An old apple orchard is a fairy land indeed when blossoms cover the treesAn old apple orchard is a fairy land indeed when blossoms cover the trees
An old apple orchard is a fairy land indeed when blossoms cover the trees
Nothing tastes so good as ripe apples picked right off the tree!Nothing tastes so good as ripe apples picked right off the tree!
Nothing tastes so good as ripe apples picked right off the tree!
Their charm is the charm of the wild rose. Their arrangement on the gnarled twigs is irregular. The artist loves the unstudied grace of it. The great botanist, Linnæus, probably saw only pressed specimens, but he named the treecoronaria, which means, “fit for crowns and garlands.â€
I remember gathering the little green apples in the fall. Hard, and almost bitter, when eaten out of hand, they make a jelly that is as distinct and delightful in its way as the flowers are more admirable than common apple blossoms. The taste is wild, and almost bitter, but beside it ordinary apple jelly tastes insipid. Perhaps I am prejudiced, and the memory of that wild crab-apple jelly too remote to be depended upon. But many people agree with me. If you are in the woods in October, and come to a thicket of trees bearing flat, yellow apples, pick as many as you can carry home. Smell their spicy fragrance, and persuade your mother to make them into jelly, so that you can form your own opinion of it.
The Eastern crab apple grows over a large part of the region between the Atlantic coast, and the dry plains east of the Rocky Mountains, and south to Northern Alabama and Texas. The prairie crab, a different species, grows in the Mississippi Valley. A narrow-leaved species grows in the South, and the Oregon crab is the native wild apple of the woods, from California north into Alaska.
Quinces are core fruits, cousins of the apples. So are pears. All of our orchard pears and quinces are cultivated varieties of species thatonce grew wild in Europe or Asia. The Japanese quince in America is a hedge plant which in spring covers its bare twigs with large, deep rose-coloured flowers, and bears hard, freckled fruits that smell better than they taste, in September. We know all these fruits, and have them in our gardens, but they are foreigners here, though much at home. We have no native pears or quinces in America.
Do you know the peculiar taste and odour of the pit of a cherry or peach? Then you will recognise it without difficulty when you meet it in a bruised leaf or twig of any tree that bears stone fruits, wild or cultivated. It belongs to the family which includes plums, cherries, peaches, apricots, and almonds. But one species of native cherry is a large tree. It is chiefly as fruit trees that the cultivated varieties are important. A few are grown for their beauty as flowering trees and shrubs; some for their rich bronze foliage.
The wild cherry is the one lumber tree in the family. Its wood ranks with mahogany, though not so expensive as the tree which grows no nearer to us than lower Florida and CentralAmerica. It is made into furniture or used in the interior finishing of houses, parlour cars, and ocean liners. It takes a beautiful polish, and has a rich brown colour that improves with time. It is largely used as veneer on cheaper woods. “Solid cherry†is likely to be birch, if the article is of modern make.
This cherry has dark, shiny bark when young, which breaks into shallow furrows, and curls back like birch bark. The unquestionable sign by which to know a wild cherry is the bitter, peach-pit taste of the sap. Nibble a leaf or twig or bit of bark, and you get that unforgettable taste, that stays on the tongue longer than we like.
Birds feast in September on the long clusters of dark purple berries. They are bitter sweet, barely edible, I say. But birds take them thankfully, and children usually eat them freely. Old-fashioned people make them into wines or cordials for home remedies.
The choke cherry is a shrubby tree, with a rank, disagreeable odour added to the bitter and pungent odour that belongs to the black cherry. The leaves are twice as wide as the black cherry’s. The fruit shares the rank quality of the leaves and bark. Until dead ripe, the cherries are so bitter, harsh, and puckery that children, who eatthe black cherries eagerly, cannot be persuaded to taste choke cherries a second time. This is well-named the “choke†cherry. Only the birds can eat the berries without choking. They seem not to mind its rankness, for the fruit is all taken by the time it has turned black-ripe.
Early in summer the red bird cherry is in fruit, after its crown of white blossoms has passed. The pit is large, and the flesh thin and sour, and the whole fruit is discouragingly small. But birds are happy among the shining leaves until the last cherry is gone. This is quite sufficient appreciation. The seeds are dropped, and the little trees come up all through the woods and in the most unexpected places, due to the birds’ scattering of the seeds.
Garden cherries of the sweet and sour groups have sprung from wild species that grow in Europe. The red, black, and yellow cherries of California are the largest, most improved varieties. The garden cherries of the Eastern states are not nearly so large.
The native cherry of Japan has been cultivated as a flowering tree, until it is wonderfully beautiful. In its season of bloom, Japan is a perfect fairyland. The country is one great garden of pink cherry blossoms. At this time the people turn out to see the marvellous sight.A national holiday is dedicated to this tree, which is the symbol of happiness in the Flower Kingdom.
All plum trees are small in stature, and many are thorny by the sharpening of side twigs, as if the struggle with adverse conditions made it necessary to carry weapons of defence. I speak now of the wild species. They grow in thickets, another habit of self-protection.
The wild red and yellow plums that still grow in thickets along streams in the great middle country between the East coast and the Rocky Mountains, furnished an important article of food to the pioneer families, which led the westward march of civilisation, and founded the prairie states. Only people who remember those times, and actually took part in the work of the pioneer, can know how valuable the wild fruits were, while the young orchards were growing, and no fruit was to be had for the greater part of the year.
After the first heavy frost in September the plums were fit to eat. They became soft, and sweet, and pleasant in flavour. But the skin was thick, very sour and puckery, so eating plums was not an unmixed joy.
When a team and part of the family could be spared from the farm work, a day was taken for “plumming,†and a happy and laborious day it was, but always enjoyed in true holiday spirit. Usually neighbours joined in the outing, and had a picnic dinner together in the woods. Only the oldest clothes were worn, for in the plum thickets one must risk the ruin of his raiment by the angular, thorny branches. Sheets were spread under the trees where possible, and a severe shaking or beating of the branches showered the fruit down. All hands were busy at gathering the plums, and loading the waggons with the harvest.
Perhaps there was time afterward for the boys to explore the hazel thickets, and gather a generous bagful of these small, but deliciously flavoured nuts, still in their husks. Wild grape vines, loaded with the purple fruit, tempted the frugal wife to strip them, even though the sun was low. For days after the return home, she was at work putting away for winter use preserves and jellies and pickles, and good old-fashioned plum and grape “butter,†sweetened with molasses made from sorghum cane.
Little plum trees, dug in the woods in early spring, were planted in the home garden. By setting these carefully, and tilling and enrichingthe soil around them, larger trees and finer fruit were produced than the wild plum thicket could show. Some of the good cultivated plums have had such an origin.
A half dozen different species of wild plum grow wild in different soils and regions of the United States. Where two grow in the same territory, natural hybrids have originated, better than either parent in the quality of their fruit. Such a cross has given rise to several varieties of garden plums, of which the Miner group is a fair example. The best orchard plums for the middle of the country are crosses between native and Japanese species. The European species, like Damsons and Green Gages, do well in the Eastern states, and on the Pacific slope.
The prunes we buy are dried plums. For a century or two France has led all countries in the prune industry. Now California leads. The kinds of plums that can be dried are sweet and fleshy. Ordinary juicy plums cannot be made into prunes. The hot sun of California soon takes all the moisture out of the plums spread on tables to dry. There is no rain to fear in the hot summer months.
Peaches, nectarines, and apricots are stone fruits, closely related to the plums and peaches. These Old World fruits are grown in the warmparts of this country. California raises them in quantities. The most profitable of the stone fruits has woody flesh, and is raised for its pit, which we eat. This is the sweet almond, a valuable nut. Its related species, the bitter almond, yields almond oil and hydrocyanic acid, both important drugs.
In the same family with apples and plums and cherries is a group of slender, pretty trees called June berry, serviceberry, and on the East coast, shadbush. When the shadbush blossoms white, the fishermen know that it is time to expect the shad, which are taken in nets when they run up the rivers to spawn. The red berries are ripe in June, and the birds celebrate the event, and even take them before they begin to redden. Competition is strong, and the supply never equals the demand. Rarely can a human berry-picker find a ripe berry, to discover how it tastes.
The charm of this little tree is that it covers its slim branches so early with white blossoms. The clusters are soft and feathery, and a warm flush underlies the white, the ruddy, strap-shaped bracts, two of which are under each flower. Thedainty opening leaves are also ruddy, and these have opened before the blossoms pass.
In early April it is worth a long walk or drive through the woods to see the scattered serviceberry trees standing out from the bare background of leafless trees, lovely as any tree can ever be, in their robes of white. Thereafter, they seem to retire from view, engulfed by the foliage curtain the woodland draws about itself, as spring advances.
In early spring on the New Hampshire hillsides, the sap begins to mount the trunks of the sugar maple trees, dissolving the sugar stored in the wood cells during the previous summer. It is time for the making of maple sugar. Winter is over. Spring work has begun.
Hundreds of twigs of elder have been cut in short lengths, and the pith pushed out, to make “spiles.†Holes are bored in the trunks of the trees, and in each hole one of these hollow spiles is driven. These are the little spouts that drain the sap from the tree into the waiting buckets that stand or hang below. Drip, drip, drip, the sweet sap flows into the buckets; and as often as they fill, the farmer makes the rounds of the treeswith barrels on a low sled or “stone boat,†emptying the buckets.
The sap he gathers is poured into the evaporating pans in the sugar house, and a roaring fire keeps it boiling. As the water goes off in steam, the remainder becomes maple syrup, which thickens as it boils. Skimming and straining removes any dirt or chips that fall into the sap. When it is just thick enough, the syrup is drawn off into cans, and sealed to be sent to market. A part of it, however, is boiled longer, and when drawn off, and cooled, it crystalises into the granular yellow maple sugar. It is cooled in shallow pans that hold a certain amount, and thus the bricks of maple sugar are formed. Little heart-shaped cakes are made by filling “patty pans†with this heavy syrup.
As long as the sap flows in sufficient quantities, the sugar harvest goes on. If the trees are bored with care, with holes not too close together, the tree will stand this draining from year to year, and seem not to be injured by the loss of sap. If the holes are close together, and extend all around the trunk, the tree will be practically girdled and it will die from the injury.
The finest kind of maple sugar is the wax which is made by pouring heavy syrup on the snow to cool. Quickly it thickens by the coldinto stringy yellow wax, which tastes like other maple sugar, but does not have the unpleasant gritty feeling, which sets some teeth on edge. Maple wax may be made at home, by melting the sugar, and pouring it into snow; but the time and the place to enjoy it most, is in the sugar camp when the hot syrup is poured from the long-handled ladle onto the nearest snow bank by the person who is in charge of the boiling. The cold air of the woods puts a keen edge on the appetite. The warm fire under the boiler takes off the chill, and the silent woods all around give a charm to the scene which one does not feel in any other place.
Hickory sap is sweet. This is sometimes added to that of the maples when maple trees are scarce.
The sap of pine trees is a liquid calledresin. The pine forests of the South are rich stores of this resin, which we call also pitch. The crude liquid drained from these trees is heated, and a light liquid calledturpentineis drawn off. The remainder hardens, and is known asrosin. The pine trees are tapped, not as the sugar trees of the North are, but in a way that is far more injurious to the trees. Resin hardens into gum when exposed to the air, so it is impossible to draw it out through small tubes like spiles of elder thatdrain the maple sap. A great gash is cut in the side of the trunk of a pine tree, forming a pocket holding three pints or more. Now a square foot or more of the bark above the pocket is cut off, and the wood is chipped to a depth of an inch or more. The bleeding surface of the wood fills the pocket below with resin, and a man comes around with pails and dipper to empty these pockets as fast as they fill. The pails are carried to a still, where the resin is poured into a tank and heated to draw off the limpid turpentine.
Once a week, from March till November, more bark and wood, above the scored surface, must be chipped to renew the flow of resin. If this fresh wounding did not occur, the flow would cease, because the resin thickens and hardens when exposed to the air. This stops up the pores of the wood.
Fortunes have been made by the draining of these pine trees of their rich, pitchy sap. Turpentine and tar and rosin are all products of the sap of pines, and all are immensely valuable, especially in shipyards, and in the provisioning of sea-going craft of all sorts. The term, “naval stores,†has been applied to the products of turpentine gathering. Our forests supply most of these products to other countries.
The sap of certain tropical trees hardens into rubber. This is one of the most valuable of tree crops, for there is hardly a household that does not have rubber articles of a dozen kinds that are daily used. Lacquer varnish is the juice of certain sumach trees that grow in Japan. Gums of fir trees have a special use in medicine, and in various arts.
Sweet gum oozes from trees of that name. This is not noticeable in our trees of the North, but if we follow the trees southward, the gum flow increases. In Mexico it is an article of commerce, obtained by wounding the bark of the trees. It is one of the staple glove perfumes in France. It is also made into medicines, perfumes, and incense.
The sap of wild cherry, holly, and buckthorn, of witch hazel and sassafras all yield medicinal drugs. The flowers of locust, of basswood, and all the fruit trees furnish nectar out of which bees make honey. The juicy inner bark of the slippery elm is valuable for food, and as a medicine.
Imagine a stranger who has lived all his life in a desert where no trees grow, coming suddenlyinto our village, and looking with wonder at the trees that shade the streets. He knows only the spiny cactuses, and other plants of the desert. His first question would be, “What are these great plants that stand so tall?†The name,tree, is new to him. It would be a strange experience to take such an eager and ignorant man and show him the trees, on the streets, planted in orchards, and growing wild in the woods outside of the town. His questions set us to thinking. He wants to know why we plant trees, and how we use those that grow in forests.
First, we tell him the uses of the living trees. Up and down the streets they are set for shade, and for their beauty. Rows of evergreens set close together make a protecting wall of green against the cold winds. Low clipped hedges of many kinds of trees make living boundaries, much more beautiful than wooden or wire fences. On lawns and near houses trees are planted for their beauty and for their shade. Orchards of fruit trees are planted because they furnish food. Nut orchards are set out for the same reasons.
The trees cut down in the woods, and sawed at the mills give us lumber to build houses to live in, and furniture to make them comfortable, and the same forest furnishes the fuel that keeps us warm. There is so much to explain to aperson who discovers trees for the first time. It takes a long time to tell all we know.
Do we think that we know a great deal about the uses of trees? If so, we are mistaken. The truth is that trees serve us in ways of which we have never dreamed.
We must travel over the world and read a great deal to learn how the people of other countries make use of trees. The basswood or linden which nobody cared to use except for fuel in the Middle West might pass for a useless tree, compared with those whose wood is harder and stronger. But in older countries people have quite a different opinion of the tree.
In Russia the tough bark of young lindens is used to make the shoes of peasants. Ropes, fishing nets, and braided mats are made from the same tough “bast†fibres, which are very long and tough in this family of trees. The seeds yield oil that is declared to be quite as good as olive oil for cooking, and for the table. Perfume is distilled from the flowers. Cattle browse on the twigs and leaves. The wood is the carver’s delight—soft, white, free from knots and imperfections. It is used for bureau drawers, carriage bodies, shoe soles, barrel staves and paper pulp. Its twigs make artist’s charcoal pencils.
Linden trees are planted for shade in manycountries, and in Europe they are often cut into grotesque shapes of animals as they grow. They are clipped into hedges, as close as box or yew. In America they are usually allowed to grow naturally, as shade trees. European species are rather more symmetrical than our native kinds.
The Indians of the Northwest used the soft inner bark of the tamarack pine for food. They cut down the trees, strip them of bark, and scraped out this soft lining layer. With water, they mash it into a pulp, which they cook and then mould into large cakes. A hole is next dug in the ground, lined with stones, and a fire is built in it. When the stones are hot, all ashes are removed, and the cakes, wrapped in green skunk cabbage leaves, are laid in. A fire of damp moss is built on top, and thus the cakes are thoroughly, baked. To insure their keeping, they are next smoked in a close tent for a week or more. This dries and cures them so that they may be safely packed away for future use. These hard, dry cakes are afterward broken into pieces and boiled. When the mass softens and cools, it is ready to eat. The fat of different animals is used for butter on this strange Alaskan bread.
Flowers and fruit of the wild black cherryFlowers and fruit of the wild black cherry
Flowers and fruit of the wild black cherry
The delicate white flower clusters of the serviceberry treeThe delicate white flower clusters of the serviceberry tree
The delicate white flower clusters of the serviceberry tree
Everybody knows that trees bear fruits of many kinds that are useful as food for men andbeasts. Spices, such as nutmegs, mace, cloves, and allspice, may be added to this list of fruits which we have as human foods.
The bark of birches is invaluable to the Indians for the making of their canoes, baskets, and all kinds of utensils. Huts and teepees are walled with it. Rope and coarse cloth are made out of the fibre of mulberry bark, and berry baskets out of the bark of the lodgepole pine. The fibrous roots of the larch tree furnished tough thread, with which the Indians sewed canoes of birch, and they made them water-tight with the gum of the balsam. The brown gum that oozes from wounds of the Western larch is sweet and starchy. The Indians discovered in it a valuable article of food.
One of the latest uses of wood is the making of paper, although the white hornet showed in its conical paper nest that this could be done. She has been making wooden paper for hundreds of years, scraping the wood from the surface of weathern-worn fence boards, and from the dead limbs of forest trees. Our newspapers are made of ground wood, cooked to a soft pulp, and rolled out into thin sheets. The high price of paper makes it worth while to gather up papers, bleach them, convert them into pulp, and roll them out again into sheets. Spruce woodand poplar are among the cheap woods which have come into demand at the paper mills. The forests of these trees, counted of little use for lumber, have become valuable because the paper mills can use them.
Look about the room, and a dozen articles, beside the chairs and table, are products of wood, or in some way owe a debt to trees. The paint that covers the window sash and frames was mixed with turpentine, which is obtained from the pitchy sap of pine trees. The shades and curtains are coloured. Dyes of many kinds are extracted from the various dyewoods, trees that grow in tropical forests. The newspaper and the books on the shelves are made of wood pulp. The lacquered box from Japan is a handsome thing. The lacquer varnish is the sap of a certain Oriental sumach tree. The perfume of the gloves in the box is made from the fragrant gum of an Oriental sweet gum tree. The skin out of which the gloves were made was tanned, not with bark, but with the acorn cups, or galls, of a European oak.
The shoes on your feet are made of leather. The hemlock trees that grow on the hills were stripped of their bark by peelers in early spring. Black oak and chestnut oak are also stripped in our woods. Carloads of bark are shipped to thetanneries to be used in the tanning of skins which changes them into leather.
That beautiful book upon the table is bound in Russia leather. The acorn cups of a European oak were used to tan the skins that made this leather so much more beautiful than that of your shoes. Your gloves are made of kid skins tanned in Europe. For this particular work the nut-like galls that grow on certain oak trees are gathered in the woods.
Tannin is the substance in oak bark which makes it valuable in tanning leather. A high percentage of tannin is found in oak galls. For this reason they are gathered in many countries, and are among the most valuable and high-priced supplies for the establishments that tan skins for gloves. The most expensive inks and dyes, those that do not fade, but are practically permanent, are made from selected oak galls.
Oak apples are a strange fruit, found in more or less abundance on the leaves of our own oak trees in autumn. You have seen them in summer time, plump, green balls, sometimes as large as a hen’s egg, but globular, sitting upon a leaf. In autumn the balls take on the colour of the dying leaves.
The same tree may have hard little marble-like balls growing on its twigs. These are ofdifferent sizes, and it is not unusual to find a hole in the side of each.
All such outgrowths on the leaves and twigs of oaks are called galls, and they are chiefly caused by winged insects called gall-gnats. An egg is laid in early spring, in a slit pierced in the twig or leaf. As this egg hatches, the tissue about it is disturbed in its growth by the presence of this feeding grub. The soft leaf pulp, or the tender tissues of the twig that surround it, are exactly what the grub likes to eat. Food and drink are all about it, and as it feeds, it grows. The leaf swells, and so surrounds the grub with an abnormal growth. The grub still feeds, and the swelling becomes larger, until finally, when the insect ceases to eat, it is housed in the peculiar ball which we know as an oak gall. Each species of gall-maker is known by its house.
The oak apples are of several kinds. Some are empty except for a little shell in the centre, in which the fat grub sleeps. Sometimes the substance within the “apple†is corky, sometimes spongy. Bullet galls, which form on twigs like little marbles, are usually solid to the centre, where the grub lies until the time comes for it to bore its way out to the surface, and fly away, to lay eggs which will produce other galls. Usually oak galls, found in winter, contain the sleepinggrub, whose transformation into a winged insect waits until the coming of spring.
The cork in your ink bottle is the bark of an oak tree. Go to Portugal or to Northern Africa, and you may see the cork harvest in progress in July or August. There is no place to go for genuine cork except to a small evergreen oak that rarely reaches a height over thirty feet. When these trees are twenty-five years old, a hard, thin layer of bark is stripped off. This is a valuable tan bark, but it is not in the least corky. The tree now produces a spongy bark entirely different from the first. It is not disturbed for eight or ten years. This is stripped off. It is the poor quality of bark which fishermen use to float their nets with.
Ten years later the bark is stripped again. It is better in quality than the first. Each ten years brings the bark stripper again to the tree. In the fiftieth year, the bark is of the finest quality, and for fifty years that follow there are five strippings of bark of the highest grade. Then the quality becomes poorer. The trees are cut down, the bark is sold to the tanners, and the wood is used for charcoal or for fuel.
It is a very particular job to get the cork off and leave the under layer uninjured. The trunk is stripped from the ground to the point whereit branches, and the inner “mother bark†must not be bruised, for no more cork will grow on any bruised spot. Two circular cuts are made, one at the top, one at the bottom of the columnar trunk, then two opposite slits are made dividing the bark of the trunk into two halves. These curved plates are worked off by inserting a wedged-shaped tool between the bark and the trunk, and gradually working it further in until the whole curved plate of cork comes off. These two big sheets are steamed and flattened, then bound in bundles, and shipped to wholesale dealers in cork.
The owner of a grove of cork oaks must wait ten years between crops of the bark, but every year three crops of acorns are borne on these trees. The pigs of the owner, turned into the grove, fatten on this rich food. So the little trees are very profitable in two ways.
In the south of Europe, the handsome, evergreen holm oak grows wild; its glossy leaves and compact form remind us of our holly trees. It is one of the most valuable ornamental oaks, but as a fruit tree, it has unusual value. Its acorns are sweet and rich, and the crop is heavy. Hogs are fattened upon them. In earlier days they were used as human food, and even now gipsies gather them to eat. Its acorn cups, bark,and the galls it bears are of the very best quality. They are used in the most particular jobs of dyeing and tanning.
Under ground, the holm oak bears a strange fruit—a fungus called “truffle†develops on the roots. These truffles are somewhat like mushrooms in their growth. They are far more delicious to eat, and expensive to buy than ordinary mushrooms. The best of them are found in France, and French people are especially fond of them.
Trees that grow on chalky lands are more likely to produce truffles. At a dozen years old, they begin to yield, and truffles may be found upon their roots for about twenty-five years.
Not every holm oak has truffles on its roots. The finding of these delicacies is a very interesting and exciting game, and a great deal of a lottery. There is but one way to find them, and that is by the sense of smell. The truffle has a rich, strong odour. Dogs and pigs are the only animals that are able to find it. The truffle-hunter is usually an old woman, who goes with a trained pig or a trained dog into the oak forest. She has a basket, and a spading fork, and she keeps a close eye on her four-footed partner. If the pig, in rooting about under an oak, suddenly becomes excited, and begins to root furiously, she drives him away, anddigs out the precious ball of fungus he has scented. It is irregular in form, and looks somewhat like a potato. Meanwhile the pig locates another, and is again disappointed. The truffle dog is treated in the same manner. Unless put into a pen, or chained at night, these truffle-hunters are likely to take to the woods and feast when no one is by to interfere with their pleasure.
Truffles are shipped in cans to the United States, but we have not yet discovered them growing on the roots of our oak trees. Probably we have not yet looked for them with sufficient care and patience.
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