by sensible men,—youshall not find this child’s question fairly put, much less fairly answered. You will be told gravely that a stem has received many names, such asculmus,stipes, andtruncus; that twigs were once calledflagella, but are now calledramuli; and that Mr. Link calls a straight stem, with branches on its sides, acaulis excurrens; and a stem, which at a certain distance above the earth breaks out into irregular ramifications, acaulis deliquescens. All thanks and honor be to Mr. Link! But at this moment, when we want to knowwhyone stem breaks “at a certain distance,” and the other not at all, we find no great help in those splendid excurrencies and deliquescencies. “At a certain distance?” Yes: but why not before? or why then? How was it that, for many and many a year, the young shoots agreed to construct a vertical tower, or, at least, the nucleus of one, and then, one merry day, changed their minds, and built about their metropolis in all directions, nobody knows where, far into the air in free delight? How is it that yonder larch-stem grows straight and true, while all its branches, constructed by the same process as the mother trunk, and under the mother trunk’s careful inspection and direction, nevertheless have lost all their manners, and go forking and flashing about, more like cracklings of spitefullest lightning than decent branches of trees that dip green leaves in dew?
§ 4. We have probably, many of us, missed the point of such questions as these, because we too readily associated the structure of trees with that of flowers. The flowering part of a plant shoots out or up, in some given direction, until, at a stated period, it opens or branches into perfect form by a law just as fixed, and just as inexplicable, as that which numbers the joints of an animal’s skeleton, and puts the head on its right joint. In many forms of flowers—foxglove, aloe, hemlock, or blossom of maize—the structure of the flowering part so far assimilates itself to that of a tree, that we not unnaturally think of a tree only as a large flower, or large remnant of flower, run to seed. And we suppose the time and place of its branching to be just as organically determined as the height of the stalk of straw, or hemlock pipe, and the fashion of its branching just as fixed as the shape of petals in a pansy or cowslip.
§ 5. But that is not so; not so in anywise. So far as you canwatch a tree, it is produced throughout by repetitions of the same process, which repetitions, however, are arbitrarily directed so as to produce one effect at one time, and another at another time. A young sapling has his branches as much as the tall tree. He does not shoot up in a long thin rod, and begin to branch when he is ten or fifteen feet high, as the hemlock or foxglove does when each has reached its ten or fifteen inches. The young sapling conducts himself with all the dignity of a tree from the first;—only he so manages his branches as to form a support for his future life, in a strong straight trunk, that will hold him well off the ground. Prudent little sapling!—but how does he manage this? how keep the young branches from rambling about, till the proper time, or on what plea dismiss them from his service if they will not help his provident purpose? So again, there is no difference in mode of construction between the trunk of a pine and its branch. But external circumstances so far interfere with the results of this repeated construction, that a stone pine rises for a hundred feet like a pillar, and then suddenly bursts into a cloud. It is the knowledge of the mode in which such change may take place which forms the true natural history of trees:—or, more accurately, their moral history. An animal is born with so many limbs, and a head of such a shape. That is, strictly speaking, not its history, but one fact of its history: a fact of which no other account can be given than that it was so appointed. But a tree is born without a head. It has got to make its own head. It is born like a little family from which a great nation is to spring; and at a certain time, under peculiar external circumstances, this nation, every individual of which remains the same in nature and temper, yet gives itself a new political constitution, and sends out branch colonies, which enforce forms of law and life entirely different from those of the parent state. That is the history of the state. It is also the history of a tree.
§ 6. Of these hidden histories, I know and can tell you as little as I did of the making of rocks. It will be enough for me if I can put the difficulty fairly before you, show you clearly such facts as are necessary to the understanding of great Art, and so leave you to pursue, at your pleasure, the graceful mystery of this imperfect leafage life.
I took in the outset the type of atriplebut as the most generalthat could be given of all trees, because it represents a prevalently upright main tendency, with a capacity of branching on both sides. I would have shown the power of branching onallsides if I could; but we must be content at first with the simplest condition. From what we have seen since of bud structure, we may now make our type more complete by giving each bud a root proportioned to its size. And our elementary type of tree plant will be as in Fig. 46.
§ 7. Now these three buds, though differently placed, have all one mind. No bud has an oblique mind. Every one would like, if he could, to grow upright, and it is because the midmost one has entirely his own way in this matter, that he is largest. He is an elder brother;—his birthright is to grow straight towards the sky. A younger child may perhaps supplant him, if he does not care for his privilege. In the meantime all are of one family, and love each other,—so that the two lateral buds do not stoop aside because they like it, but to let their more favored brother grow in peace. All the three buds and roots have at heart the same desire;—which is, the one to grow as straight as he can towards bright heaven, the other as deep as he can into dark earth. Up to light, and down to shade;—into air and into rock:—that is their mind and purpose for ever. So far as they can, in kindness to each other, and by sufferance of external circumstances, work out that destiny, they will. But their beauty will not result from their working it out,—only from their maintained purpose and resolve to do so, if it may be. They will fail—certainly two, perhaps all three of them: fail egregiously;—ridiculously;—it may be agonizingly. Instead of growing up, they may be wholly sacrificed to happier buds above, and have to growdown, sideways, roundabout ways, all sorts of ways. Instead of getting down quietly into the convent of the earth, they may have to cling and crawl about hardest and hottest angles of it, full in sight of man and beast, and roughly trodden under foot by them;—stumbling-blocks to many.
Yet out of such sacrifice, gracefully made—such misfortune, gloriously sustained—all their true beauty is to arise. Yes, and from more than sacrifice—more than misfortune: fromdeath. Yes, and more than death:—from the worst kind of death: notnatural, coming to each in its due time; but premature, oppressed, unnatural, misguided—or so it would seem—to the poor dying sprays. Yet, without such death, no strong trunk were ever possible; no grace of glorious limb or glittering leaf; no companionship with the rest of nature or with man.
§ 8. Let us see how this must be. We return to our poor little threefold type, Fig. 46, above. Next year he will become as in Fig. 47. The two lateral buds keeping as much as may be out of their brother’s way, and yet growing upwards with a will, strike diagonal lines, and in moderate comfort accomplish their year’s life and terminal buds. But what is to be done next? Forming the triple terminal head on this diagonal line, we find that one of our next year’s buds,c, will have to grow down again, which is very hard; and another,b, will run right against the lateral branch of the upper bud,A, which must not be allowed under any circumstances.
What are we to do?
§ 9. The best we can. Give up our straightness, and some of our length, and consent to grow short, and crooked. Butbshall be ordered to stoop forward and keep his head out of the great bough’s way, as in Fig. 48, and grow as he best may, with the consumptive pain in his chest. To give him a little more room, the elder brother,a, shall stoop a little forward also, recovering himself when he has got out ofb’s way; and budcshall be encouraged to bend himself bravely round and up, after his first start in that disagreeable downward direction. Poorb, withdrawn from air and light betweenaandA, and having to live stooping besides, cannot make much of himself, and is stunted and feeble.c, having free play for his energies, bends up with a will, and becomes handsomer, to our minds, than if he had been straight; andais none the worse for his concession to unhappybin early life.
So far well for this year. But how for next?bis already too near the spray above him, even for his own strength and comfort; much less, with his weak constitution, will he be able to throw up any strong new shoots. And if he did, they would only run into those of the bough above. (If the reader will proceed in the construction of the whole figure he will see that this is so.) Under these discouragements and deficiencies,bis probably frostbitten, and drops off. The bough proceeds, mutilated, and itself somewhat discouraged. But it repeats its sincere and good-natured compliances, and at the close of the year, new wood from all the leaves having concealed the stump, and effaced the memory of poor lostb, and perhaps a consolatory bud lower down having thrown out a tiny spray to make the most of the vacant space near the main stem, we shall find the bough in some such shape as Fig. 49.
§ 10. Wherein we already see the germ of our irregularly bending branch, which might ultimately be much the prettier for the loss ofb. Alas! the Fates have forbidden even this. While the low bough is making all these exertions, the boughs ofA, above him, higher in air, have made the same under happier auspices. Every year their thicker leaves more and more forbid the light; and, after rain, shed their own drops unwittingly on the unfortunate lower bough, and prevent the air or sun from drying his bark or checking the chill in his medullary rays. Slowly a hopeless languor gains upon him. He buds here or there, faintly, in the spring; but the flow of strong wood from above oppresses him even about his root, where it joins the trunk. The very sap does not turn aside to him, but rushes up to the stronger, laughing leaves far above. Life is no more worth having; and abandoning all effort, the poor bough drops, and finds consummation of destiny in helping an old woman’s fire.
When he is gone, the one next above is left with greater freedom, and will shoot now from points of its sprays which were before likely to perish. Hence another condition of irregularity in form. But that bough also will fall in its turn, though after longer persistence. Gradually thus the central trunk is built, and the branches by whose help it was formed cast off, leaving here and there scars, which are all effaced by years, or lost sight of among the roughnesses and furrows of the aged surface. The work is continually advancing, and thus the head of foliage on any tree is not an expansion at a given height, like a flower-bell, but the collective group of boughs, or workmen, who have got up so far, and will get up higher next year, still losing one or two of their number underneath.
§ 11. So far well. But this only accounts for the formation of a vertical trunk. How is it that at a certain height this vertical trunk ceases to be built; and irregular branches spread in all directions?
First: In a great number of trees, the vertical trunk never ceases to be built. It is confused, at the top of the tree, among other radiating branches, being at first, of course, just as slender as they, and only prevailing over them in time. It shows at the top the same degree of irregularity and undulation as a sapling; and is transformed gradually into straightness lower down (see Fig. 50). The reader has only to take an hour’s ramble, to see for himself how many trees are thus constructed, if circumstances are favorable to their growth. Again, the mystery of blossoming has great influence in increasing the tendency to dispersion among the upper boughs: but this part of vegetative structure I cannot enter into; it is too subtle, and has, besides, no absolute bearing on our subject; the principal conditions which produce the varied play of branches being purely mechanical. The point at which they show a determined tendency to spread is generally to be conceived as a place ofrestfor the tree, where it has reached the height from the ground at which ground-mist, imperfect circulation of air, &c., have ceased to operate injuriously on it, and where it has free room, and air, and light for its growth.
§ 12. I find there is quite an infinite interest in watching the different ways in which trees part their sprays at this resting-place, and the sometimes abrupt, sometimes gentle and undiscoverable,severing of the upright stem into the wandering and wilful branches; but a volume, instead of a chapter or two, and quite a little gallery of plates, would be needed to illustrate the various grace of this division, associated as it is with an exquisitely subtle effacing of undulation in the thicker stems, by the flowing down of the wood from above; the curves which are too violent in the branches being filled up, so that what was ata, Fig. 50, becomes as atb, and when the main stem is old, passes at last into straightness by almost imperceptible curves, a continually gradated emphasis of curvature being carried to the branch extremities.
§ 13. Hitherto we have confined ourselves entirely to examination of stems in one plane. We must glance—though only to ascertain how impossible it is to do more than glance—at the conditions of form which result from the throwing out of branches, not in one plane, but on all sides. “As your fingers divide when they hold a ball,” I said: or, better, a large cup, without a handle. Consider how such ramification will appear in one of the bud groups, that of our old friend the oak. We saw it opened usually into five shoots. Imagine, then (Fig. 51), a five-sided cup or funnel with a stout rod running through the centre of it. In the figure it is seen from above, so as partly to show the inside, and a little obliquely, that the central rod may not hide any of the angles. Then let us suppose that, where the angles of this cup were, we have, instead, five rods, as in Fig. 52,A, like the ribs of a pentagonal umbrella turned inside out by the wind. I dot the pentagon which connects their extremities, to keep their positions clear. Then these five rods, with the central one, will represent the five shoots, and the leader, from a vigorous young oak-spray. Put the leaves on each; the five-foiled star at its extremity, and theothers, now not quite formally, but still on the whole as in Fig. 3 above, and we have the result, Fig. 52,B—rather a pretty one.
§ 14. By considering the various aspects which the five rods would take in Fig. 52, as the entire group was seen from below or above, and at different angles and distances, the reader may find out for himself what changes of aspect are possible in even so regular a structure as this. But the branchings soon take more complex symmetry. We know that next year each of these five subordinate rods is to enter into life on its own account, and to repeat the branching of the first. Thus, we shall have five pentagonal cups surrounding a large central pentagonal cup. This figure, if the reader likes a pretty perspective problem, he may construct for his own pleasure:—which having done, or conceived, he is then to apply the great principles of subjection and resilience, not to three branches only, as in Fig. 49, but to the five of each cup;—by which the cups get flattened out and bent up, as you may have seen vessels of Venetian glass, so that every cup actually takes something the shape of a thick aloe or artichoke leaf; and they surround the central one, not as a bunch of grapes surrounds a grape at the end of it, but as the petals grow round the centre of a rose. So that any one of theselateral branches—though, seen from above, it would present a symmetrical figure, as if it were not flattened (A, Fig. 53)—seen sideways, or in profile, will show itself to be at least as much flattened as atB.
§ 15. You may thus regard the whole tree as composed of a series of such thick, flat, branch-leaves; only incomparably more varied and enriched in framework as they spread; and arranged more or less in spirals round the trunk. Gather a cone of a Scotch fir; begin at the bottom of it, and pull off the seeds, so as to show one of the spiral rows of them continuously, from the bottom to the top, leaving enough seeds above them to support the row. Then the gradual lengthening of the seeds from the root, their spiral arrangement, and their limitation within a curved, convex form, furnish the bestseveretype you can have of the branch system of all stemmed trees; and each seed of the cone represents, not badly, the sort of flattened solid leaf-shape which all complete branches have. Also, if you will try to draw the spiral of the fir-cone, you will understand something about tree-perspective, which may be generally useful. Finally, if you note the way in which the seeds of the cone slip each farther and farther over each other, so as to change sides in the middle of the cone, and obtain a reversed action of spiral lines in the upper half, you may imagine what a piece of work it would be for both of us, if we were to try to follow the complexities of branch order in trees of irregular growth, such as the rhododendron. I tried to do it, at least, for the pine, in section, but sawI was getting into a perfect maelström of spirals, from which no efforts would have freed me, in any imaginable time, and the only safe way was to keep wholly out of the stream.
§ 16. The alternate system, leading especially to the formation of forked trees, is more manageable; and if the reader is master of perspective, he may proceed some distance in the examination of that for himself. But I do not care to frighten the general reader by many diagrams: the book is always sure to open at them when he takes it up. I will venture on one which has perhaps something a little amusing about it, and is really of importance.
§ 17. Let X, Fig. 54, represent a shoot of any opposite-leaved tree. The mode in which it will grow into a tree depends, mainly, on its disposition to lose the leader or a lateral shoot. If it keeps the leader, but drops the lateral, it takes the form A, and next year by a repetition of the process, B. But if it keeps the laterals, and drops the leader, it becomes first, C and next year, D. The form A is almost universal in spiral or alternate trees; and it is especially to be noted as bringing about this result, that in any given forking, one bough always goes on in its own direct course, and the other leaves it softly; they do not separate as if one was repelled from the other. Thus in Fig. 55, a perfect and nearly symmetrical piece of ramification, by Turner(lowest bough but one in the tree on the left in the “Château of La belle Gabrielle”), the leading bough, going on in its own curve, throws off, first, a bough to the right, then one to the left, then two small ones to the right, and proceeds itself, hidden by leaves, to form the farthest upper point of the branch.
The lower secondary bough—the first thrown off—proceeds in its own curve, branching first to the left, then to the right.
The upper bough proceeds in the same way, throwing off first to left, then to right. And this is the commonest and most graceful structure. But if the tree loses the leader, as atC, Fig. 54 (and many opposite trees have a trick of doing so), a very curious result is arrived at, which I will give in a geometrical form.
§ 18. The number of branches which die, so as to leave the main stem bare, is always greatest low down, or near the interior of the tree. It follows that the lengths of stem which do not fork diminish gradually to the extremities, in a fixed proportion. This is a general law. Assume, for example’s sake, the stem to separate always into two branches, at an equal angle, and that each branch is three quarters of the length of the preceding one. Diminish their thickness in proportion, and carry out the figure any extent you like. In Plate 56, opposite, Fig. 1, you have it at its ninth branch; in which I wish you to notice, first, the delicate curve formed by every complete line of the branches (compare Vol. IV. Fig. 91); and, secondly, the very curious result of the top of the tree being a broad flat line, which passes at an angle into lateral shorter lines, and so down to the extremities. It is this property which renders the contours of tops of trees so intensely difficult to draw rightly, without making their curves too smooth and insipid.
Observe, also, that the great weight of the foliage being thrown on the outside of each main fork, the tendency of forked trees is very often to droop and diminish the bough on one side, and erect the other into a principal mass.1
§ 19. But the form in a perfect tree is dependent on the revolution of this sectional profile, so as to produce a mushroom-shaped or cauliflower-shaped mass, of which I leave the reader to enjoy the perspective drawing by himself, adding, after he has completed it, the effect of the law of resilience to the extremities. Only, he must note this: that in real trees, as the branches rise from the ground, the open spaces underneath are partly filled by subsequent branchings, so that a real tree has not so much the shape of a mushroom, as of an apple, or, if elongated, a pear.
§ 20. And now you may just begin to understand a little of Turner’s meaning in those odd pear-shaped trees of his, in the “Mercury and Argus,” and other such compositions: which, however, before we can do completely, we must gather our evidence together, and see what general results will come of it respecting the hearts and fancies of trees, no less than their forms.