Western DogwoodC. Nuttallii, Aud.The Pacific Coast outdoes the rest of the country in the size of its forest trees. Superlatives in vegetation abound where the breath of the Japan current tempers the air. The Western dogwood often reaches one hundred feet in height in the forests near Seattle. Its flowers have six, instead of four, of the petal-like, white bracts, each narrower and pointed, and without the terminal notch. The tree in blossom is more magnificent than the eastern species, for the flowers are often twice as large, and the spectacle of one of these trees, after the leaves turn to scarlet in autumn, and it leans against the sombre evergreens that cover the mountain-side, is always startling, even in a country where surprises are the rule.European DogwoodC. mas.The European dogwood or cornel is often planted in the Eastern states as an ornamental tree, but not for its flowers alone, though these tiny, button-like clusters cover the bare branches in earliest spring. The showyfruits look like scarlet olives hanging among the glossy foliage in late summer. These fruits are edible, and in Europe are used in preserves and cordials.THE VIBURNUMSThe honeysuckle family, which includes a multitude of ornamental shrubs, furnishes two genera with three representatives. Handsome foliage, showy flowers, and attractive fruits justify the popularity of this family in gardens and parks.The viburnums are distributed over the Northern Hemisphere and extend into the tropics. There are about one hundred species, including the old-fashioned snowball bush, perhaps the best-known species in this country. Discriminating gardeners have replaced it by the Japanese snowball, because the latter has much more handsome foliage and perfect flowers, instead of the barren flower cluster that has nothing to show for itself once the bloom is past. This new species wears the autumn decoration of bright red berries well into the winter.The SheepberryViburnum lentago, Linn.In our native woods the sheepberry is a small round-headed tree, with slim, drooping branches and oval leaves, finely cut-toothed and tapering to wavy-winged petioles. In autumn these leathery leaves change to orange and red, their shiny surfaces contrasting with the dull lining, pitted with black dots. The fruit, a loose cluster of dark blueberries, on branching red stems, is an attractive color contrast, and the birds flutter in the trees until they have eaten the last one. The fragrant white flowers light up the tree from April to June with their flat clusters three to five inches across. The opposite arrangement of the leaves and that short-winged petiole identify the little tree, whether it grows by the swamp borders, along the streams, or in parks and gardens. At any season it is good to look upon. Its range covers the eastern half of the country, extending almost to the Gulf of Mexico and west into Wyoming.The Rusty NannyberryV. rufidulum, Raff.The rusty nannyberry is easily distinguished by the rusty hairs that clothe its new shoots and the stems and veins of the leaves. White flower clusters are succeeded by bright blue berries of unusual size and brilliance, ripe in October, on red-stemmed pedicles. The handsome polished leaves are rounded at the tips. The wood of this little tree has a very unpleasant odor, but this trait has no bearing upon its merits as a garden ornament. It is found wild from Virginia to Illinois and southward. In cultivation it is hardy in the latitude of Boston.The Black HawV. prunifolium, Linn.The black haw has the characteristic flowers and fruit of its genus, but is smaller throughout than the other two, and its branches are stout. In European parks and gardensit is known as the "stagbush." Its fruit turns dark when dead ripe, and persists well into the winter. In the wilds, this little viburnum is found from southern New England to Michigan, and south to Georgia and Texas.THE MOUNTAIN ASHESThe handsome foliage and showy flower clusters make the mountain ashes a favorite group of little trees for border shrubberies and other ornamental planting. The foliage is almost fern-like in delicacy and it spreads in a whorl below the flower clusters in spring and the scarlet berry clusters in autumn. Far into the winter after the foliage has dropped the berries persist, supplying the birds with food, especially in snowy winters, when their need is greatest, and brightening the dull thickets of bare twigs on dreary days.Eastern Mountain AshSorbus Americana, Marsh.The common eastern mountain ash reaches thirty feet in height—a slender, pyramidal tree, with spreading branches and delicate leaves of from thirteen to seventeen leaflets. The flat-topped cluster of creamy white flowers (see illustration,page 135) appears in May and June, above the dark yellow-green foliage; and the scarlet berries, ripe in September when the leaves have turned yellow, may persist until spring. Along the borders of swamps and climbing rocky bluffs, often scattered in plum thickets, these trees are handsome at any season. Along the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina home remediesare made out of the berries. From Newfoundland to Manitoba and southward the tree grows wild and is planted for ornament in home grounds.Elder-leaved Mountain AshS. sambucifolia, Roem.The elder-leaved mountain ash overlaps the first species, and is even more daring as a climber. It ranges from Labrador to Alaska, follows the Rocky Mountains to Colorado, and in the Eastern states goes no farther south than Pennsylvania. Its leaves are graceful and drooping like the elder. The flowers and fruits are large; the whole tree tropical looking, its open, pyramidal head giving each leaf a chance at the sun.European Mountain AshS. Aucuparia, Linn.Most common in cultivation is the European mountain ash called in England the rowan tree. This trim round-headed species is very neat and conventional compared with its wild cousins, but in the craggy highlands of Scotland and Wales it much resembles our mountain ashes.Old superstitions cluster around the rowan tree in all rural sections. These are preserved in the folk-lore and the literature of many countries. Rowans were planted by cottage doors and at the gates of church yards, being considered effectual in exorcising evil spirits. Leafy twigs hung over the thresholds, crosses made of "Roan" wood given out on festival days, were worn as charms or amulets. Milkmaids, especially, depended upon thesefor the defeat of the "black elves" who constantly tried to make their cows go dry, and unless prevented got into the churns—and then the butter would never come!The farther north a tree can grow, the more likely it is to have close relatives in the Old World. One mountain ash of Japan is hardly distinguishable from our western species, and some authorities believe that our two native species are but varieties of the rowan tree of Europe.THE RHODODENDRONThe heath family, of about sixty-seven genera, distributed over the temperate and tropical countries of the earth, has twenty-one genera in the United States, seven of which have tree representatives. Azaleas, the multitude of the heathers, the huckleberries, the madroñas, call to mind flower shows we have seen—under glass, in gardens, in parks, and among mountain fastnesses brightened by the loveliness of the mountain laurel, azalea, and rhododendron. In this wonderful family the leaves are simple and mostly evergreen. Rarely are the fruits of any importance. It is the flowers in masses that give the chief distinction to a family with over a thousand species, which have been the subjects of study and cultivation through centuries. The type of the family is the Scotch heather, immortalized in song and story. In London the Christmas season is marked by the sale of half a million little potted plants of heather! Each is about a foot in height and bears a thousand tiny bells, rosy, with white lips. This is the poor man's Christmas flower. It costs a shilling and lasts a month or more.Seepage 111FLOWERING DOGWOODSeepage 99THE OSAGE ORANGEFlowers appear in June, after the lustrous leavesTrees are scarce in the heath family. Shrubs are in the majority. The azaleas, which the Belgian gardeners have brought to such perfection and developed in such a great number of varieties, are among the best known of the heaths. The profuse blossoms in potted azaleas entirely extinguish the foliage, and the flowers are almost as lasting as if they were artificial.The genus rhododendron in American woods is represented by a mountain shrub and a tree. Both are evergreen and both are widely planted for ornament during the entire season. Carloads of these wonderful plants are shipped from the mountain slopes of the Alleghanies for mass planting on rocky ground, and to cover embankments along the drives in great estates. Because of the altitude of their native habitat, they are hardy in New England, and even as far as the Great Lakes. In time of bloom, these masses are the great flower show of the countryside, and in winter nothing is more beautiful than the evergreen foliage of rhododendrons, lifted out of the snow.Great Laurel or Rose BayRhododendron maximum, Linn.Among the Alleghany Mountains, from Virginia southward, the great laurel rises to a height of forty feet, and interlaces its boughs with those of Fraser's magnolia and the mountain hemlock in the dense forest cover. Thickets of rhododendron trees are common, and though its stature is reduced, it follows the highlands into New York, and is one of the most striking and beautiful shrubs in the Pennsylvania mountains. Scattered and becoming more rare and more stunted, it reaches Lake Erie and oninto New Brunswick. The leaves crown each of the stiff branches with an umbrella-like whorl, that stands guard in winter time about a large scaly bud. In spring the scales fall and a cone-like flower cluster rises. Each blossom is white, marked with yellow or orange spots, in the bell-like corolla's throat; or the flowers may be pale rose, with deeper tones in the unopened buds. A great tree in blossom, with its flower clusters lighting up the umbrella-like whorls of glossy, evergreen leaves, illuminates the woods, and makes every other tree look commonplace beside it.In late summer, green capsules, each with a curving style at the top, cluster where the flowers stood, but these are scarcely ornamental. The evergreen leaves and the buds, full of promise for June blossoming, are the beautiful features of rhododendrons in winter.The wonderful array of color and profusion of bloom, seen in an exhibit of rhododendrons and azaleas, is the most convincing proof of what crossing and careful selection can do in developing races of flowering plants. The ancestry of all these tub-plants is a matter of record, and goes back to a few comparatively insignificant wild species, competing with all the rest of the native flora for a livelihood.THE MOUNTAIN LAURELThe mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia, Linn.) grows from Nova Scotia to Lake Erie and southward through New England and New York, and along the Alleghanies to northern Georgia. Hardier than the rhododendrons, smaller in blossoms and in foliage, the laurel is in manypoints its superior in beauty. In June and July the polished evergreen foliage of the kalmia bushes is almost overwhelmed by the masses of its exquisite pink blossoms, beside which the bloom of rhododendrons looks coarse and crude in coloring. Coral-red fluted buds with pointed tips show the richest color, making with the yellow-green of the new leaves one of the most exquisite color combinations in any spring shrubbery. The largest buds open first, spreading into wide five-lobed corollas, with two pockets in the base of each forming a circle of ten pockets. Ten stamens stand about the free central pistil, and the anther of each is hid in a pocket of the corolla—the slender filament bent backward. This is a curious contrivance for insuring cross-fertilization through the help of the bees. (See "Flowers Worth Knowing.")Linnaeus commemorated in the name of this genus the devoted and arduous labors of Peter Kalm, the Swedish botanist, who sent back to his master at the university of Upsala specimens of the wonderful and varied flora found in his travels in eastern North America. Most of the names accredited to Linnaeus were given to plants he never saw except as dried herbarium specimens from the New World.THE MADROÑAThe madroña (Arbutus Menziesii, Pursh.), another member of the Heath family, is one of the superbly beautiful trees in the forests that stretch from British Columbia southward into California. South of the bay of San Francisco and on the dry eastern slopes of California mountains it is stunted to a shrub, but on the high, well-drainedslopes through the coast region and in the redwood forests of northern California it is a tree that reaches a hundred feet in height.John Muir writes: "The madroña, clad in thin, smooth, red and yellow bark, with big, glossy leaves, seems in the dark coniferous forests of Washington and Vancouver Island like some lost wanderer from the magnolia groves in the South." All the year around this is one of the most beautiful of American trees. It bears large conical clusters of white flowers above the vivid green of its leathery leaves, that are wonderfully lightened by silvery linings. In autumn the red-brown of the branches is enriched and intensified by the luxuriant clusters of scarlet berries against the red and orange of the two-year-old leaves. Among the giant redwoods this tree commands the highest admiration.THE SORREL TREEThe sorrel tree, or sour-wood (Oxydendrum arboreum, DC.) belongs among the heaths. Its vivid scarlet autumn foliage is its chief claim to the admiration of gardeners. In spring the little tree is beautiful in its bronze-green foliage, and in late July and August it bears long branching racemes of tiny bell-shaped white flowers. This multitude of little bells suggests the tree's relationship to the blossoming heather we see in florists' shops.The leaves give the tree its two common names: they have a sour taste, resembling that of the herbaceous sorrels. The twigs, even in the dead of winter, yield this refreshing acid sap, that flows through the veins of the membranous leaves in summer. Many a hunter, temporarilylost in Southern woods, quenches his thirst by nibbling young shoots of the sour-wood.After the flower comes a downy capsule, five-celled, with numerous pointed seeds. The leaves are not unlike those of a plum tree except that they attain a length of five to seven inches. In the woods from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, southward to Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas this tree ranges, and we often see it in cultivation as far north as Boston. It grows to its largest size on the western slopes of the Big Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, attaining here a height of sixty feet. In cultivation it is one of the little, slender-stemmed, dainty trees, beautiful at any season. It is the sole representative of its genus in the world, so far as botanists know.THE SILVER BELL TREESThe silver bell tree (Mohrodendron tetraptera, Britt.) earns its name in May when among the green leaves the clustered bell flowers gradually pale from green to white, with rosy tints that seem to come from the ruddy flower-stems. A "snowdrop tree" may be eighty feet in height, in the mountains of east Tennessee and western North Carolina, but ordinarily we see it in gardens and parks as a delicate, slender-branched tree, that stands out from every other species in the border as the loveliest thing that blooms there.Not a moment in spring lacks interest if one has a little mohrodendron tree to watch. For weeks the ruddy twigs grow ruddier by the opening of leaf and flower buds; then comes the slow fading of the flowers, when sun and rainseem to work together to bleach them into utter purity of color and texture. Gradually the white bells fade and a queer little green, tapering seed-case enlarges and ripens. Through the late summer these pale green fruits are exceedingly ornamental as the leaves turn to pale yellow.In cultivation, the silver bell tree is hardy in the New England states, but in its native woods it grows north no farther than West Virginia and Illinois. It is easily transplanted and pruned to bush form, if one desires to keep the blossoming down where the perfection of the flowers can be enjoyed at close range.Snowdrop TreeM. diptera, Britt.A second species called the snowdrop tree skirts the swamps along the South Atlantic and Gulf coast and follows the Mississippi bayous to southern Arkansas. It is smaller in stature than the silver bell tree, but has larger leaves and more showy flowers. The botanical names record the chief specific difference between the two species: this one has but two wings on its seed-cases, while the other has four. This species is hardy no farther north than Philadelphia. The flowers have their bells cleft almost to the base, whereas the bell of the other species is merely notched at the top.THE SWEET LEAFTwo genera of trees in this country are temperate zone representatives of a tropical family which furnishes benzoine, torax, and other valuable balsams of commerce. Itis easy to see that these trees are strangers from warm countries, for many of their traits are singularly unfamiliar.The Sweet LeafSymplocos tinctoria, L'Her.The sweet leaf is our sole representative of a large genus of trees native to the forests of Australia and the tropics in Asia and South America. They yield important drugs and dyestuffs, particularly in British India. But the sweet leaf is a small tree, rarely over twenty feet in height, with ashy gray bark, warty and narrowly fissured. In earliest spring its twigs are clothed with yellow or white blossoms that come in a procession and cover the tree from March until May, preceding the leaves, and breathing a wonderful fragrance into the air. The leaves are small, leathery, dark green, lustrous above, deciduous in the regions of colder winters, persistent from one to two years in the warmer part of its range. The flowers are succeeded by brown berries that ripen in summer, or early autumn. The flesh is dry about the single seed.Horses and cattle greedily browse upon the foliage, which has a distinctly sweet taste. The bark and leaves both yield a yellow dye, and the roots a tonic from their bitter, aromatic sap."Horse sugar" is another local name for this little tree, which is found sparingly from Delaware to Florida, west to the Blue Ridge Mountains, and in the Gulf states to Louisiana and northward into Arkansas and to eastern Texas. It is a shade-loving tree, usually found under the forest cover of taller species, skirting the borders ofcypress swamps, and climbing to elevations of nearly three thousand feet on the slopes of the Blue Ridge.A wonderful new species ofsymplocoshas come into cultivation from Japan and will enjoy a constantly increasing popularity. Its fragrant white blossoms, before the leaves, make the tree look like a hawthorn; but its unique distinction is that the racemed flowers give place to berries of a brilliant turquoise blue, which make this shrubby tree a most striking and beautiful object in the autumn when the leaves are turning yellow.THE FRINGE TREENative to the middle and southern portions of the United States is a slender little tree (Chionanthus Virginica, Linn.), whose sister species inhabits northern and central China. Both of them cover their branches with delicate, fragrant white flowers, in loose drooping panicles, when the leaves are about one third grown. Each flower has four slender curving petals an inch long, but exceedingly narrow. In May and June the tree is decked with a bridal veil of white that makes it one of the most ethereal and the most elegant of lawn and park trees at this supreme moment of the year. Later the leaves broaden and reach six to eight inches in length, tapering narrowly to the short petioles. Thick and dark green, with plain margins, and conspicuously looped venation near the edges, these leaves suggest a young magnolia tree. Blue fruits the size of plums succeed the flowers in September, denying the magnolia theory and shading to black before they fall. The flesh is dry and seeds solitary under the thick skin of the drupe.As in many other instances, European gardeners have led in the appreciation of this American ornamental tree. However, New England has planted it freely in parks and gardens, and popularity will follow wherever it becomes known. Its natural distribution is from southern Pennsylvania to Florida, and west to Arkansas and Texas. In cultivation it is hardy and flourishes far north of its natural range. No garden that can have a fringe tree should be without it. Fortunately its wood is negligible in quantity, and the temptation to chop down these trees does not come to the ignorant man with an axe. Whoever goes to the woods in May is rewarded for many miles of tramping if he comes upon a "snow-flower tree" in the height of its blooming season, led perhaps by its delicate fragrance when the little tree is overshadowed by the deep green of the forest cover. It is an experience that will not be forgotten soon.THE LAUREL FAMILYThe laurel family, a large group of aromatic trees and shrubs found chiefly in the tropics, includes with our sassafras, laurels, and bays the cinnamon and camphor trees.California LaurelUmbellaria Californica, Nutt.The California laurel climbs the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada from the forests of southwestern Oregon to the San Bernardino range near Los Angeles. "Up North" it is called pepperwood. It is a lover of wet soil,so it keeps near streams. With the broad-leaved maple it gives character to the deciduous growth near the northern boundaries of California, where it reaches eighty to ninety feet in height, and a trunk diameter of four to five feet. Sometimes it is tall, but usually it divides near the ground into several large diverging stems, forming a broad round head. In southern California, and at high elevations, it oftenest occurs as a low shrub.The willow-like leaves, lustrous and evergreen, last often through the sixth season. Unfolding in winter or early spring, they continue to appear as the branches lengthen until late in the autumn, turning to beautiful yellow or orange and falling one by one. Beginning during the second season, they continue to drop, as new shoots loosen their hold. These leaves are rich in an aromatic oil which causes them to burn readily when piled green upon a campfire. Plum-like purple fruits succeed the small white fragrant flowers, borne in clusters in the axils of the leaves. The seeds germinate before the fruit begins to decay. Indeed the plantlet has attained considerable size before the acid flesh shows any signs of change.This tree is a superb addition to the parks and gardens of the Pacific Coast. It is strikingly handsome in a land of handsome trees, native and exotic. Its wood is the most beautiful and valuable produced in the forests of Pacific North America for the interior finish of houses and for furniture. It is heavy, hard, strong, fine-grained, light brown, of a rich tone, with paler sap-wood, that includes the annual growth of thirty or forty seasons. The leaves yield by distillation a pungent, aromatic, volatile oil, and the fruit a fatty acid commercially valuable.The Red BayPersea Borbonia, Streng.Another laurel native to stream and swamp borders, from Virginia to Texas and north to Arkansas, is the red bay, whose bark, thick, red, and furrowed into scaly ridges on the trunk, becomes smooth and green on the branches. The evergreen leaves are narrowly oval, three to four inches long, bright green, polished, with pale linings. The white flowers are very minute bells borne in axillary clusters, succeeded in autumn by blue or black shiny berries, one half inch long, one-seeded, making a pretty contrast with the clear yellow of the year-old leaves and the bright green of the new ones.This native laurel, lover of rich, moist soil, deserves the place in cultivation more commonly granted its European cousin,Laurus nobilis, Linn., the familiar tub laurel of hotel verandas in the Northern states, and much grown out of doors in southern California and in milder climates east. The tree is occasionally sixty to seventy feet high, with trunk two to three feet in diameter. Such specimens furnish the cabinet-maker and carpenter with a beautiful, bright red, close-grained wood for fine interior finish and furniture. Formerly it was used in the construction of river boats, but the timber supply is now very limited.The AvocadoP. gratissima, Gaertn.In Florida and southern California the avocado or alligator pear is being extensively cultivated. Thislaurel grows wild in the West Indies, Brazil, Peru, and Mexico. Its berry attains the size of a large pear. It has been developed in several commercial varieties, all having smooth green or purple skin, and soft oily pulp like marrow surrounding a single gigantic seed. It is usually cut in two like a melon and eaten raw as a salad dressed with vinegar, salt, and pepper. Once a stranger acquires the taste, he is extremely fond of this new salad fruit. The growing of the trees is easy and very profitable. At present the fruits are in great demand in city markets, and the prices are too high for any but the rich to enjoy this luxury.Where a market is difficult to reach, the abundant oil is expressed from these fruits and used for illumination and the manufacture of soap. The seeds yield an indelible ink.It is interesting to the student of trees to note how many tropical families have representation in North America, due to the fact that Florida extends into the tropics, and the West Indies seem to form a sort of bridge over which Central American and South American species have reached the Floridian Keys and the mainland.The SassafrasSassafras, Karst.The sole remnant of an ancient genus is the aromatic sassafras familiar as a roadside tree that flames in autumn with the star gum and the swamp maples. In the deep woods it reaches a height of more than a hundred feet and is an important lumber tree. In the arctic regions and in the rocky strata of our western mountains, fossil leaves of sassafras are preserved, andthe same traces are found in Europe, giving to the geologist proofs that the genus once had a much wider range than now. But no living representative of the genus was known outside of eastern North America, until the report of a recently discovered sassafras in China.The Indians in Florida named the sassafras to the inquiring colonists who came with Columbus. They explained its curative properties, and its reputation traveled up the Atlantic seaboard. The first cargo of home products shipped by the colonists back to England from Massachusetts contained a large consignment of sassafras roots. To-day we look for an exhibit of sassafras bark in drug-store windows in spring. People buy it and make sassafras tea which they drink "to clear the blood." "In the Southwestern states the dried leaves are much used as an ingredient in soups, for which they are well adapted by the abundance of mucilage they contain. For this purpose the mature green leaves are dried, powdered (the stringy portions being separated), sifted and preserved for use. This preparation mixed with soups gives them a ropy consistence and a peculiar flavor, much relished by those accustomed to it. To such soups are given the namesgombo fileandgombo zab." (Seton.)Emerson says that in New England a decoction of sassafras bark gave to the housewife's homespun woolen cloth a permanent orange dye. The name "Ague Tree" originated with the use of sassafras bark tea as a stimulant that warmed and brought out the perspiration freely for victims of the malarial "ague," or "chills and fever."Sassafras wood is dull orange-yellow, soft, weak, light, brittle, and coarse-grained, but it is amazingly durable in contact with the soil, as the pioneers learned when theyused it to make posts and fence rails. It is largely used also in cooperage, and in the building of light boats. Oil of sassafras distilled from the bark of the roots is used for perfuming soaps and flavoring medicines.With all its practical uses listed above, we must all have learned to know the tree if it grows in our neighborhood, and if we observe it closely, month by month throughout the year, we shall all agree that its beauty justifies its selection for planting in our home grounds, and surpasses all its medicinal and other commercial offerings to the world.In winter the sassafras tree is most picturesque by reason of the short, stout, twisted branches that spread almost at right angles from the central shaft, and form a narrow, usually flat, often unsymmetrical head. The bark is rough, reddish brown, deeply and irregularly divided into broad scaly plates or ridges. The branches end in slim, pale yellow-green twigs that are set with pointed, bright green buds, giving the tree an appearance of being thoroughly alive while others, bare of leaves, look dead in winter.What country boy or girl has not lingered on the way home from school to nibble the dainty green buds of the sassafras, or to dig at the roots with his jack-knife for a sliver of aromatic bark?As spring comes on the bare twigs are covered with a delicate green of the opening leaves, brightened by clusters of yellow flowers (see illustration,page 150) whose starry calyxes are alike on all of the trees; but only on the fertile trees are the flowers succeeded by the blue berries, softening on their scarlet pedicels, if only the birds can wait until they are ripe.Midsummer is the time to hunt for "mittens" and tonote how many different forms of leaves belong on the same sassafras tree. First, there is the simple ovate leaf; second, a larger blade oval in form but with one side extended and lobed to form a thumb, making the whole leaf look like the pattern of a mitten cut out by an unskilled hand; third, a symmetrical, three-lobed leaf, the pattern of a narrow mitten with a large thumb on each side. Not infrequently do all these forms occur on a single twig. Only the mulberry, among our native trees, shows such a variety of leaf forms as the sassafras. There is quite as great variation in the size of the leaves. One law seems to prevail among sassafras trees: more of the oval leaves than the lobed ones are found on mature trees. It is the roadside sapling, with its foliage within easy reach, that delights boys and girls with its wonderful variety of leaf patterns. Here the size of the leaves greatly surpasses that of the foliage on full-grown trees, and the autumnal colors are more glorious in the roadside thickets than in the tree-tops far above them.Sassafras trees grow readily from seed in any loose, moist soil. A single tree spreads by a multitude of fleshy root-stalks, and these natural root-cuttings bear transplanting as easily as a poplar. Every garden border should have one specimen at least to add its flame to the conflagration of autumn foliage and the charming contrast of its blue berries on their coral stalks.THE WITCH HAZELEighteen genera compose the sub-tropical family in whichhamamelisis the type. Two or three Asiatic species and one American are known.The witch hazel (Hamamelis Virginiana, Linn.) is a stout, many-stemmed shrub or a small tree, with rough unsymmetrical leaves, strongly veined, coarsely toothed, and roughly diamond-shaped. The twigs, when bare, are set with hairy sickle-shaped buds. Nowhere in summer would an undergrowth of witch hazel trees attract attention. But in autumn, when other trees have reached a state of utter rest, the witch hazel wakes and bursts into bloom. Among the dead leaves which stubbornly cling as they yellow, and often persist until spring, the tiny buds, the size of a pin-head, open into starry blossoms with petals like gold threads. The witch hazel thicket is veiled with these gold-mesh flowers, as ethereal as the haunting perfume which they exhale. Frost crisps the delicate petals but they curl, up like shavings and stay till spring. At no time is the weather cold enough to destroy this November flower show.Among the blossoms are the pods in clusters, gaping wide if the seeds are shed; closed tight, with little monkey faces, if not yet open. The harvest of witch hazel seeds is worth going far to see. Damp weather delays this most interesting little game. Dry frosty weather is ideal for it.Go into a witch hazel thicket on some fine morning in early November and sit down on the drift of dead leaves that carpet the woods floor. The silence is broken now and then by a sharp report like a bullet striking against the bark of a near-by trunk, or skipping among the leaves. Perhaps a twinge on the ear shows that you have been a target for some tiny projectile, sent to its mark with force enough to hurt.Seepage 111BARK, BLOSSOM, FRUIT, AND WINTER FLOWER BUDS OF THE FLOWERING DOGWOODSeepage 116THE MOUNTAIN ASHThe flat, crowded cluster of tiny white flowers is set in awhorl of dark-green leaves in May or JuneThe fusillade comes from the ripened pods, which have a remarkable ability to throw their seeds, and thus do for the parent tree what the winged seeds of other trees accomplish. The lining of the two-celled pod is believed to shorten and produce a spring that drives the seeds forth with surprising force when they are loosened from their attachment. This occurs when the lips part. Frost and sun seem to decide just when to spring the trap and let fly the little black seeds.A young botanist went into the woods to find out just how far a witch hazel tree can throw its seeds. She chose an isolated tree and spread white muslin under it for many yards in four directions. The most remote of the many seeds she caught that day fell eighteen feet from the base of the tree.The Indians in America were the first people to use the bark of the witch hazel for curing inflammations. An infusion of the twigs and roots is now made by boiling them for twenty-four hours in water to which alcohol has been added. "Witch hazel extract," distilled from this mixture, is the most popular preparation to use for bruises and sprains, and to allay the pain of burns. Druggists and chemists have failed to discover any medicinal properties in bark or leaf, but the public has faith in it. The alcohol is probably the effective agent.Witch hazel comes honestly by its name. The English "witch hazel" is a species of elm to which superstitious miners went to get forked twigs to use as divining rods. No one in the countryside would dream of sinking a shaft for coal without the use of this forked twig. In any old and isolated country district in America there is usually a man whose reputation is based in his skilful use of a forked witch hazel twig. Sent for before a well is dug, he slowly walks over the ground, holding the twig erect by its two supple forks, one in each hand. When he passes over thespot where the hidden springs of water are, the twig goes down, without any volition of the "water-witch." At least, so he says, and if water is struck by digging, his claims are vindicated and scoffers hide their heads.THE BURNING BUSHAmerican gardeners cherish with regard that amounts almost to affection any shrub or tree which will lend color, especially brilliant color, to the winter landscape. Thus the holly, the Japanese barberry, many of the haws, the mountain ash, and the rugosa rose will be found in the shrubbery borders of many gardens, supplying the birds with food when the ground is covered with snow, and sprinkling the brightness of their red berries against the monotony of dull green conifers.The burning bush (Euonymus atropurpureus, Jacq.) lends its scarlet fruits to the vivid colors that paint any winter landscape. They hang on slender stalks, clustered where the leaves were attached. Four flattish lobes, deeply separated by constrictions, form each of these strange-looking fruits. In October each is pale purplish in color and one half an inch across. Now the husk parts and curls back, revealing the seeds, each of the four enveloped in a loose scarlet wrinkled coat. Until midwinter the little tree is indeed a burning bush, glowing brighter as the advancing season opens wider the purple husks, and the little swinging Maltese cross, made by the four scarlet berries, is the only thing one sees, looking up from below. Birds take the berries, though they are bitter and poisonous.In spring the slender branchlets of this little tree are covered with opposite, pointed leaves, two to five inches long, and in their axils are borne purplish flowers, with four spreading recurving petals. In the centre of each is supported a square platform upon which are the spreading anthers and styles. It does not require much botanical knowledge to see a family relationship between this tree and the woody vine we call "bitter-sweet"; the flowers and fruits are alike in many features.In Oklahoma and Arkansas and eastern Texas the burning bush becomes a good-sized tree and its hard, close-grained wood is peculiarly adapted to making spindles, knitting needles, skewers, and toothpicks. "Prickwood" is the English name. Chinese and Japanese species have been added to our list of flowering trees and vines. Two shrubby species ofEuonymusbelong to the flora of North America, but the bulk of the large family is tropical.Our dainty little American tree skirts the edges of deep woods from New York to Montana, and southward to the Gulf. In cultivation it extends throughout New England. "Wahoo," the common name in the South, is probably of Indian origin.THE SUMACHSThe sumach family contains more than fifty genera, confined for the most part to the warmer regions of the globe. Two fruit trees within this family are the mango and the pistachio nut tree. Commercially important also is the turpentine tree of southern Europe. The Japanese lacquer tree yields the black varnish used in all lacqueredwares. The cultivated sumachs of southern Europe are important in the tanning industry, their leaves containing from twenty-five to thirty per cent. of tannic acid.In the flora of the United States three genera of the family have tree representatives. The genusRhus, with a total of one hundred and twenty species, stands first. Most of these belong to South Africa; sixteen to North America where their distribution covers practically the entire continent. Of these, four attain the habit of small trees.Fleshy roots, pithy branchlets, and milky, or sometimes caustic or watery juice, belong to the sumachs, which are oftenest seen as roadside thickets or fringing the borders of woods. The foliage is fernlike, odd-pinnate, rarely simple. The flowers are conspicuous by their crowding into terminal or axillary panicles, followed by bony fruits, densely crowded like the flowers.The Staghorn SumachRhus hirta, Sudw.The staghorn sumach is named for the densely hairy, forking branchlets, which look much like the horns of a stag "in the velvet." The foliage and fruit are also densely clothed with stiff pale hairs, usually red or bright yellow.The leaves reach two feet in length, with twenty or thirty oblong, often sickle-shaped leaflets, set opposite on the stem, and terminating in a single odd leaflet. Bright yellow-green until half grown, dark green and dull abovewhen mature, often nearly white on the under surface, these leaves turn in autumn to bright scarlet, shading into purple, crimson, and orange. No sunset was ever more changeful and glorious than a patch of staghorn sumach that covers the ugliness of a railroad siding in October. After the leaves have fallen, the dull red fuzzy fruits persist, offering food to belated bird migrants and gradually fading to browns before spring.The maximum height of this largest of northern sumachs is thirty-five feet. The wood of such large specimens is sometimes used for walking-sticks and for tabourets and such fancy work as inlaying. Coarse, soft, and brittle, it is satiny when polished, and attractively streaked with orange and green. The young shoots are cut and their pith contents removed to make pipes for drawing maple sap from the trees in sugaring time.But the best use of the tree is for ornamental planting. In summer, the ugliness of the most unsightly bank is covered where this tree is allowed to run wild and throw up its root suckers unchecked. The mass effect of its fernlike foliage in spring is superb, when the green is lightened by the fine clusters of pink blossoms. No tree carries its autumn foliage longer nor blazes with greater splendor in the soft sunshine of the late year. The hairy staghorn branches, bared of leaves, hold aloft their fruits like lighted candelabra far into the waning winter. For screens and border shrubs this sumach may become objectionable, by reason of its habit of spreading by suckers as well as seed.Its choice of situations is broken uplands and dry, gravelly banks. Its range extends from New Brunswick to Minnesota and southward through the Northern states,and along the mountains to the Gulf states. In cultivation, it is found in the Middle West and on the Atlantic seaboard, and is a favorite in central and northern Europe.
Western Dogwood
C. Nuttallii, Aud.
The Pacific Coast outdoes the rest of the country in the size of its forest trees. Superlatives in vegetation abound where the breath of the Japan current tempers the air. The Western dogwood often reaches one hundred feet in height in the forests near Seattle. Its flowers have six, instead of four, of the petal-like, white bracts, each narrower and pointed, and without the terminal notch. The tree in blossom is more magnificent than the eastern species, for the flowers are often twice as large, and the spectacle of one of these trees, after the leaves turn to scarlet in autumn, and it leans against the sombre evergreens that cover the mountain-side, is always startling, even in a country where surprises are the rule.
European Dogwood
C. mas.
The European dogwood or cornel is often planted in the Eastern states as an ornamental tree, but not for its flowers alone, though these tiny, button-like clusters cover the bare branches in earliest spring. The showyfruits look like scarlet olives hanging among the glossy foliage in late summer. These fruits are edible, and in Europe are used in preserves and cordials.
THE VIBURNUMS
The honeysuckle family, which includes a multitude of ornamental shrubs, furnishes two genera with three representatives. Handsome foliage, showy flowers, and attractive fruits justify the popularity of this family in gardens and parks.
The viburnums are distributed over the Northern Hemisphere and extend into the tropics. There are about one hundred species, including the old-fashioned snowball bush, perhaps the best-known species in this country. Discriminating gardeners have replaced it by the Japanese snowball, because the latter has much more handsome foliage and perfect flowers, instead of the barren flower cluster that has nothing to show for itself once the bloom is past. This new species wears the autumn decoration of bright red berries well into the winter.
The Sheepberry
Viburnum lentago, Linn.
In our native woods the sheepberry is a small round-headed tree, with slim, drooping branches and oval leaves, finely cut-toothed and tapering to wavy-winged petioles. In autumn these leathery leaves change to orange and red, their shiny surfaces contrasting with the dull lining, pitted with black dots. The fruit, a loose cluster of dark blueberries, on branching red stems, is an attractive color contrast, and the birds flutter in the trees until they have eaten the last one. The fragrant white flowers light up the tree from April to June with their flat clusters three to five inches across. The opposite arrangement of the leaves and that short-winged petiole identify the little tree, whether it grows by the swamp borders, along the streams, or in parks and gardens. At any season it is good to look upon. Its range covers the eastern half of the country, extending almost to the Gulf of Mexico and west into Wyoming.
The Rusty Nannyberry
V. rufidulum, Raff.
The rusty nannyberry is easily distinguished by the rusty hairs that clothe its new shoots and the stems and veins of the leaves. White flower clusters are succeeded by bright blue berries of unusual size and brilliance, ripe in October, on red-stemmed pedicles. The handsome polished leaves are rounded at the tips. The wood of this little tree has a very unpleasant odor, but this trait has no bearing upon its merits as a garden ornament. It is found wild from Virginia to Illinois and southward. In cultivation it is hardy in the latitude of Boston.
The Black Haw
V. prunifolium, Linn.
The black haw has the characteristic flowers and fruit of its genus, but is smaller throughout than the other two, and its branches are stout. In European parks and gardensit is known as the "stagbush." Its fruit turns dark when dead ripe, and persists well into the winter. In the wilds, this little viburnum is found from southern New England to Michigan, and south to Georgia and Texas.
THE MOUNTAIN ASHES
The handsome foliage and showy flower clusters make the mountain ashes a favorite group of little trees for border shrubberies and other ornamental planting. The foliage is almost fern-like in delicacy and it spreads in a whorl below the flower clusters in spring and the scarlet berry clusters in autumn. Far into the winter after the foliage has dropped the berries persist, supplying the birds with food, especially in snowy winters, when their need is greatest, and brightening the dull thickets of bare twigs on dreary days.
Eastern Mountain Ash
Sorbus Americana, Marsh.
The common eastern mountain ash reaches thirty feet in height—a slender, pyramidal tree, with spreading branches and delicate leaves of from thirteen to seventeen leaflets. The flat-topped cluster of creamy white flowers (see illustration,page 135) appears in May and June, above the dark yellow-green foliage; and the scarlet berries, ripe in September when the leaves have turned yellow, may persist until spring. Along the borders of swamps and climbing rocky bluffs, often scattered in plum thickets, these trees are handsome at any season. Along the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina home remediesare made out of the berries. From Newfoundland to Manitoba and southward the tree grows wild and is planted for ornament in home grounds.
Elder-leaved Mountain Ash
S. sambucifolia, Roem.
The elder-leaved mountain ash overlaps the first species, and is even more daring as a climber. It ranges from Labrador to Alaska, follows the Rocky Mountains to Colorado, and in the Eastern states goes no farther south than Pennsylvania. Its leaves are graceful and drooping like the elder. The flowers and fruits are large; the whole tree tropical looking, its open, pyramidal head giving each leaf a chance at the sun.
European Mountain Ash
S. Aucuparia, Linn.
Most common in cultivation is the European mountain ash called in England the rowan tree. This trim round-headed species is very neat and conventional compared with its wild cousins, but in the craggy highlands of Scotland and Wales it much resembles our mountain ashes.
Old superstitions cluster around the rowan tree in all rural sections. These are preserved in the folk-lore and the literature of many countries. Rowans were planted by cottage doors and at the gates of church yards, being considered effectual in exorcising evil spirits. Leafy twigs hung over the thresholds, crosses made of "Roan" wood given out on festival days, were worn as charms or amulets. Milkmaids, especially, depended upon thesefor the defeat of the "black elves" who constantly tried to make their cows go dry, and unless prevented got into the churns—and then the butter would never come!
The farther north a tree can grow, the more likely it is to have close relatives in the Old World. One mountain ash of Japan is hardly distinguishable from our western species, and some authorities believe that our two native species are but varieties of the rowan tree of Europe.
THE RHODODENDRON
The heath family, of about sixty-seven genera, distributed over the temperate and tropical countries of the earth, has twenty-one genera in the United States, seven of which have tree representatives. Azaleas, the multitude of the heathers, the huckleberries, the madroñas, call to mind flower shows we have seen—under glass, in gardens, in parks, and among mountain fastnesses brightened by the loveliness of the mountain laurel, azalea, and rhododendron. In this wonderful family the leaves are simple and mostly evergreen. Rarely are the fruits of any importance. It is the flowers in masses that give the chief distinction to a family with over a thousand species, which have been the subjects of study and cultivation through centuries. The type of the family is the Scotch heather, immortalized in song and story. In London the Christmas season is marked by the sale of half a million little potted plants of heather! Each is about a foot in height and bears a thousand tiny bells, rosy, with white lips. This is the poor man's Christmas flower. It costs a shilling and lasts a month or more.
Seepage 111FLOWERING DOGWOOD
Seepage 111
FLOWERING DOGWOOD
Seepage 99THE OSAGE ORANGEFlowers appear in June, after the lustrous leaves
Seepage 99
THE OSAGE ORANGEFlowers appear in June, after the lustrous leaves
Trees are scarce in the heath family. Shrubs are in the majority. The azaleas, which the Belgian gardeners have brought to such perfection and developed in such a great number of varieties, are among the best known of the heaths. The profuse blossoms in potted azaleas entirely extinguish the foliage, and the flowers are almost as lasting as if they were artificial.
The genus rhododendron in American woods is represented by a mountain shrub and a tree. Both are evergreen and both are widely planted for ornament during the entire season. Carloads of these wonderful plants are shipped from the mountain slopes of the Alleghanies for mass planting on rocky ground, and to cover embankments along the drives in great estates. Because of the altitude of their native habitat, they are hardy in New England, and even as far as the Great Lakes. In time of bloom, these masses are the great flower show of the countryside, and in winter nothing is more beautiful than the evergreen foliage of rhododendrons, lifted out of the snow.
Great Laurel or Rose Bay
Rhododendron maximum, Linn.
Among the Alleghany Mountains, from Virginia southward, the great laurel rises to a height of forty feet, and interlaces its boughs with those of Fraser's magnolia and the mountain hemlock in the dense forest cover. Thickets of rhododendron trees are common, and though its stature is reduced, it follows the highlands into New York, and is one of the most striking and beautiful shrubs in the Pennsylvania mountains. Scattered and becoming more rare and more stunted, it reaches Lake Erie and oninto New Brunswick. The leaves crown each of the stiff branches with an umbrella-like whorl, that stands guard in winter time about a large scaly bud. In spring the scales fall and a cone-like flower cluster rises. Each blossom is white, marked with yellow or orange spots, in the bell-like corolla's throat; or the flowers may be pale rose, with deeper tones in the unopened buds. A great tree in blossom, with its flower clusters lighting up the umbrella-like whorls of glossy, evergreen leaves, illuminates the woods, and makes every other tree look commonplace beside it.
In late summer, green capsules, each with a curving style at the top, cluster where the flowers stood, but these are scarcely ornamental. The evergreen leaves and the buds, full of promise for June blossoming, are the beautiful features of rhododendrons in winter.
The wonderful array of color and profusion of bloom, seen in an exhibit of rhododendrons and azaleas, is the most convincing proof of what crossing and careful selection can do in developing races of flowering plants. The ancestry of all these tub-plants is a matter of record, and goes back to a few comparatively insignificant wild species, competing with all the rest of the native flora for a livelihood.
THE MOUNTAIN LAUREL
The mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia, Linn.) grows from Nova Scotia to Lake Erie and southward through New England and New York, and along the Alleghanies to northern Georgia. Hardier than the rhododendrons, smaller in blossoms and in foliage, the laurel is in manypoints its superior in beauty. In June and July the polished evergreen foliage of the kalmia bushes is almost overwhelmed by the masses of its exquisite pink blossoms, beside which the bloom of rhododendrons looks coarse and crude in coloring. Coral-red fluted buds with pointed tips show the richest color, making with the yellow-green of the new leaves one of the most exquisite color combinations in any spring shrubbery. The largest buds open first, spreading into wide five-lobed corollas, with two pockets in the base of each forming a circle of ten pockets. Ten stamens stand about the free central pistil, and the anther of each is hid in a pocket of the corolla—the slender filament bent backward. This is a curious contrivance for insuring cross-fertilization through the help of the bees. (See "Flowers Worth Knowing.")
Linnaeus commemorated in the name of this genus the devoted and arduous labors of Peter Kalm, the Swedish botanist, who sent back to his master at the university of Upsala specimens of the wonderful and varied flora found in his travels in eastern North America. Most of the names accredited to Linnaeus were given to plants he never saw except as dried herbarium specimens from the New World.
THE MADROÑA
The madroña (Arbutus Menziesii, Pursh.), another member of the Heath family, is one of the superbly beautiful trees in the forests that stretch from British Columbia southward into California. South of the bay of San Francisco and on the dry eastern slopes of California mountains it is stunted to a shrub, but on the high, well-drainedslopes through the coast region and in the redwood forests of northern California it is a tree that reaches a hundred feet in height.
John Muir writes: "The madroña, clad in thin, smooth, red and yellow bark, with big, glossy leaves, seems in the dark coniferous forests of Washington and Vancouver Island like some lost wanderer from the magnolia groves in the South." All the year around this is one of the most beautiful of American trees. It bears large conical clusters of white flowers above the vivid green of its leathery leaves, that are wonderfully lightened by silvery linings. In autumn the red-brown of the branches is enriched and intensified by the luxuriant clusters of scarlet berries against the red and orange of the two-year-old leaves. Among the giant redwoods this tree commands the highest admiration.
THE SORREL TREE
The sorrel tree, or sour-wood (Oxydendrum arboreum, DC.) belongs among the heaths. Its vivid scarlet autumn foliage is its chief claim to the admiration of gardeners. In spring the little tree is beautiful in its bronze-green foliage, and in late July and August it bears long branching racemes of tiny bell-shaped white flowers. This multitude of little bells suggests the tree's relationship to the blossoming heather we see in florists' shops.
The leaves give the tree its two common names: they have a sour taste, resembling that of the herbaceous sorrels. The twigs, even in the dead of winter, yield this refreshing acid sap, that flows through the veins of the membranous leaves in summer. Many a hunter, temporarilylost in Southern woods, quenches his thirst by nibbling young shoots of the sour-wood.
After the flower comes a downy capsule, five-celled, with numerous pointed seeds. The leaves are not unlike those of a plum tree except that they attain a length of five to seven inches. In the woods from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, southward to Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas this tree ranges, and we often see it in cultivation as far north as Boston. It grows to its largest size on the western slopes of the Big Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, attaining here a height of sixty feet. In cultivation it is one of the little, slender-stemmed, dainty trees, beautiful at any season. It is the sole representative of its genus in the world, so far as botanists know.
THE SILVER BELL TREES
The silver bell tree (Mohrodendron tetraptera, Britt.) earns its name in May when among the green leaves the clustered bell flowers gradually pale from green to white, with rosy tints that seem to come from the ruddy flower-stems. A "snowdrop tree" may be eighty feet in height, in the mountains of east Tennessee and western North Carolina, but ordinarily we see it in gardens and parks as a delicate, slender-branched tree, that stands out from every other species in the border as the loveliest thing that blooms there.
Not a moment in spring lacks interest if one has a little mohrodendron tree to watch. For weeks the ruddy twigs grow ruddier by the opening of leaf and flower buds; then comes the slow fading of the flowers, when sun and rainseem to work together to bleach them into utter purity of color and texture. Gradually the white bells fade and a queer little green, tapering seed-case enlarges and ripens. Through the late summer these pale green fruits are exceedingly ornamental as the leaves turn to pale yellow.
In cultivation, the silver bell tree is hardy in the New England states, but in its native woods it grows north no farther than West Virginia and Illinois. It is easily transplanted and pruned to bush form, if one desires to keep the blossoming down where the perfection of the flowers can be enjoyed at close range.
Snowdrop Tree
M. diptera, Britt.
A second species called the snowdrop tree skirts the swamps along the South Atlantic and Gulf coast and follows the Mississippi bayous to southern Arkansas. It is smaller in stature than the silver bell tree, but has larger leaves and more showy flowers. The botanical names record the chief specific difference between the two species: this one has but two wings on its seed-cases, while the other has four. This species is hardy no farther north than Philadelphia. The flowers have their bells cleft almost to the base, whereas the bell of the other species is merely notched at the top.
THE SWEET LEAF
Two genera of trees in this country are temperate zone representatives of a tropical family which furnishes benzoine, torax, and other valuable balsams of commerce. Itis easy to see that these trees are strangers from warm countries, for many of their traits are singularly unfamiliar.
The Sweet Leaf
Symplocos tinctoria, L'Her.
The sweet leaf is our sole representative of a large genus of trees native to the forests of Australia and the tropics in Asia and South America. They yield important drugs and dyestuffs, particularly in British India. But the sweet leaf is a small tree, rarely over twenty feet in height, with ashy gray bark, warty and narrowly fissured. In earliest spring its twigs are clothed with yellow or white blossoms that come in a procession and cover the tree from March until May, preceding the leaves, and breathing a wonderful fragrance into the air. The leaves are small, leathery, dark green, lustrous above, deciduous in the regions of colder winters, persistent from one to two years in the warmer part of its range. The flowers are succeeded by brown berries that ripen in summer, or early autumn. The flesh is dry about the single seed.
Horses and cattle greedily browse upon the foliage, which has a distinctly sweet taste. The bark and leaves both yield a yellow dye, and the roots a tonic from their bitter, aromatic sap.
"Horse sugar" is another local name for this little tree, which is found sparingly from Delaware to Florida, west to the Blue Ridge Mountains, and in the Gulf states to Louisiana and northward into Arkansas and to eastern Texas. It is a shade-loving tree, usually found under the forest cover of taller species, skirting the borders ofcypress swamps, and climbing to elevations of nearly three thousand feet on the slopes of the Blue Ridge.
A wonderful new species ofsymplocoshas come into cultivation from Japan and will enjoy a constantly increasing popularity. Its fragrant white blossoms, before the leaves, make the tree look like a hawthorn; but its unique distinction is that the racemed flowers give place to berries of a brilliant turquoise blue, which make this shrubby tree a most striking and beautiful object in the autumn when the leaves are turning yellow.
THE FRINGE TREE
Native to the middle and southern portions of the United States is a slender little tree (Chionanthus Virginica, Linn.), whose sister species inhabits northern and central China. Both of them cover their branches with delicate, fragrant white flowers, in loose drooping panicles, when the leaves are about one third grown. Each flower has four slender curving petals an inch long, but exceedingly narrow. In May and June the tree is decked with a bridal veil of white that makes it one of the most ethereal and the most elegant of lawn and park trees at this supreme moment of the year. Later the leaves broaden and reach six to eight inches in length, tapering narrowly to the short petioles. Thick and dark green, with plain margins, and conspicuously looped venation near the edges, these leaves suggest a young magnolia tree. Blue fruits the size of plums succeed the flowers in September, denying the magnolia theory and shading to black before they fall. The flesh is dry and seeds solitary under the thick skin of the drupe.
As in many other instances, European gardeners have led in the appreciation of this American ornamental tree. However, New England has planted it freely in parks and gardens, and popularity will follow wherever it becomes known. Its natural distribution is from southern Pennsylvania to Florida, and west to Arkansas and Texas. In cultivation it is hardy and flourishes far north of its natural range. No garden that can have a fringe tree should be without it. Fortunately its wood is negligible in quantity, and the temptation to chop down these trees does not come to the ignorant man with an axe. Whoever goes to the woods in May is rewarded for many miles of tramping if he comes upon a "snow-flower tree" in the height of its blooming season, led perhaps by its delicate fragrance when the little tree is overshadowed by the deep green of the forest cover. It is an experience that will not be forgotten soon.
THE LAUREL FAMILY
The laurel family, a large group of aromatic trees and shrubs found chiefly in the tropics, includes with our sassafras, laurels, and bays the cinnamon and camphor trees.
California Laurel
Umbellaria Californica, Nutt.
The California laurel climbs the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada from the forests of southwestern Oregon to the San Bernardino range near Los Angeles. "Up North" it is called pepperwood. It is a lover of wet soil,so it keeps near streams. With the broad-leaved maple it gives character to the deciduous growth near the northern boundaries of California, where it reaches eighty to ninety feet in height, and a trunk diameter of four to five feet. Sometimes it is tall, but usually it divides near the ground into several large diverging stems, forming a broad round head. In southern California, and at high elevations, it oftenest occurs as a low shrub.
The willow-like leaves, lustrous and evergreen, last often through the sixth season. Unfolding in winter or early spring, they continue to appear as the branches lengthen until late in the autumn, turning to beautiful yellow or orange and falling one by one. Beginning during the second season, they continue to drop, as new shoots loosen their hold. These leaves are rich in an aromatic oil which causes them to burn readily when piled green upon a campfire. Plum-like purple fruits succeed the small white fragrant flowers, borne in clusters in the axils of the leaves. The seeds germinate before the fruit begins to decay. Indeed the plantlet has attained considerable size before the acid flesh shows any signs of change.
This tree is a superb addition to the parks and gardens of the Pacific Coast. It is strikingly handsome in a land of handsome trees, native and exotic. Its wood is the most beautiful and valuable produced in the forests of Pacific North America for the interior finish of houses and for furniture. It is heavy, hard, strong, fine-grained, light brown, of a rich tone, with paler sap-wood, that includes the annual growth of thirty or forty seasons. The leaves yield by distillation a pungent, aromatic, volatile oil, and the fruit a fatty acid commercially valuable.
The Red Bay
Persea Borbonia, Streng.
Another laurel native to stream and swamp borders, from Virginia to Texas and north to Arkansas, is the red bay, whose bark, thick, red, and furrowed into scaly ridges on the trunk, becomes smooth and green on the branches. The evergreen leaves are narrowly oval, three to four inches long, bright green, polished, with pale linings. The white flowers are very minute bells borne in axillary clusters, succeeded in autumn by blue or black shiny berries, one half inch long, one-seeded, making a pretty contrast with the clear yellow of the year-old leaves and the bright green of the new ones.
This native laurel, lover of rich, moist soil, deserves the place in cultivation more commonly granted its European cousin,Laurus nobilis, Linn., the familiar tub laurel of hotel verandas in the Northern states, and much grown out of doors in southern California and in milder climates east. The tree is occasionally sixty to seventy feet high, with trunk two to three feet in diameter. Such specimens furnish the cabinet-maker and carpenter with a beautiful, bright red, close-grained wood for fine interior finish and furniture. Formerly it was used in the construction of river boats, but the timber supply is now very limited.
The Avocado
P. gratissima, Gaertn.
In Florida and southern California the avocado or alligator pear is being extensively cultivated. Thislaurel grows wild in the West Indies, Brazil, Peru, and Mexico. Its berry attains the size of a large pear. It has been developed in several commercial varieties, all having smooth green or purple skin, and soft oily pulp like marrow surrounding a single gigantic seed. It is usually cut in two like a melon and eaten raw as a salad dressed with vinegar, salt, and pepper. Once a stranger acquires the taste, he is extremely fond of this new salad fruit. The growing of the trees is easy and very profitable. At present the fruits are in great demand in city markets, and the prices are too high for any but the rich to enjoy this luxury.
Where a market is difficult to reach, the abundant oil is expressed from these fruits and used for illumination and the manufacture of soap. The seeds yield an indelible ink.
It is interesting to the student of trees to note how many tropical families have representation in North America, due to the fact that Florida extends into the tropics, and the West Indies seem to form a sort of bridge over which Central American and South American species have reached the Floridian Keys and the mainland.
The Sassafras
Sassafras, Karst.
The sole remnant of an ancient genus is the aromatic sassafras familiar as a roadside tree that flames in autumn with the star gum and the swamp maples. In the deep woods it reaches a height of more than a hundred feet and is an important lumber tree. In the arctic regions and in the rocky strata of our western mountains, fossil leaves of sassafras are preserved, andthe same traces are found in Europe, giving to the geologist proofs that the genus once had a much wider range than now. But no living representative of the genus was known outside of eastern North America, until the report of a recently discovered sassafras in China.
The Indians in Florida named the sassafras to the inquiring colonists who came with Columbus. They explained its curative properties, and its reputation traveled up the Atlantic seaboard. The first cargo of home products shipped by the colonists back to England from Massachusetts contained a large consignment of sassafras roots. To-day we look for an exhibit of sassafras bark in drug-store windows in spring. People buy it and make sassafras tea which they drink "to clear the blood." "In the Southwestern states the dried leaves are much used as an ingredient in soups, for which they are well adapted by the abundance of mucilage they contain. For this purpose the mature green leaves are dried, powdered (the stringy portions being separated), sifted and preserved for use. This preparation mixed with soups gives them a ropy consistence and a peculiar flavor, much relished by those accustomed to it. To such soups are given the namesgombo fileandgombo zab." (Seton.)
Emerson says that in New England a decoction of sassafras bark gave to the housewife's homespun woolen cloth a permanent orange dye. The name "Ague Tree" originated with the use of sassafras bark tea as a stimulant that warmed and brought out the perspiration freely for victims of the malarial "ague," or "chills and fever."
Sassafras wood is dull orange-yellow, soft, weak, light, brittle, and coarse-grained, but it is amazingly durable in contact with the soil, as the pioneers learned when theyused it to make posts and fence rails. It is largely used also in cooperage, and in the building of light boats. Oil of sassafras distilled from the bark of the roots is used for perfuming soaps and flavoring medicines.
With all its practical uses listed above, we must all have learned to know the tree if it grows in our neighborhood, and if we observe it closely, month by month throughout the year, we shall all agree that its beauty justifies its selection for planting in our home grounds, and surpasses all its medicinal and other commercial offerings to the world.
In winter the sassafras tree is most picturesque by reason of the short, stout, twisted branches that spread almost at right angles from the central shaft, and form a narrow, usually flat, often unsymmetrical head. The bark is rough, reddish brown, deeply and irregularly divided into broad scaly plates or ridges. The branches end in slim, pale yellow-green twigs that are set with pointed, bright green buds, giving the tree an appearance of being thoroughly alive while others, bare of leaves, look dead in winter.
What country boy or girl has not lingered on the way home from school to nibble the dainty green buds of the sassafras, or to dig at the roots with his jack-knife for a sliver of aromatic bark?
As spring comes on the bare twigs are covered with a delicate green of the opening leaves, brightened by clusters of yellow flowers (see illustration,page 150) whose starry calyxes are alike on all of the trees; but only on the fertile trees are the flowers succeeded by the blue berries, softening on their scarlet pedicels, if only the birds can wait until they are ripe.
Midsummer is the time to hunt for "mittens" and tonote how many different forms of leaves belong on the same sassafras tree. First, there is the simple ovate leaf; second, a larger blade oval in form but with one side extended and lobed to form a thumb, making the whole leaf look like the pattern of a mitten cut out by an unskilled hand; third, a symmetrical, three-lobed leaf, the pattern of a narrow mitten with a large thumb on each side. Not infrequently do all these forms occur on a single twig. Only the mulberry, among our native trees, shows such a variety of leaf forms as the sassafras. There is quite as great variation in the size of the leaves. One law seems to prevail among sassafras trees: more of the oval leaves than the lobed ones are found on mature trees. It is the roadside sapling, with its foliage within easy reach, that delights boys and girls with its wonderful variety of leaf patterns. Here the size of the leaves greatly surpasses that of the foliage on full-grown trees, and the autumnal colors are more glorious in the roadside thickets than in the tree-tops far above them.
Sassafras trees grow readily from seed in any loose, moist soil. A single tree spreads by a multitude of fleshy root-stalks, and these natural root-cuttings bear transplanting as easily as a poplar. Every garden border should have one specimen at least to add its flame to the conflagration of autumn foliage and the charming contrast of its blue berries on their coral stalks.
THE WITCH HAZEL
Eighteen genera compose the sub-tropical family in whichhamamelisis the type. Two or three Asiatic species and one American are known.
The witch hazel (Hamamelis Virginiana, Linn.) is a stout, many-stemmed shrub or a small tree, with rough unsymmetrical leaves, strongly veined, coarsely toothed, and roughly diamond-shaped. The twigs, when bare, are set with hairy sickle-shaped buds. Nowhere in summer would an undergrowth of witch hazel trees attract attention. But in autumn, when other trees have reached a state of utter rest, the witch hazel wakes and bursts into bloom. Among the dead leaves which stubbornly cling as they yellow, and often persist until spring, the tiny buds, the size of a pin-head, open into starry blossoms with petals like gold threads. The witch hazel thicket is veiled with these gold-mesh flowers, as ethereal as the haunting perfume which they exhale. Frost crisps the delicate petals but they curl, up like shavings and stay till spring. At no time is the weather cold enough to destroy this November flower show.
Among the blossoms are the pods in clusters, gaping wide if the seeds are shed; closed tight, with little monkey faces, if not yet open. The harvest of witch hazel seeds is worth going far to see. Damp weather delays this most interesting little game. Dry frosty weather is ideal for it.
Go into a witch hazel thicket on some fine morning in early November and sit down on the drift of dead leaves that carpet the woods floor. The silence is broken now and then by a sharp report like a bullet striking against the bark of a near-by trunk, or skipping among the leaves. Perhaps a twinge on the ear shows that you have been a target for some tiny projectile, sent to its mark with force enough to hurt.
Seepage 111BARK, BLOSSOM, FRUIT, AND WINTER FLOWER BUDS OF THE FLOWERING DOGWOOD
Seepage 111
BARK, BLOSSOM, FRUIT, AND WINTER FLOWER BUDS OF THE FLOWERING DOGWOOD
Seepage 116THE MOUNTAIN ASHThe flat, crowded cluster of tiny white flowers is set in awhorl of dark-green leaves in May or June
Seepage 116
THE MOUNTAIN ASHThe flat, crowded cluster of tiny white flowers is set in awhorl of dark-green leaves in May or June
The fusillade comes from the ripened pods, which have a remarkable ability to throw their seeds, and thus do for the parent tree what the winged seeds of other trees accomplish. The lining of the two-celled pod is believed to shorten and produce a spring that drives the seeds forth with surprising force when they are loosened from their attachment. This occurs when the lips part. Frost and sun seem to decide just when to spring the trap and let fly the little black seeds.
A young botanist went into the woods to find out just how far a witch hazel tree can throw its seeds. She chose an isolated tree and spread white muslin under it for many yards in four directions. The most remote of the many seeds she caught that day fell eighteen feet from the base of the tree.
The Indians in America were the first people to use the bark of the witch hazel for curing inflammations. An infusion of the twigs and roots is now made by boiling them for twenty-four hours in water to which alcohol has been added. "Witch hazel extract," distilled from this mixture, is the most popular preparation to use for bruises and sprains, and to allay the pain of burns. Druggists and chemists have failed to discover any medicinal properties in bark or leaf, but the public has faith in it. The alcohol is probably the effective agent.
Witch hazel comes honestly by its name. The English "witch hazel" is a species of elm to which superstitious miners went to get forked twigs to use as divining rods. No one in the countryside would dream of sinking a shaft for coal without the use of this forked twig. In any old and isolated country district in America there is usually a man whose reputation is based in his skilful use of a forked witch hazel twig. Sent for before a well is dug, he slowly walks over the ground, holding the twig erect by its two supple forks, one in each hand. When he passes over thespot where the hidden springs of water are, the twig goes down, without any volition of the "water-witch." At least, so he says, and if water is struck by digging, his claims are vindicated and scoffers hide their heads.
THE BURNING BUSH
American gardeners cherish with regard that amounts almost to affection any shrub or tree which will lend color, especially brilliant color, to the winter landscape. Thus the holly, the Japanese barberry, many of the haws, the mountain ash, and the rugosa rose will be found in the shrubbery borders of many gardens, supplying the birds with food when the ground is covered with snow, and sprinkling the brightness of their red berries against the monotony of dull green conifers.
The burning bush (Euonymus atropurpureus, Jacq.) lends its scarlet fruits to the vivid colors that paint any winter landscape. They hang on slender stalks, clustered where the leaves were attached. Four flattish lobes, deeply separated by constrictions, form each of these strange-looking fruits. In October each is pale purplish in color and one half an inch across. Now the husk parts and curls back, revealing the seeds, each of the four enveloped in a loose scarlet wrinkled coat. Until midwinter the little tree is indeed a burning bush, glowing brighter as the advancing season opens wider the purple husks, and the little swinging Maltese cross, made by the four scarlet berries, is the only thing one sees, looking up from below. Birds take the berries, though they are bitter and poisonous.
In spring the slender branchlets of this little tree are covered with opposite, pointed leaves, two to five inches long, and in their axils are borne purplish flowers, with four spreading recurving petals. In the centre of each is supported a square platform upon which are the spreading anthers and styles. It does not require much botanical knowledge to see a family relationship between this tree and the woody vine we call "bitter-sweet"; the flowers and fruits are alike in many features.
In Oklahoma and Arkansas and eastern Texas the burning bush becomes a good-sized tree and its hard, close-grained wood is peculiarly adapted to making spindles, knitting needles, skewers, and toothpicks. "Prickwood" is the English name. Chinese and Japanese species have been added to our list of flowering trees and vines. Two shrubby species ofEuonymusbelong to the flora of North America, but the bulk of the large family is tropical.
Our dainty little American tree skirts the edges of deep woods from New York to Montana, and southward to the Gulf. In cultivation it extends throughout New England. "Wahoo," the common name in the South, is probably of Indian origin.
THE SUMACHS
The sumach family contains more than fifty genera, confined for the most part to the warmer regions of the globe. Two fruit trees within this family are the mango and the pistachio nut tree. Commercially important also is the turpentine tree of southern Europe. The Japanese lacquer tree yields the black varnish used in all lacqueredwares. The cultivated sumachs of southern Europe are important in the tanning industry, their leaves containing from twenty-five to thirty per cent. of tannic acid.
In the flora of the United States three genera of the family have tree representatives. The genusRhus, with a total of one hundred and twenty species, stands first. Most of these belong to South Africa; sixteen to North America where their distribution covers practically the entire continent. Of these, four attain the habit of small trees.
Fleshy roots, pithy branchlets, and milky, or sometimes caustic or watery juice, belong to the sumachs, which are oftenest seen as roadside thickets or fringing the borders of woods. The foliage is fernlike, odd-pinnate, rarely simple. The flowers are conspicuous by their crowding into terminal or axillary panicles, followed by bony fruits, densely crowded like the flowers.
The Staghorn Sumach
Rhus hirta, Sudw.
The staghorn sumach is named for the densely hairy, forking branchlets, which look much like the horns of a stag "in the velvet." The foliage and fruit are also densely clothed with stiff pale hairs, usually red or bright yellow.
The leaves reach two feet in length, with twenty or thirty oblong, often sickle-shaped leaflets, set opposite on the stem, and terminating in a single odd leaflet. Bright yellow-green until half grown, dark green and dull abovewhen mature, often nearly white on the under surface, these leaves turn in autumn to bright scarlet, shading into purple, crimson, and orange. No sunset was ever more changeful and glorious than a patch of staghorn sumach that covers the ugliness of a railroad siding in October. After the leaves have fallen, the dull red fuzzy fruits persist, offering food to belated bird migrants and gradually fading to browns before spring.
The maximum height of this largest of northern sumachs is thirty-five feet. The wood of such large specimens is sometimes used for walking-sticks and for tabourets and such fancy work as inlaying. Coarse, soft, and brittle, it is satiny when polished, and attractively streaked with orange and green. The young shoots are cut and their pith contents removed to make pipes for drawing maple sap from the trees in sugaring time.
But the best use of the tree is for ornamental planting. In summer, the ugliness of the most unsightly bank is covered where this tree is allowed to run wild and throw up its root suckers unchecked. The mass effect of its fernlike foliage in spring is superb, when the green is lightened by the fine clusters of pink blossoms. No tree carries its autumn foliage longer nor blazes with greater splendor in the soft sunshine of the late year. The hairy staghorn branches, bared of leaves, hold aloft their fruits like lighted candelabra far into the waning winter. For screens and border shrubs this sumach may become objectionable, by reason of its habit of spreading by suckers as well as seed.
Its choice of situations is broken uplands and dry, gravelly banks. Its range extends from New Brunswick to Minnesota and southward through the Northern states,and along the mountains to the Gulf states. In cultivation, it is found in the Middle West and on the Atlantic seaboard, and is a favorite in central and northern Europe.