The Red OakQ. rubra, Linn.The red oak grows rapidly, like the pin oak, and is a great favorite in parks overseas, where it takes on the rich autumnal red shades that give it its name at home. Such color is unknown in native woods in England.The head of this oak is usually narrow and rounded; the branches, short and stout, are inclined to go their own way, giving the tree more of picturesqueness than of symmetry, as age advances. Sometimes the dome isbroad and rounded like that of a white oak, and in the woods, where competition is keen, the trunk may reach one hundred and fifty feet in height.The red oak leaf is large, smooth, rather thin, its oval broken by triangular sinuses and forward-aiming lobes, that end in bristly points. The blade is broadest between the apex and the middle, where the two largest lobes are. No oak has leaves more variable than this.Under the dark brown, close-knit bark of a full-grown red oak tree is a reddish layer that shows in the furrows. The twigs and leaf-stems are red. A flush of pink covers the opening leaves, and they are lined with white down which is soon shed.The bloom is very abundant and conspicuous, the fringe-like pollen-bearing aments four or five inches long, drooping from the twigs in clusters, when the leaves are half-grown in May.The acorns of the red oak are large, and set in shallow saucers, with incurving rims. Few creatures taste their bitter white kernels.The Willow OakQ. Phellos, Linn.The willow oak has long, narrow, pointed leaves that suggest a willow, and not at all an oak. The supple twigs, too, are willow-like, and the tree is a lover of the waterside. But there is the acorn, seated in a shallow, scaly cup, like a pin oak's. There is no denying the tree's family connections.A southern tree, deservedly popular in cities for shade and ornamental planting, it is nevertheless hardy inPhiladelphia and New York; and a good little specimen seems to thrive in Boston, in the Arnold Arboretum. As a lumber tree, the species is unimportant.The Shingle, or Laurel, OakQ. imbricaria, Michx.The shingle or laurel oak may be met in any woodland from Pennsylvania to Nebraska, and south to Georgia and Arkansas. It may be large or small; a well-grown specimen reaches sixty feet, with a broad, pyramidal, open head.The chief beauty of the tree, at any season, is the foliage mass—dark, lustrous, pale lined, the margin usually unbroken by any indentations. In autumn the yellow, channelled midribs turn red, and all the blades to purplish crimson, and this color stays a long time. It is a wonderful sight to see the evening sunlight streaming through the loose, open head of a laurel oak. No wonder people plant it for shade and for the beauty it adds to home grounds and public parks.The Mountain Live OakQ. chrysolepis, Liebm.The mountain live oak cannot be seen without climbing the western slopes of the mountains from Oregon to Lower California, and eastward into New Mexico and Arizona. On levels where avalanches deposit detritus from the higher slopes, sufficient fertility and moisture are found to maintain groves of these oaks, wide-domed, with massive, horizontal branches from short, buttressed trunks—theWestern counterpart of the live oak of the South, but lacking the familiar drapery of pale green moss.The leaves are leathery, polished, oval blades, one or two inches in length, with unbroken margins, abundant on intricately divided, supple twigs, that droop with their burden and respond to the lightest breeze. The leaves persist until the bronze-green new foliage expands to replace the old, and keep the tree-tops evergreen.The acorns are large, and their thick, shallow saucers are covered with yellow fuzz. For this character, the tree is called the gold-cup oak. In June, the copious bloom is yellow. Even at an altitude of eight thousand feet the familiar gold-cup acorns are borne on shrubby oaks not more than a foot high!The maximum height of the species is sixty feet. The wood is the most valuable oak of the West Coast. It is used for wagons and agricultural implements.The Live OakQ. agrifolia, Née.The live oak (Q. agrifolia, Née.) called also "Encina," is the huge-limbed, holly-leaved live oak of the lowlands, that reaches its greatest abundance and maximum stature in the valleys south of San Francisco Bay. The giant oaks of the University campus at Berkeley stretch out ponderous arms, in wayward fashion, that reach far from the stocky trunk and often rest their mighty elbows on the ground. The pointed acorns, usually exceeding an inch in length, are collected by woodpeckers, and tucked away for further reference in holes they make in the bark of the same oaks.From the mountain slopes to the sea, and from Mendocino County to Lower California, groves of this semi-prostrate giant are found, furnishing abundant supply of fuel, but no lumber of any consequence, because the trunks are so short and the limbs so crooked.THE HORSE-CHESTNUTS, OR BUCKEYESThe Horse-chestnutAesculus Hippocastanum, Linn.At the head of this family stands a stately tree, native of the mountains of northern Greece and Asia Minor, which was introduced into European parks and planted there as an avenue tree when landscape gardening came into vogue. By way of England it came to America, and in Eastern villages one often sees a giant horse-chestnut, perhaps the sole remnant of the street planting of an earlier day.Longfellow's "spreading chestnut tree" was a horse-chestnut. And the boys who watched the smith at his work doubtless filled their pockets with the shiny brown nuts and played the game of "conquerors" every autumn as regularly as they flew their kites in spring. What boy has not tied a chestnut to each end of a string, whirled them round and round at a bewildering rate of speed and finally let them fly to catch on telegraph wires, where they dangle for months and bother tidy folks?The glory of the horse-chestnut comes at blooming time, when the upturning branches, like arms of candelabra, are each tipped with a white blossom-cluster, pointedlike a candle flame. (See illustration,page 54.) Each flower of the pyramid has its throat-dashes of yellow and red, and the curving yellow stamens are thrust far out of the dainty ruffled border of the corolla.Bees and wasps make music in the tree-top, sucking the nectar out of the flowers. Unhappily for us humans, caterpillars of the leopard and tussock moths feed upon the tender tissues of this tree, defacing the foliage and making the whole tree unsightly by their presence.Sidewalks under horse-chestnut trees are always littered with something the tree is dropping. In early spring the shiny, wax-covered leaf buds cast off and they stick to slate and cement most tenaciously. Scarcely have the folded leaflets spread, tent-like, before some of them, damaged by wind or late frosts or insects' injury, begin to curl and drop, and as the leaves attain full size, they crowd, and this causes continual shedding. In early autumn the leaflets begin to be cast, the seven fingers gradually loosening from the end of the leaf-stalk; then comes a day when all of the foliage mass lets go, and one may wade knee deep under the tree in the dead leaves. The tree is still ugly from clinging leaf-stems and the slow breaking of the prickly husks that enclose the nuts.With all these faults, the horse-chestnut holds its popularity in the suburbs of great cities, for it lives despite smoke and soot. Bushey Park in London has five rows of these trees on either side of a wide avenue. When they are in bloom the fact is announced in the newspapers and all London turns out to see the sight. Paris uses the tree extensively; nearly twenty thousand of them line her streets, and thrive despite the poverty of the soil.The American buckeyes are less sturdy in form and lessshowy in flower than the European species, but they have the horse-shoe print with the nails in it where the leaf-stalk meets the twig. The brown nuts, with the dull white patch which fastens them in the husk, justifies the name "buckeye." One nibble at the nut will prove to any one that, as a fruit, it is too bitter for even horses. Bitter, astringent bark is characteristic of the family.The Ohio BuckeyeAe. glabra, Willd.The Ohio buckeye has five yellow-green leaflets, smooth when full grown, pale, greenish yellow flowers, not at all conspicuous, and bitter nuts in spiny husks. The whole tree exhales a strong, disagreeable odor. The wood is peculiarly adapted to the making of artificial limbs.The great abundance of this little tree in the Ohio Valley accounts for Ohio being called the "Buckeye State."The Sweet BuckeyeAe. octandra, Marsh.The sweet buckeye is a handsome, large tree with greenish yellow, tubular flowers and leaves of five slender, elliptical leaflets. Cattle will eat the nuts and paste made from them is preferred by bookbinders; it holds well, and book-loving insects will not attack it. These trees grow on mountain slopes of the Alleghanies from western Pennsylvania southward, and west to Iowa and Texas.The California BuckeyeAe. californica, Nutt.The California buckeye spreads wide branches from a squat trunk, and clothes its sturdy twigs with unmistakable horse-chestnut leaves and pyramids of white flowers. Sometimes these are tinted with rose, and the tree is very beautiful. The brown nuts are irregular in shape and enclosed in somewhat pear-shaped, two-valved husks.This western buckeye follows the borders of streams from the Sacramento Valley southward; they are largest north of San Francisco Bay, in the canyons of the Coast Range.Shrubby, red-flowered buckeyes, often seen in gardens and in the shrubbery borders of parks, are horticultural crosses between the European horse-chestnut and a shrubby, red-flowered native buckeye that occurs in the lower Mississippi Valley.THE LINDENS, OR BASSWOODSThis tropical family, with about thirty-five genera, has a single tree genus,tilia, in North America. This genus has eighteen or twenty species, all told, with representatives in all temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, with the exception of Central America, Central Asia, and the Himalayas.Tilia wood is soft, pale-colored, light, of even grain, adaptable for wood-carving, sounding-boards of pianos, woodenwares of all kinds, and for the manufacture ofpaper. The inner bark is tough and fibrous. It has been used since the human race was young, in the making of ropes, fish nets, and like necessities. It was a favorite tying material in nurseries and greenhouses until the more adaptable raffia came in to take its place. The bark of young trees is stripped in spring to make the shoes of the Russian peasantry. An infusion of basswood flowers has long been a home remedy for indigestion, nervousness, coughs, and hoarseness. Experiments in Germany have successfully extracted a table oil from the seed-balls. A nutritious paste resembling chocolate has been made from its nuts, which are delicious when fresh. In winter the buds, as well as the tiny nuts, stand between the lost trapper and starvation. The flowers yield large quantities of nectar, and honey made near linden forests is unsurpassed in delicacy of flavor.About the time of Louis XIV, the French fashion arose of planting avenues to lindens, where horse-chestnuts had formerly been the favorite tree. The fashion spread to England of bordering with "lime trees" approaches to the homes of the gentry. "Pleached alleys" were made with these fast-growing trees that submitted so successfully to severe pruning and training. All sorts of grotesque figures were carved out of the growing lime trees in the days before topiary work in gardens submitted to the rules of landscape art, and slower growing trees were chosen for such purposes.In cultivation, lindens have the virtues of swift growth, superb framework, clean, smooth bark, and late, profuse, beautiful and fragrant bloom, which is followed by interesting seed clusters, winged with a pale blade that lightens the foliage mass. One fault is the early dropping of theleaves, which are usually marred by the wind soon after they reach mature size. Propagation is easy from cuttings and from seed.The American Linden, or BasswoodTilia Americana, Linn.The American linden or basswood is a stately spreading tree reaching one hundred and twenty feet in height and a trunk diameter of four feet. The bark is brown, furrowed, and scaly, the branches gray and smooth, the twigs ruddy. The alternate leaves are obliquely heart-shaped, saw-toothed, with prominent veins that branch at the base, only on the side next to the petiole. (See illustration,page 86.) Occasionally the leaf blades are eight inches long. A dense shade is cast by a linden tree in midsummer.The blossoms, cream-white and clustered on pale green, leaf-like blades, open by hundreds in June and July, actually dripping with nectar, and illuminating the platforms of green leaves. A bird flying overhead looks down upon a tree covered with broad leaf blades overlapping like shingles on a roof. It must look underneath to see the flowers that delight us as we look up into the tree-top from our station on the ground.In midsummer the linden foliage becomes coarse and wind-whipped; the soft leaf-substance is attacked by insects that feed upon it; plant lice deface them with patches of honey-dew, and the sticky surfaces catch dust and soot. Riddled and torn, they drop in desultory fashion, their faded yellow not at all like the satisfying gold of beech and hickory leaves.Seepage 31THE BLACK WALNUTThe young shoots are velvety and aromatic. The pistillate flowers, in groups of 3 to 5, are on terminal spikesSeepage 37SHAGBARK HICKORY IS KNOWN AND NAMED BY ITS LOOSE, STRIPPING BARKThe flight of basswood seeds on their wing-like blades goes on throughout the winter. This alone would account for the fact that basswoods greatly outnumbered all other trees in the virgin forests of the Ohio Valley. The seeds are not the tree's sole dependence. Suckers grow up about the stump of a tree the lumberman has taken, or the lightning has stricken. Any twig is likely to strike root, and any cutting made from a root as well.The finest specimen I know grew from a walking-stick cut in the woods and thrust into the ground, by a mere chance, when the rambler reached home. It is the roof tree of a mansion, tall enough to waft its fragrance into the third-story windows, and to reach high above the chimney pots.The range of this tree extends from New Brunswick to Dakota and south to Virginia and Texas. Its wood is used for carriage bodies, furniture, cooperage, paper pulp, charcoal, and fuel.The Bee Tree, or White BasswoodT. heterophylla, Vent.The bee tree or white basswood of the South has narrower leaves than the species just described, and they vary in form and size; but always have linings of fine, silvery down, and the fruits are fuzzy. A wonderful, dazzling play of white, pale green, and deeper shades is seen when one of these trees flutters its leaf mass against a background, sombre with hemlocks and an undergrowth of rhododendron. The favorite haunts of this species are the sides of mountain streams. Wild bees store their hoard of honey in the hollow trunks of old trees; and it isthe favorite holiday of many country folk to locate these natural hives and despoil them. In order to do this the tree must come down, and the revenge of the outraged swarm is sometimes a high price to pay for the stolen sweets.This linden is found from Ithaca, New York, southward along the Appalachian Mountains to northern Alabama, and westward into Illinois and Tennessee. It is best and most abundant in the mountains of eastern Tennessee and North Carolina, at a considerable altitude.The Downy BasswoodT. pubescens, Ait.The downy basswood has leaves that are green on both sides, but its young shoots and leaf-linings are coated with rusty hairs. It is a miniature throughout of the American basswood, except that the blade that bears the flower-cluster is rounded at its base, while the others taper narrowly to the short stem. This species occurs on Long Island, and is sparingly seen along the coast from the Carolinas to Texas.The Common LimeT. vulgaris"Unter den Linden," the famous avenue in Berlin, is planted with the small-leaved common lime of Europe, beside which the American basswood is a coarse-looking tree. Very disappointing docked trees they are, along this thoroughfare; for city streets are never places where a tree can reach its best estate. In the rural sections of Franceand Germany this tree reaches noble stature and great age.Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist, had his name from a fine linden tree, when his peasant father rose to the dignity of a surname. "Linn" is the Swedish word for linden. "Carl Linne," meaning "Charles of the linden tree," it was at first when he played as a boy in the shadow of its great branches. "Carolus Linnaeus" he became when he was appointed professor of the university at Upsala, and through all time since.Gerarde discourses quaintly upon the linden tree in his "Grete Herball" published in England in 1597. "The male tree," he says, "is to me unknown." We smile at his notion that there are male and female trees in this family, but we wonder at the accuracy of observation evinced by one who lived and wrote before the science of botany had any existence. Evidently Master Gerarde had a good pair of eyes, and he has well expressed the things he saw. I quote a paragraph:"The female line, or linden tree waxeth very great and thicke, spreading forth its branches wide and fare abroad, being a tree which yieldeth a most pleasant shadow, under and within whose boughs may be made brave summer houses and banqueting arbors, because the more that it is surcharged with weight of timber and such like, the better it doth flourish. The bark is brownish, very smooth and plaine on the outside, but that which is next to the timber is white, moist and tough, serving very well for ropes, trases and halters. The timber is whitish, plaine, and without knots; yea, very soft and gentle in the cutting and handling. The leaves are smooth, greene, shining and large, somewhat snipt or toothed about the edges: the floures are little, whitish, of a good savour, and very manyin number; growing clustered together from out of the middle of the leaf: out of which proceedeth a small whitish long narrow leafe: after the floures succeed cornered sharp pointed nuts, of the bignesse of hasell nuts. This tree seemeth to be a kinde of elme, and the people of Essex (whereas great plenty groweth by the waysides) do call it broad-leafed elme."PART IIITHE WATER-LOVING TREESThe Poplars—The Willows—The Hornbeams—The Birches—The Alders—The Sycamores, or Buttonwoods—The Gum Trees—The Osage OrangeTHE POPLARSThe poplars are plebeian trees, but they have a place to fill and they fill it with credit. They are the hardy, rude pioneers that go before and prepare the way for nobler trees. Let a fire sweep a path through the forest, and the poplar is likely to be the first tree to fill the breach. The trees produce abundant seed, very much like that of willows, and the wind sows it far and wide. The young trees love the sun, and serve as nurse trees to more valuable hardwoods and conifers, that must have shade until they become established. By the time the more valuable species are able to take care of themselves, the poplars have come to maturity and disappeared, for they are quick-growing, short-lived trees. The wind plays havoc with their brittle branches. Seldom has a good-sized poplar tree any claim to beauty.Tenacity of life, if not of fibre, belongs to the poplar tribe. Twigs strike root and the roots send up suckers from underground: cutting off these suckers only encouragesthem to fresh activity. The only way to get rid of the young growth that springs up about an old tree is to use the grubbing-hoe thoroughly and patiently.Poplar blossoms, borne in catkins, show the close relationship between this genus and the willows. The leaves, however, are always broad and leathery, and set on long stems. Twenty-five species are known, twelve of which are American.The White PoplarPopulus alba, Linn.The white poplar is sometimes called the silver-leaved poplar because its dark, glossy leaves are lined with cottony nap. This sprightly contrast of light and shade in the foliage is most unusual, and very attractive in early spring; but the leaf-linings collect soot and dust, and this they carry to the end of the season—a fact which should not be forgotten by those considering the advisability of planting this tree in a city where much soft coal is burned.The white bark of this European poplar reminds us of the birch family, though it has no silky fringe shedding from the surface. The leaves often imitate the maple in the divisions of their margins, justifying the name "maple-leaved poplar."As a dooryard tree this species has a wider popularity than it deserves. The wind breaks the brittle branches, and when these accidents threaten its life, the tree sends up suckers which form a grove about the parent trunk, and defy all efforts to eradicate them, until the grubbing-hoe and axe have been resorted to.The Black PoplarP. nigra, Linn.The Lombardy poplar, a variety of the black poplar of Europe, is a familiar tree figure along roadsides, and often marks boundary lines between farms. Each tree is an exclamation point, its branches short and numerous, rising toward the zenith. The roundish leaves that twinkle on these aspiring branches make the tree pretty and interesting when young—just the thing to accent a group of round-headed trees in a park. But not many years are attained before the top becomes choked with the multitude of its branches. The tree cannot shed this dead wood and the beauty of its youth is departed. The trunk grows coarse, warty, and buttressed at the base. Suckers are thrown up from the roots. There is little left to challenge admiration. Since the tree gives practically no shade, we must believe that the first planters were attracted by its odd shape and its readiness to grow, rather than by any belief in its fitness for avenue and highway planting.The CottonwoodP. deltoidea, Marsh.The cottonwood justifies its existence, if ever a tree did. On our Western plains, where the watercourses are sluggish and few and often run dry in midsummer, few trees grow; and the settler and traveler is grateful for the cottonwoods. The pioneer on the Western prairie planted it for shade and for wind-breaks about his first home. Many of these trees attain great age and in protected situationsare magnificent though unsymmetrical trees, shaking out each spring a new head of bright green, glossy foliage, each leaf responsive to the lightest breeze."Necklace-bearing poplar," it has been called, from the fact that children find pleasure in stringing for beads the green, half-grown pods containing the minute seeds. They also delight in gathering the long, red caterpillar-like catkins of the staminate flowers, the pollen bearers, from the sterile trees. A fertile tree is sometimes counted a nuisance in a dooryard because its pods set free a great mass of cotton that collects in window screens, to the annoyance of housewives. But this seed time is soon over.Just these merits of quick growth, prettiness, and tenacity of life, belong to the Carolina Poplar, a variety of native cottonwood that lines the streets of the typical suburban tract opened near any American city. The leaves are large and shine with a varnish which protects them from dust and smoke. But the wind breaks the branches, destroys the symmetry of the tree's head, and in a few years the suburban community takes on a cheap and ugly look. The wise promoter will alternate slow-growing maples and elms with the poplars so that these permanent trees will be ready to take their places in a few years.The AspenP. tremuloides, Michx.The trembling aspen, or quaking asp, is the prettiest tree of all the poplar tribe. Its bark is gray and smooth, often greenish and nearly white. An aspen copse is one of the loveliest things in the spring landscape. In March the bare, angular limbs show green under their bark, one of thefirst prophecies of spring; then the buds cast their brown scales and fuzzy gray catkins are revealed. There are few shades of olive and rose, few textures of silk and velvet that are not duplicated as the catkins lengthen and dance like chenille fringe from every twig. With the flowers, the new leaves open; each blade limp, silky, as it unrolls, more like the finest white flannel than anything else. (See illustrations,pages 86-87.) Soon the leaves shed all of this hairy, protective coat, passing through various tones of pink and silver on their way to their lustrous, bright green maturity. Their stems are flattened in a plane at right angles with the blade. Being long and pliant besides, they catch the breeze on blade or stem, and so the foliage is never still on the quietest of summer days. "Popple" leaves twinkle and dance and catch the sunlight like ripples on the surface of a stream, while the foliage of oaks and other trees near by may be practically motionless.The Balsam PoplarP. balsamifera, Linn.The balsam poplar is the balm of Gilead of the early settlers, the Tacamahac of the Northern Indians. They squeezed the fragrant wax from the winter buds and used it to seal up the seams in their birch-bark canoes. The bees taught the Indian the uses of this glutinous secretion, which the tree used to seal the bud-scales and thus keep out water. When growth starts with the stirring of the sap, this wax softens; then the bees collect and store it against a day of need. Whether their homes be hollow trees or patent hives, weather-cracks are carefully sealed up with this waterproof gum, which the bee-keeper knows as "propolis."Forests of balm of Gilead cover much of the vast British possessions north of the United States, and reach to the ultimate islands of the Aleutian group. They dip down into the states as far as Nebraska and Nevada. In cultivation, the species has proved itself a tree of excellent habit, easily propagated and transplanted, and of rapid growth. It has all the good points of the Carolina poplar and lacks its besetting sin of becoming so soon an unsightly cripple.Narrow-leaved CottonwoodP. angustifolia, James.Lance-leaved CottonwoodP. acuminata, Rydb.Mexican CottonwoodP. Mexicana, Wesm.These three cottonwoods line the banks of mountain streams at high elevations in the great system of mountain chains that stretch from British Columbia southward. The dancing foliage, bright green in summer, golden in autumn, lends a charming color note to the dun stretches of arid plain and the sombre green of pine forests. These trees furnish the settler fuel, shade, and wind-breaks while he is converting his "homestead" into a home.Black CottonwoodP. trichocarpa, Hook.Farther west, covering the mountain slopes from Alaska to Mexico, and liking even better the moist, rich lowlands, is the black cottonwood, the giant of the genus,reaching two hundred feet in height, and seven to eight feet in trunk diameter. Tall and stately, it lifts its broad rounded crown upon heavy upright limbs. In the Yosemite the dark, rich green of these poplar groves along the Merced River makes a rich, velvet margin, glorious when it turns to gold in autumn.Swamp CottonwoodP. heterophylla, Linn.The swamp cottonwood of the South has leaves of variable but distinctly poplar form, always large, broadly ovate, with slim round petioles. The white down of the unfolding leaves often persists into midsummer. On account of the fluttering leaves the trees were called, by the early Acadians, "Langues de femmes" a mild calumny traceable to the herbalist, Gerarde, who compares them to "women's tongues, which seldom cease wagging."The wood of poplars, soft, weak, and of slight value for fuel or lumber, has within two decades come into a position of great economic importance. Wood pulp is made of it, and out of wood pulp a thousand articles, from toys to wheels of locomotives, are made. A state forester declared: "If I could replace the maples in the state forest by poplars to-day, I would do it gladly. It would be worth thousands of dollars to the state."THE WILLOWSAlong the watercourses the willow family finds its most congenial habitat. It is a very large family, numbering more than one hundred and seventy species, which are,however, mostly shrubs rather than trees. America has seventy species of willows, and new forms are constantly being discovered, which are the results of the crossing of closely related species. These "natural hybrids" have greatly confused the botany of the willow family.Not more than half a dozen American willows ever attain the height of good-sized trees, and many of these are more commonly found in the tangled shrubbery of river banks, or covering long semi-arid strips of ground far to the north, or on mountain sides where their growth is stunted. Little trees, six inches high, bearing the characteristic catkins and narrow leaves of the willow, are found on the arctic tundras.The wood of willows is pale in color, soft in texture, and of very little use as lumber or fuel, except in localities where trees are scarce. The Indian depended upon the inner bark of the withy willow for material for his fish nets and lines, and farmers in the pioneer days took the tough, supple stems, when spring made the sap run freely, for the binding together of the rails of their fences. Knotted tight and seasoned, these twigs hardened and lasted for years.In Europe the white willow has long been used for the making of wooden shoes, artificial limbs, and carriage bodies. Its wood makes the finest charcoal for gunpowder. Willow wares, such as baskets and wicker furniture, are as old as civilization, and that in its primitive stages. It is a common sight in Europe to see groves of trees from which the long twigs have been taken yearly for these uses. The stumps are called "pollards" and the trees "pollarded willows" whose discouraging task has been to grow a yearly crop of withes for the basket-makers; yet each spring finds them bristling with the new growth.The hosts of Cæsar invading England in the First Century found the Britons defending themselves behind willow-woven shields, and living in huts of wattled willows, smeared with mud. From that time to the present the uses of these long shoots have multiplied.The roots of willows are fibrous and tough as the shoots. For this reason they serve a useful purpose in binding the banks of streams, especially where these are liable to flood. Nature seems to have designed these trees for just this purpose, for a twig lying upon the ground strikes root at every joint if the soil it falls on is sufficiently moist. The wind breaks off twigs and the water carries them down stream where they lodge on banks and sand bars, and these are soon covered with billows of green.Willows start growth early in spring, putting out their catkins, the two sexes on different trees, before the opening of the leaves. Before the foliage is full grown,the light seeds, each a minute speck, floats awayin a wisp of silky down. Its vitality lasts but a day, so it must fall on wet ground at once in order to grow. But the willow family is quite independent of its seeds in the matter of propagation. Chop the roots and twigs into bits and each will grow. Chop a young willow tree into sticks and fence posts and each one, if it is stuck green into the ground, covers itself with a head of leafy twigs before the season is over.Weeping WillowSalix BabylonicaThe weeping willow, much planted in cemeteries and parks, came originally from Asia and is remarkable for itsnarrow leaves that seem fairly to drip from the pendulous twigs. (See illustration,page 55.) The foliage has a wonderful lightness and cheerfulness of expression, despite its weeping habit.The Pussy WillowS. discolor, Muehl.The pussy willow is the familiar bog willow, whose gray, silky catkins appear in earliest spring. A walk in the woods in late February often brings us the charming surprise of a meeting with this little tree, just when its gray pussies are pushing out from their brown scales. We cut the twigs and bring them home and watch the wonderful color changes that mark the full development of the flowers. Turning them in the light, one sees under the sheen of silky hairs the varied and evanescent hues that glow in a Hungarian opal. In midsummer a pussy willow tree is lost among the shrubby growth in any woods. It is only because it leads the procession of the spring flowers that every one knows and loves it. (See illustrations,pages 86-87.)THE HORNBEAMSTwo genera of little trees in the same family with the birches are frequently met in the woods, often modestly hiding under the larger trees. One is the solitary representative of its genus: the other has a sister species.The hornbeams grow very slowly and their wood is close-grained, heavy, and hard. In flexibility, strength, and ability to stand strain, it rivals steel. Before metals sogenerally became competitors of woods in construction work, hornbeam was the only wood for rake teeth, levers, mallets, and especially for the beams of ox yokes. It outwore the stoutest oak, the toughest elm. Springiness adapted it for fork handles and the like. Bowls and dishes of hornbeam lasted forever, and would never leak nor crack. "Ironwood" is the name used wherever the wood was worked.American HornbeamCarpinus Carolinianum, Walt.The American hornbeam has bluish gray bark, very fine in texture, from which the name "blue beech," is common in some localities. "Water beech" points out the tree's preference for rich swamp land.The trunk and limbs are strangely swollen, sometimes like a fluted column, oftener irregularly, the swelling under the bark suggesting the muscular development of a gymnast's arm.In favorable places the hornbeams grow into regular oval heads, their branches dividing into a multitude of wiry, supple twigs. Crowded under oaks and other forest growth, they crouch and writhe; and their heads flatten into tangled masses of foliage.The delicate leaves, strong-ribbed, oval, pointed, turn to red and orange in autumn. (See illustration,page 87.) The paired nutlets are provided with a parachute each, so that the wind can sow them broadcast. This wing is leafy in texture, shaped like a maple leaf, and curved into the shape of a boat. After they have broken apart, the nutlets hang by threads, tough as hornbeam fibres always are.At last, away they sail, to start new trees if they fall in moist soil.The European hornbeam was a favorite tree for making the "pleached alleys," of which old-world garden-lovers were proud. A row of trees on each side of a promenade were pruned and trained to cover an arching framework, and to interlace their supple branches so that at length no other framework was needed, and one walked through a tunnel of green so closely interlaced as to make walls and roof that shut out light and wind and rain! Hedges, fences, and many fancies of the gardener were worked out with this hornbeam, so willingly did it lend itself to cutting and moulding into curious forms.Hop HornbeamOstrya Virginiana, Willd.The hop hornbeam has habits like the other ironwood and an equal reputation for the hardness of its wood. The tree, however, wears scaly, shaggy brown bark, suggesting in its manner of scaling off the shagbark hickory. Its nutlets are packed separate in loose papery bags, and together form a loose, cone-like cluster, like the fruit of a hop vine. The wind scatters these buoyant little bags, that travel far.This tree often twists in growing, and the trunk shows spiral furrows. "Hard-tack," "beetle-wood," "lever-wood"—all take us back to the pioneer who put this wood to such good uses, and who was glad to have these little trees growing in his wood-lot. In hickories, even, he had not the equal of them for strength and hardness.Seepage 70THE AMERICAN LINDENThe broad leaves are unsymmetrical. Dry seed-balls are scattered by winter winds, the leathery bracts serving as wingsSee pagepage 78TREMBLING ASPENCatkins and newly opened, flannel-like leavesSeepage 84THE PUSSY WILLOW1—Mature staminate flower. 2—Immature staminate flowers. 3—Mature pistillate flowersSeepage 85THE AMERICAN HORNBEAMA fruiting branch showing the thin beech-like leaves and the seeds on their leafy triangular bracts
The Red Oak
Q. rubra, Linn.
The red oak grows rapidly, like the pin oak, and is a great favorite in parks overseas, where it takes on the rich autumnal red shades that give it its name at home. Such color is unknown in native woods in England.
The head of this oak is usually narrow and rounded; the branches, short and stout, are inclined to go their own way, giving the tree more of picturesqueness than of symmetry, as age advances. Sometimes the dome isbroad and rounded like that of a white oak, and in the woods, where competition is keen, the trunk may reach one hundred and fifty feet in height.
The red oak leaf is large, smooth, rather thin, its oval broken by triangular sinuses and forward-aiming lobes, that end in bristly points. The blade is broadest between the apex and the middle, where the two largest lobes are. No oak has leaves more variable than this.
Under the dark brown, close-knit bark of a full-grown red oak tree is a reddish layer that shows in the furrows. The twigs and leaf-stems are red. A flush of pink covers the opening leaves, and they are lined with white down which is soon shed.
The bloom is very abundant and conspicuous, the fringe-like pollen-bearing aments four or five inches long, drooping from the twigs in clusters, when the leaves are half-grown in May.
The acorns of the red oak are large, and set in shallow saucers, with incurving rims. Few creatures taste their bitter white kernels.
The Willow Oak
Q. Phellos, Linn.
The willow oak has long, narrow, pointed leaves that suggest a willow, and not at all an oak. The supple twigs, too, are willow-like, and the tree is a lover of the waterside. But there is the acorn, seated in a shallow, scaly cup, like a pin oak's. There is no denying the tree's family connections.
A southern tree, deservedly popular in cities for shade and ornamental planting, it is nevertheless hardy inPhiladelphia and New York; and a good little specimen seems to thrive in Boston, in the Arnold Arboretum. As a lumber tree, the species is unimportant.
The Shingle, or Laurel, Oak
Q. imbricaria, Michx.
The shingle or laurel oak may be met in any woodland from Pennsylvania to Nebraska, and south to Georgia and Arkansas. It may be large or small; a well-grown specimen reaches sixty feet, with a broad, pyramidal, open head.
The chief beauty of the tree, at any season, is the foliage mass—dark, lustrous, pale lined, the margin usually unbroken by any indentations. In autumn the yellow, channelled midribs turn red, and all the blades to purplish crimson, and this color stays a long time. It is a wonderful sight to see the evening sunlight streaming through the loose, open head of a laurel oak. No wonder people plant it for shade and for the beauty it adds to home grounds and public parks.
The Mountain Live Oak
Q. chrysolepis, Liebm.
The mountain live oak cannot be seen without climbing the western slopes of the mountains from Oregon to Lower California, and eastward into New Mexico and Arizona. On levels where avalanches deposit detritus from the higher slopes, sufficient fertility and moisture are found to maintain groves of these oaks, wide-domed, with massive, horizontal branches from short, buttressed trunks—theWestern counterpart of the live oak of the South, but lacking the familiar drapery of pale green moss.
The leaves are leathery, polished, oval blades, one or two inches in length, with unbroken margins, abundant on intricately divided, supple twigs, that droop with their burden and respond to the lightest breeze. The leaves persist until the bronze-green new foliage expands to replace the old, and keep the tree-tops evergreen.
The acorns are large, and their thick, shallow saucers are covered with yellow fuzz. For this character, the tree is called the gold-cup oak. In June, the copious bloom is yellow. Even at an altitude of eight thousand feet the familiar gold-cup acorns are borne on shrubby oaks not more than a foot high!
The maximum height of the species is sixty feet. The wood is the most valuable oak of the West Coast. It is used for wagons and agricultural implements.
The Live Oak
Q. agrifolia, Née.
The live oak (Q. agrifolia, Née.) called also "Encina," is the huge-limbed, holly-leaved live oak of the lowlands, that reaches its greatest abundance and maximum stature in the valleys south of San Francisco Bay. The giant oaks of the University campus at Berkeley stretch out ponderous arms, in wayward fashion, that reach far from the stocky trunk and often rest their mighty elbows on the ground. The pointed acorns, usually exceeding an inch in length, are collected by woodpeckers, and tucked away for further reference in holes they make in the bark of the same oaks.
From the mountain slopes to the sea, and from Mendocino County to Lower California, groves of this semi-prostrate giant are found, furnishing abundant supply of fuel, but no lumber of any consequence, because the trunks are so short and the limbs so crooked.
THE HORSE-CHESTNUTS, OR BUCKEYES
The Horse-chestnut
Aesculus Hippocastanum, Linn.
At the head of this family stands a stately tree, native of the mountains of northern Greece and Asia Minor, which was introduced into European parks and planted there as an avenue tree when landscape gardening came into vogue. By way of England it came to America, and in Eastern villages one often sees a giant horse-chestnut, perhaps the sole remnant of the street planting of an earlier day.
Longfellow's "spreading chestnut tree" was a horse-chestnut. And the boys who watched the smith at his work doubtless filled their pockets with the shiny brown nuts and played the game of "conquerors" every autumn as regularly as they flew their kites in spring. What boy has not tied a chestnut to each end of a string, whirled them round and round at a bewildering rate of speed and finally let them fly to catch on telegraph wires, where they dangle for months and bother tidy folks?
The glory of the horse-chestnut comes at blooming time, when the upturning branches, like arms of candelabra, are each tipped with a white blossom-cluster, pointedlike a candle flame. (See illustration,page 54.) Each flower of the pyramid has its throat-dashes of yellow and red, and the curving yellow stamens are thrust far out of the dainty ruffled border of the corolla.
Bees and wasps make music in the tree-top, sucking the nectar out of the flowers. Unhappily for us humans, caterpillars of the leopard and tussock moths feed upon the tender tissues of this tree, defacing the foliage and making the whole tree unsightly by their presence.
Sidewalks under horse-chestnut trees are always littered with something the tree is dropping. In early spring the shiny, wax-covered leaf buds cast off and they stick to slate and cement most tenaciously. Scarcely have the folded leaflets spread, tent-like, before some of them, damaged by wind or late frosts or insects' injury, begin to curl and drop, and as the leaves attain full size, they crowd, and this causes continual shedding. In early autumn the leaflets begin to be cast, the seven fingers gradually loosening from the end of the leaf-stalk; then comes a day when all of the foliage mass lets go, and one may wade knee deep under the tree in the dead leaves. The tree is still ugly from clinging leaf-stems and the slow breaking of the prickly husks that enclose the nuts.
With all these faults, the horse-chestnut holds its popularity in the suburbs of great cities, for it lives despite smoke and soot. Bushey Park in London has five rows of these trees on either side of a wide avenue. When they are in bloom the fact is announced in the newspapers and all London turns out to see the sight. Paris uses the tree extensively; nearly twenty thousand of them line her streets, and thrive despite the poverty of the soil.
The American buckeyes are less sturdy in form and lessshowy in flower than the European species, but they have the horse-shoe print with the nails in it where the leaf-stalk meets the twig. The brown nuts, with the dull white patch which fastens them in the husk, justifies the name "buckeye." One nibble at the nut will prove to any one that, as a fruit, it is too bitter for even horses. Bitter, astringent bark is characteristic of the family.
The Ohio Buckeye
Ae. glabra, Willd.
The Ohio buckeye has five yellow-green leaflets, smooth when full grown, pale, greenish yellow flowers, not at all conspicuous, and bitter nuts in spiny husks. The whole tree exhales a strong, disagreeable odor. The wood is peculiarly adapted to the making of artificial limbs.
The great abundance of this little tree in the Ohio Valley accounts for Ohio being called the "Buckeye State."
The Sweet Buckeye
Ae. octandra, Marsh.
The sweet buckeye is a handsome, large tree with greenish yellow, tubular flowers and leaves of five slender, elliptical leaflets. Cattle will eat the nuts and paste made from them is preferred by bookbinders; it holds well, and book-loving insects will not attack it. These trees grow on mountain slopes of the Alleghanies from western Pennsylvania southward, and west to Iowa and Texas.
The California Buckeye
Ae. californica, Nutt.
The California buckeye spreads wide branches from a squat trunk, and clothes its sturdy twigs with unmistakable horse-chestnut leaves and pyramids of white flowers. Sometimes these are tinted with rose, and the tree is very beautiful. The brown nuts are irregular in shape and enclosed in somewhat pear-shaped, two-valved husks.
This western buckeye follows the borders of streams from the Sacramento Valley southward; they are largest north of San Francisco Bay, in the canyons of the Coast Range.
Shrubby, red-flowered buckeyes, often seen in gardens and in the shrubbery borders of parks, are horticultural crosses between the European horse-chestnut and a shrubby, red-flowered native buckeye that occurs in the lower Mississippi Valley.
THE LINDENS, OR BASSWOODS
This tropical family, with about thirty-five genera, has a single tree genus,tilia, in North America. This genus has eighteen or twenty species, all told, with representatives in all temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, with the exception of Central America, Central Asia, and the Himalayas.
Tilia wood is soft, pale-colored, light, of even grain, adaptable for wood-carving, sounding-boards of pianos, woodenwares of all kinds, and for the manufacture ofpaper. The inner bark is tough and fibrous. It has been used since the human race was young, in the making of ropes, fish nets, and like necessities. It was a favorite tying material in nurseries and greenhouses until the more adaptable raffia came in to take its place. The bark of young trees is stripped in spring to make the shoes of the Russian peasantry. An infusion of basswood flowers has long been a home remedy for indigestion, nervousness, coughs, and hoarseness. Experiments in Germany have successfully extracted a table oil from the seed-balls. A nutritious paste resembling chocolate has been made from its nuts, which are delicious when fresh. In winter the buds, as well as the tiny nuts, stand between the lost trapper and starvation. The flowers yield large quantities of nectar, and honey made near linden forests is unsurpassed in delicacy of flavor.
About the time of Louis XIV, the French fashion arose of planting avenues to lindens, where horse-chestnuts had formerly been the favorite tree. The fashion spread to England of bordering with "lime trees" approaches to the homes of the gentry. "Pleached alleys" were made with these fast-growing trees that submitted so successfully to severe pruning and training. All sorts of grotesque figures were carved out of the growing lime trees in the days before topiary work in gardens submitted to the rules of landscape art, and slower growing trees were chosen for such purposes.
In cultivation, lindens have the virtues of swift growth, superb framework, clean, smooth bark, and late, profuse, beautiful and fragrant bloom, which is followed by interesting seed clusters, winged with a pale blade that lightens the foliage mass. One fault is the early dropping of theleaves, which are usually marred by the wind soon after they reach mature size. Propagation is easy from cuttings and from seed.
The American Linden, or Basswood
Tilia Americana, Linn.
The American linden or basswood is a stately spreading tree reaching one hundred and twenty feet in height and a trunk diameter of four feet. The bark is brown, furrowed, and scaly, the branches gray and smooth, the twigs ruddy. The alternate leaves are obliquely heart-shaped, saw-toothed, with prominent veins that branch at the base, only on the side next to the petiole. (See illustration,page 86.) Occasionally the leaf blades are eight inches long. A dense shade is cast by a linden tree in midsummer.
The blossoms, cream-white and clustered on pale green, leaf-like blades, open by hundreds in June and July, actually dripping with nectar, and illuminating the platforms of green leaves. A bird flying overhead looks down upon a tree covered with broad leaf blades overlapping like shingles on a roof. It must look underneath to see the flowers that delight us as we look up into the tree-top from our station on the ground.
In midsummer the linden foliage becomes coarse and wind-whipped; the soft leaf-substance is attacked by insects that feed upon it; plant lice deface them with patches of honey-dew, and the sticky surfaces catch dust and soot. Riddled and torn, they drop in desultory fashion, their faded yellow not at all like the satisfying gold of beech and hickory leaves.
Seepage 31THE BLACK WALNUTThe young shoots are velvety and aromatic. The pistillate flowers, in groups of 3 to 5, are on terminal spikes
Seepage 31
THE BLACK WALNUTThe young shoots are velvety and aromatic. The pistillate flowers, in groups of 3 to 5, are on terminal spikes
Seepage 37SHAGBARK HICKORY IS KNOWN AND NAMED BY ITS LOOSE, STRIPPING BARK
Seepage 37
SHAGBARK HICKORY IS KNOWN AND NAMED BY ITS LOOSE, STRIPPING BARK
The flight of basswood seeds on their wing-like blades goes on throughout the winter. This alone would account for the fact that basswoods greatly outnumbered all other trees in the virgin forests of the Ohio Valley. The seeds are not the tree's sole dependence. Suckers grow up about the stump of a tree the lumberman has taken, or the lightning has stricken. Any twig is likely to strike root, and any cutting made from a root as well.
The finest specimen I know grew from a walking-stick cut in the woods and thrust into the ground, by a mere chance, when the rambler reached home. It is the roof tree of a mansion, tall enough to waft its fragrance into the third-story windows, and to reach high above the chimney pots.
The range of this tree extends from New Brunswick to Dakota and south to Virginia and Texas. Its wood is used for carriage bodies, furniture, cooperage, paper pulp, charcoal, and fuel.
The Bee Tree, or White Basswood
T. heterophylla, Vent.
The bee tree or white basswood of the South has narrower leaves than the species just described, and they vary in form and size; but always have linings of fine, silvery down, and the fruits are fuzzy. A wonderful, dazzling play of white, pale green, and deeper shades is seen when one of these trees flutters its leaf mass against a background, sombre with hemlocks and an undergrowth of rhododendron. The favorite haunts of this species are the sides of mountain streams. Wild bees store their hoard of honey in the hollow trunks of old trees; and it isthe favorite holiday of many country folk to locate these natural hives and despoil them. In order to do this the tree must come down, and the revenge of the outraged swarm is sometimes a high price to pay for the stolen sweets.
This linden is found from Ithaca, New York, southward along the Appalachian Mountains to northern Alabama, and westward into Illinois and Tennessee. It is best and most abundant in the mountains of eastern Tennessee and North Carolina, at a considerable altitude.
The Downy Basswood
T. pubescens, Ait.
The downy basswood has leaves that are green on both sides, but its young shoots and leaf-linings are coated with rusty hairs. It is a miniature throughout of the American basswood, except that the blade that bears the flower-cluster is rounded at its base, while the others taper narrowly to the short stem. This species occurs on Long Island, and is sparingly seen along the coast from the Carolinas to Texas.
The Common Lime
T. vulgaris
"Unter den Linden," the famous avenue in Berlin, is planted with the small-leaved common lime of Europe, beside which the American basswood is a coarse-looking tree. Very disappointing docked trees they are, along this thoroughfare; for city streets are never places where a tree can reach its best estate. In the rural sections of Franceand Germany this tree reaches noble stature and great age.
Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist, had his name from a fine linden tree, when his peasant father rose to the dignity of a surname. "Linn" is the Swedish word for linden. "Carl Linne," meaning "Charles of the linden tree," it was at first when he played as a boy in the shadow of its great branches. "Carolus Linnaeus" he became when he was appointed professor of the university at Upsala, and through all time since.
Gerarde discourses quaintly upon the linden tree in his "Grete Herball" published in England in 1597. "The male tree," he says, "is to me unknown." We smile at his notion that there are male and female trees in this family, but we wonder at the accuracy of observation evinced by one who lived and wrote before the science of botany had any existence. Evidently Master Gerarde had a good pair of eyes, and he has well expressed the things he saw. I quote a paragraph:
"The female line, or linden tree waxeth very great and thicke, spreading forth its branches wide and fare abroad, being a tree which yieldeth a most pleasant shadow, under and within whose boughs may be made brave summer houses and banqueting arbors, because the more that it is surcharged with weight of timber and such like, the better it doth flourish. The bark is brownish, very smooth and plaine on the outside, but that which is next to the timber is white, moist and tough, serving very well for ropes, trases and halters. The timber is whitish, plaine, and without knots; yea, very soft and gentle in the cutting and handling. The leaves are smooth, greene, shining and large, somewhat snipt or toothed about the edges: the floures are little, whitish, of a good savour, and very manyin number; growing clustered together from out of the middle of the leaf: out of which proceedeth a small whitish long narrow leafe: after the floures succeed cornered sharp pointed nuts, of the bignesse of hasell nuts. This tree seemeth to be a kinde of elme, and the people of Essex (whereas great plenty groweth by the waysides) do call it broad-leafed elme."
PART III
THE WATER-LOVING TREES
The Poplars—The Willows—The Hornbeams—The Birches—The Alders—The Sycamores, or Buttonwoods—The Gum Trees—The Osage Orange
THE POPLARS
The poplars are plebeian trees, but they have a place to fill and they fill it with credit. They are the hardy, rude pioneers that go before and prepare the way for nobler trees. Let a fire sweep a path through the forest, and the poplar is likely to be the first tree to fill the breach. The trees produce abundant seed, very much like that of willows, and the wind sows it far and wide. The young trees love the sun, and serve as nurse trees to more valuable hardwoods and conifers, that must have shade until they become established. By the time the more valuable species are able to take care of themselves, the poplars have come to maturity and disappeared, for they are quick-growing, short-lived trees. The wind plays havoc with their brittle branches. Seldom has a good-sized poplar tree any claim to beauty.
Tenacity of life, if not of fibre, belongs to the poplar tribe. Twigs strike root and the roots send up suckers from underground: cutting off these suckers only encouragesthem to fresh activity. The only way to get rid of the young growth that springs up about an old tree is to use the grubbing-hoe thoroughly and patiently.
Poplar blossoms, borne in catkins, show the close relationship between this genus and the willows. The leaves, however, are always broad and leathery, and set on long stems. Twenty-five species are known, twelve of which are American.
The White Poplar
Populus alba, Linn.
The white poplar is sometimes called the silver-leaved poplar because its dark, glossy leaves are lined with cottony nap. This sprightly contrast of light and shade in the foliage is most unusual, and very attractive in early spring; but the leaf-linings collect soot and dust, and this they carry to the end of the season—a fact which should not be forgotten by those considering the advisability of planting this tree in a city where much soft coal is burned.
The white bark of this European poplar reminds us of the birch family, though it has no silky fringe shedding from the surface. The leaves often imitate the maple in the divisions of their margins, justifying the name "maple-leaved poplar."
As a dooryard tree this species has a wider popularity than it deserves. The wind breaks the brittle branches, and when these accidents threaten its life, the tree sends up suckers which form a grove about the parent trunk, and defy all efforts to eradicate them, until the grubbing-hoe and axe have been resorted to.
The Black Poplar
P. nigra, Linn.
The Lombardy poplar, a variety of the black poplar of Europe, is a familiar tree figure along roadsides, and often marks boundary lines between farms. Each tree is an exclamation point, its branches short and numerous, rising toward the zenith. The roundish leaves that twinkle on these aspiring branches make the tree pretty and interesting when young—just the thing to accent a group of round-headed trees in a park. But not many years are attained before the top becomes choked with the multitude of its branches. The tree cannot shed this dead wood and the beauty of its youth is departed. The trunk grows coarse, warty, and buttressed at the base. Suckers are thrown up from the roots. There is little left to challenge admiration. Since the tree gives practically no shade, we must believe that the first planters were attracted by its odd shape and its readiness to grow, rather than by any belief in its fitness for avenue and highway planting.
The Cottonwood
P. deltoidea, Marsh.
The cottonwood justifies its existence, if ever a tree did. On our Western plains, where the watercourses are sluggish and few and often run dry in midsummer, few trees grow; and the settler and traveler is grateful for the cottonwoods. The pioneer on the Western prairie planted it for shade and for wind-breaks about his first home. Many of these trees attain great age and in protected situationsare magnificent though unsymmetrical trees, shaking out each spring a new head of bright green, glossy foliage, each leaf responsive to the lightest breeze.
"Necklace-bearing poplar," it has been called, from the fact that children find pleasure in stringing for beads the green, half-grown pods containing the minute seeds. They also delight in gathering the long, red caterpillar-like catkins of the staminate flowers, the pollen bearers, from the sterile trees. A fertile tree is sometimes counted a nuisance in a dooryard because its pods set free a great mass of cotton that collects in window screens, to the annoyance of housewives. But this seed time is soon over.
Just these merits of quick growth, prettiness, and tenacity of life, belong to the Carolina Poplar, a variety of native cottonwood that lines the streets of the typical suburban tract opened near any American city. The leaves are large and shine with a varnish which protects them from dust and smoke. But the wind breaks the branches, destroys the symmetry of the tree's head, and in a few years the suburban community takes on a cheap and ugly look. The wise promoter will alternate slow-growing maples and elms with the poplars so that these permanent trees will be ready to take their places in a few years.
The Aspen
P. tremuloides, Michx.
The trembling aspen, or quaking asp, is the prettiest tree of all the poplar tribe. Its bark is gray and smooth, often greenish and nearly white. An aspen copse is one of the loveliest things in the spring landscape. In March the bare, angular limbs show green under their bark, one of thefirst prophecies of spring; then the buds cast their brown scales and fuzzy gray catkins are revealed. There are few shades of olive and rose, few textures of silk and velvet that are not duplicated as the catkins lengthen and dance like chenille fringe from every twig. With the flowers, the new leaves open; each blade limp, silky, as it unrolls, more like the finest white flannel than anything else. (See illustrations,pages 86-87.) Soon the leaves shed all of this hairy, protective coat, passing through various tones of pink and silver on their way to their lustrous, bright green maturity. Their stems are flattened in a plane at right angles with the blade. Being long and pliant besides, they catch the breeze on blade or stem, and so the foliage is never still on the quietest of summer days. "Popple" leaves twinkle and dance and catch the sunlight like ripples on the surface of a stream, while the foliage of oaks and other trees near by may be practically motionless.
The Balsam Poplar
P. balsamifera, Linn.
The balsam poplar is the balm of Gilead of the early settlers, the Tacamahac of the Northern Indians. They squeezed the fragrant wax from the winter buds and used it to seal up the seams in their birch-bark canoes. The bees taught the Indian the uses of this glutinous secretion, which the tree used to seal the bud-scales and thus keep out water. When growth starts with the stirring of the sap, this wax softens; then the bees collect and store it against a day of need. Whether their homes be hollow trees or patent hives, weather-cracks are carefully sealed up with this waterproof gum, which the bee-keeper knows as "propolis."
Forests of balm of Gilead cover much of the vast British possessions north of the United States, and reach to the ultimate islands of the Aleutian group. They dip down into the states as far as Nebraska and Nevada. In cultivation, the species has proved itself a tree of excellent habit, easily propagated and transplanted, and of rapid growth. It has all the good points of the Carolina poplar and lacks its besetting sin of becoming so soon an unsightly cripple.
Narrow-leaved Cottonwood
P. angustifolia, James.
Lance-leaved Cottonwood
P. acuminata, Rydb.
Mexican Cottonwood
P. Mexicana, Wesm.
These three cottonwoods line the banks of mountain streams at high elevations in the great system of mountain chains that stretch from British Columbia southward. The dancing foliage, bright green in summer, golden in autumn, lends a charming color note to the dun stretches of arid plain and the sombre green of pine forests. These trees furnish the settler fuel, shade, and wind-breaks while he is converting his "homestead" into a home.
Black Cottonwood
P. trichocarpa, Hook.
Farther west, covering the mountain slopes from Alaska to Mexico, and liking even better the moist, rich lowlands, is the black cottonwood, the giant of the genus,reaching two hundred feet in height, and seven to eight feet in trunk diameter. Tall and stately, it lifts its broad rounded crown upon heavy upright limbs. In the Yosemite the dark, rich green of these poplar groves along the Merced River makes a rich, velvet margin, glorious when it turns to gold in autumn.
Swamp Cottonwood
P. heterophylla, Linn.
The swamp cottonwood of the South has leaves of variable but distinctly poplar form, always large, broadly ovate, with slim round petioles. The white down of the unfolding leaves often persists into midsummer. On account of the fluttering leaves the trees were called, by the early Acadians, "Langues de femmes" a mild calumny traceable to the herbalist, Gerarde, who compares them to "women's tongues, which seldom cease wagging."
The wood of poplars, soft, weak, and of slight value for fuel or lumber, has within two decades come into a position of great economic importance. Wood pulp is made of it, and out of wood pulp a thousand articles, from toys to wheels of locomotives, are made. A state forester declared: "If I could replace the maples in the state forest by poplars to-day, I would do it gladly. It would be worth thousands of dollars to the state."
THE WILLOWS
Along the watercourses the willow family finds its most congenial habitat. It is a very large family, numbering more than one hundred and seventy species, which are,however, mostly shrubs rather than trees. America has seventy species of willows, and new forms are constantly being discovered, which are the results of the crossing of closely related species. These "natural hybrids" have greatly confused the botany of the willow family.
Not more than half a dozen American willows ever attain the height of good-sized trees, and many of these are more commonly found in the tangled shrubbery of river banks, or covering long semi-arid strips of ground far to the north, or on mountain sides where their growth is stunted. Little trees, six inches high, bearing the characteristic catkins and narrow leaves of the willow, are found on the arctic tundras.
The wood of willows is pale in color, soft in texture, and of very little use as lumber or fuel, except in localities where trees are scarce. The Indian depended upon the inner bark of the withy willow for material for his fish nets and lines, and farmers in the pioneer days took the tough, supple stems, when spring made the sap run freely, for the binding together of the rails of their fences. Knotted tight and seasoned, these twigs hardened and lasted for years.
In Europe the white willow has long been used for the making of wooden shoes, artificial limbs, and carriage bodies. Its wood makes the finest charcoal for gunpowder. Willow wares, such as baskets and wicker furniture, are as old as civilization, and that in its primitive stages. It is a common sight in Europe to see groves of trees from which the long twigs have been taken yearly for these uses. The stumps are called "pollards" and the trees "pollarded willows" whose discouraging task has been to grow a yearly crop of withes for the basket-makers; yet each spring finds them bristling with the new growth.
The hosts of Cæsar invading England in the First Century found the Britons defending themselves behind willow-woven shields, and living in huts of wattled willows, smeared with mud. From that time to the present the uses of these long shoots have multiplied.
The roots of willows are fibrous and tough as the shoots. For this reason they serve a useful purpose in binding the banks of streams, especially where these are liable to flood. Nature seems to have designed these trees for just this purpose, for a twig lying upon the ground strikes root at every joint if the soil it falls on is sufficiently moist. The wind breaks off twigs and the water carries them down stream where they lodge on banks and sand bars, and these are soon covered with billows of green.
Willows start growth early in spring, putting out their catkins, the two sexes on different trees, before the opening of the leaves. Before the foliage is full grown,the light seeds, each a minute speck, floats awayin a wisp of silky down. Its vitality lasts but a day, so it must fall on wet ground at once in order to grow. But the willow family is quite independent of its seeds in the matter of propagation. Chop the roots and twigs into bits and each will grow. Chop a young willow tree into sticks and fence posts and each one, if it is stuck green into the ground, covers itself with a head of leafy twigs before the season is over.
Weeping Willow
Salix Babylonica
The weeping willow, much planted in cemeteries and parks, came originally from Asia and is remarkable for itsnarrow leaves that seem fairly to drip from the pendulous twigs. (See illustration,page 55.) The foliage has a wonderful lightness and cheerfulness of expression, despite its weeping habit.
The Pussy Willow
S. discolor, Muehl.
The pussy willow is the familiar bog willow, whose gray, silky catkins appear in earliest spring. A walk in the woods in late February often brings us the charming surprise of a meeting with this little tree, just when its gray pussies are pushing out from their brown scales. We cut the twigs and bring them home and watch the wonderful color changes that mark the full development of the flowers. Turning them in the light, one sees under the sheen of silky hairs the varied and evanescent hues that glow in a Hungarian opal. In midsummer a pussy willow tree is lost among the shrubby growth in any woods. It is only because it leads the procession of the spring flowers that every one knows and loves it. (See illustrations,pages 86-87.)
THE HORNBEAMS
Two genera of little trees in the same family with the birches are frequently met in the woods, often modestly hiding under the larger trees. One is the solitary representative of its genus: the other has a sister species.
The hornbeams grow very slowly and their wood is close-grained, heavy, and hard. In flexibility, strength, and ability to stand strain, it rivals steel. Before metals sogenerally became competitors of woods in construction work, hornbeam was the only wood for rake teeth, levers, mallets, and especially for the beams of ox yokes. It outwore the stoutest oak, the toughest elm. Springiness adapted it for fork handles and the like. Bowls and dishes of hornbeam lasted forever, and would never leak nor crack. "Ironwood" is the name used wherever the wood was worked.
American Hornbeam
Carpinus Carolinianum, Walt.
The American hornbeam has bluish gray bark, very fine in texture, from which the name "blue beech," is common in some localities. "Water beech" points out the tree's preference for rich swamp land.
The trunk and limbs are strangely swollen, sometimes like a fluted column, oftener irregularly, the swelling under the bark suggesting the muscular development of a gymnast's arm.
In favorable places the hornbeams grow into regular oval heads, their branches dividing into a multitude of wiry, supple twigs. Crowded under oaks and other forest growth, they crouch and writhe; and their heads flatten into tangled masses of foliage.
The delicate leaves, strong-ribbed, oval, pointed, turn to red and orange in autumn. (See illustration,page 87.) The paired nutlets are provided with a parachute each, so that the wind can sow them broadcast. This wing is leafy in texture, shaped like a maple leaf, and curved into the shape of a boat. After they have broken apart, the nutlets hang by threads, tough as hornbeam fibres always are.At last, away they sail, to start new trees if they fall in moist soil.
The European hornbeam was a favorite tree for making the "pleached alleys," of which old-world garden-lovers were proud. A row of trees on each side of a promenade were pruned and trained to cover an arching framework, and to interlace their supple branches so that at length no other framework was needed, and one walked through a tunnel of green so closely interlaced as to make walls and roof that shut out light and wind and rain! Hedges, fences, and many fancies of the gardener were worked out with this hornbeam, so willingly did it lend itself to cutting and moulding into curious forms.
Hop Hornbeam
Ostrya Virginiana, Willd.
The hop hornbeam has habits like the other ironwood and an equal reputation for the hardness of its wood. The tree, however, wears scaly, shaggy brown bark, suggesting in its manner of scaling off the shagbark hickory. Its nutlets are packed separate in loose papery bags, and together form a loose, cone-like cluster, like the fruit of a hop vine. The wind scatters these buoyant little bags, that travel far.
This tree often twists in growing, and the trunk shows spiral furrows. "Hard-tack," "beetle-wood," "lever-wood"—all take us back to the pioneer who put this wood to such good uses, and who was glad to have these little trees growing in his wood-lot. In hickories, even, he had not the equal of them for strength and hardness.
Seepage 70THE AMERICAN LINDENThe broad leaves are unsymmetrical. Dry seed-balls are scattered by winter winds, the leathery bracts serving as wings
Seepage 70
THE AMERICAN LINDENThe broad leaves are unsymmetrical. Dry seed-balls are scattered by winter winds, the leathery bracts serving as wings
See pagepage 78TREMBLING ASPENCatkins and newly opened, flannel-like leaves
See pagepage 78
TREMBLING ASPENCatkins and newly opened, flannel-like leaves
Seepage 84THE PUSSY WILLOW1—Mature staminate flower. 2—Immature staminate flowers. 3—Mature pistillate flowers
Seepage 84
THE PUSSY WILLOW1—Mature staminate flower. 2—Immature staminate flowers. 3—Mature pistillate flowers
Seepage 85THE AMERICAN HORNBEAMA fruiting branch showing the thin beech-like leaves and the seeds on their leafy triangular bracts
Seepage 85
THE AMERICAN HORNBEAMA fruiting branch showing the thin beech-like leaves and the seeds on their leafy triangular bracts