Belonging to a genus which is remarkable for the beautiful form of its
leaves, I suspect that some Scarlet-Oak leaves surpass those of all
other Oaks in the rich and wild beauty of their outlines. I judge from
an acquaintance with twelve species, and from drawings which I have
seen of many others.
Stand under this tree and see how finely its leaves are cut against the
sky,—as it were, only a few sharp points extending from a midrib. They
look like double, treble, or quadruple crosses. They are far more
ethereal than the less deeply scolloped Oak-leaves. They have so little
leafy _terra firma_ that they appear melting away in the light, and
scarcely obstruct our view. The leaves of very young plants are, like
those of full-grown Oaks of other species, more entire, simple, and
lumpish in their outlines; but these, raised high on old trees, have
solved the leafy problem. Lifted higher and higher, and sublimated more
and more, putting off some earthiness and cultivating more intimacy
with the light each year, they have at length the least possible amount
of earthy matter, and the greatest spread and grasp of skyey
influences. There they dance, arm in arm with the light,—tripping it on
fantastic points, fit partners in those aerial halls. So intimately
mingled are they with it, that, what with their slenderness and their
glossy surfaces, you can hardly tell at last what in the dance is leaf
and what is light. And when no zephyr stirs, they are at most but a
rich tracery to the forest-windows.
I am again struck with their beauty, when, a month later, they thickly
strew the ground in the woods, piled one upon another under my feet.
They are then brown above, but purple beneath. With their narrow lobes
and their bold deep scollops reaching almost to the middle, they
suggest that the material must be cheap, or else there has been a
lavish expense in their creation, as if so much had been cut out. Or
else they seem to us the remnants of the stuff out of which leaves have
been cut with a die. Indeed, when they lie thus one upon another, they
remind me of a pile of scrap-tin.
Or bring one home, and study it closely at your leisure, by the
fireside. It is a type, not from any Oxford font, not in the Basque nor
the arrow-headed character, not found on the Rosetta Stone, but
destined to be copied in sculpture one day, if they ever get to
whittling stone here. What a wild and pleasing outline, a combination
of graceful curves and angles! The eye rests with equal delight on what
is not leaf and on what is leaf,—on the broad, free, open sinuses, and
on the long, sharp, bristle-pointed lobes. A simple oval outline would
include it all, if you connected the points of the leaf; but how much
richer is it than that, with its half-dozen deep scollops, in which the
eye and thought of the beholder are embayed! If I were a
drawing-master, I would set my pupils to copying these leaves, that
they might learn to draw firmly and gracefully.
Regarded as water, it is like a pond with half a dozen broad rounded
promontories extending nearly to its middle, half from each side, while
its watery bays extend far inland, like sharp friths, at each of whose
heads several fine streams empty in,—almost a leafy archipelago.
But it oftener suggests land, and, as Dionysius and Pliny compared the
form of the Morea to that of the leaf of the Oriental Plane-tree, so
this leaf reminds me of some fair wild island in the ocean, whose
extensive coast, alternate rounded bays with smooth strands, and
sharp-pointed rocky capes, mark it as fitted for the habitation of man,
and destined to become a centre of civilization at last. To the
sailor’s eye, it is a much-indented shore. Is it not, in fact, a shore
to the aerial ocean, on which the windy surf beats? At sight of this
leaf we are all mariners,—if not vikings, buccaneers, and filibusters.
Both our love of repose and our spirit of adventure are addressed. In
our most casual glance, perchance, we think, that, if we succeed in
doubling those sharp capes, we shall find deep, smooth, and secure
havens in the ample bays. How different from the White-Oak leaf, with
its rounded headlands, on which no lighthouse need be placed! That is
an England, with its long civil history, that may be read. This is some
still unsettled New-found Island or Celebes. Shall we go and be rajahs
there?
By the twenty-sixth of October the large Scarlet Oaks are in their
prime, when other Oaks are usually withered. They have been kindling
their fires for a week past, and now generally burst into a blaze. This
alone of _our_ indigenous deciduous trees (excepting the Dogwood, of
which I do not know half a dozen, and they are but large bushes) is now
in its glory. The two Aspens and the Sugar-Maple come nearest to it in
date, but they have lost the greater part of their leaves. Of
evergreens, only the Pitch-Pine is still commonly bright.
But it requires a particular alertness, if not devotion to these
phenomena, to appreciate the wide-spread, but late and unexpected glory
of the Scarlet Oaks. I do not speak here of the small trees and shrubs,
which are commonly observed, and which are now withered, but of the
large trees. Most go in and shut their doors, thinking that bleak and
colorless November has already come, when some of the most brilliant
and memorable colors are not yet lit.
This very perfect and vigorous one, about forty feet high, standing in
an open pasture, which was quite glossy green on the twelfth, is now,
the twenty-sixth, completely changed to bright dark scarlet,—every
leaf, between you and the sun, as if it had been dipped into a scarlet
dye. The whole tree is much like a heart in form, as well as color. Was
not this worth waiting for? Little did you think, ten days ago, that
that cold green tree would assume such color as this. Its leaves are
still firmly attached, while those of other trees are falling around
it. It seems to say,—“I am the last to blush, but I blush deeper than
any of ye. I bring up the rear in my red coat. We Scarlet ones, alone
of Oaks, have not given up the fight.”
The sap is now, and even far into November, frequently flowing fast in
these trees, as in Maples in the spring; and apparently their bright
tints, now that most other Oaks are withered, are connected with this
phenomenon. They are full of life. It has a pleasantly astringent,
acorn-like taste, this strong Oak-wine, as I find on tapping them with
my knife.
Looking across this woodland valley, a quarter of a mile wide, how rich
those Scarlet Oaks, embosomed in Pines, their bright red branches
intimately intermingled with them! They have their full effect there.
The Pine-boughs are the green calyx to their red petals. Or, as we go
along a road in the woods, the sun striking endwise through it, and
lighting up the red tents of the Oaks, which on each side are mingled
with the liquid green of the Pines, makes a very gorgeous scene.
Indeed, without the evergreens for contrast, the autumnal tints would
lose much of their effect.
The Scarlet Oak asks a clear sky and the brightness of late October
days. These bring out its colors. If the sun goes into a cloud, they
become comparatively indistinct. As I sit on a cliff in the southwest
part of our town, the sun is now getting low, and the woods in Lincoln,
south and east of me, are lit up by its more level rays; and in the
Scarlet Oaks, scattered so equally over the forest, there is brought
out a more brilliant redness than I had believed was in them. Every
tree of this species which is visible in those directions, even to the
horizon, now stands out distinctly red. Some great ones lift their red
backs high above the woods, in the next town, like huge roses with a
myriad of fine petals; and some more slender ones, in a small grove of
White Pines on Pine Hill in the east, on the very verge of the horizon,
alternating with the Pines on the edge of the grove, and shouldering
them with their red coats, look like soldiers in red amid hunters in
green. This time it is Lincoln green, too. Till the sun got low, I did
not believe that there were so many red coats in the forest army.
Theirs is an intense burning red, which would lose some of its
strength, methinks, with every step you might take toward them; for the
shade that lurks amid their foliage does not report itself at this
distance, and they are unanimously red. The focus of their reflected
color is in the atmosphere far on this side. Every such tree becomes a
nucleus of red, as it were, where, with the declining sun, that color
grows and glows. It is partly borrowed fire, gathering strength from
the sun on its way to your eye. It has only some comparatively dull red
leaves for a rallying-point, or kindling-stuff, to start it, and it
becomes an intense scarlet or red mist, or fire, which finds fuel for
itself in the very atmosphere. So vivacious is redness. The very rails
reflect a rosy light at this hour and season. You see a redder tree
than exists.
If you wish to count the Scarlet Oaks, do it now. In a clear day stand
thus on a hill-top in the woods, when the sun is an hour high, and
every one within range of your vision, excepting in the west, will be
revealed. You might live to the age of Methuselah and never find a
tithe of them, otherwise. Yet sometimes even in a dark day I have
thought them as bright as I ever saw them. Looking westward, their
colors are lost in a blaze of light; but in other directions the whole
forest is a flower-garden, in which these late roses burn, alternating
with green, while the so-called “gardeners,” walking here and there,
perchance, beneath, with spade and water-pot, see only a few little
asters amid withered leaves.
These are _my_ China-asters, _my_ late garden-flowers. It costs me
nothing for a gardener. The falling leaves, all over the forest, are
protecting the roots of my plants. Only look at what is to be seen, and
you will have garden enough, without deepening the soil in your yard.
We have only to elevate our view a little, to see the whole forest as a
garden. The blossoming of the Scarlet Oak,—the forest-flower,
surpassing all in splendor, (at least since the Maple)! I do not know
but they interest me more than the Maples, they are so widely and
equally dispersed throughout the forest; they are so hardy, a nobler
tree on the whole;—our chief November flower, abiding the approach of
winter with us, imparting warmth to early November prospects. It is
remarkable that the latest bright color that is general should be this
deep, dark scarlet and red, the intensest of colors. The ripest fruit
of the year; like the cheek of a hard, glossy, red apple, from the cold
Isle of Orleans, which will not be mellow for eating till next spring!
When I rise to a hilltop, a thousand of these great Oak roses,
distributed on every side, as far as the horizon! I admire them four or
five miles off! This my unfailing prospect for a fortnight past! This
late forest-flower surpasses all that spring or summer could do. Their
colors were but rare and dainty specks comparatively, (created for the
near-sighted, who walk amid the humblest herbs and underwoods,) and
made no impression on a distant eye. Now it is an extended forest or a
mountain-side, through or along which we journey from day to day, that
bursts into bloom. Comparatively, our gardening is on a petty
scale,—the gardener still nursing a few asters amid dead weeds,
ignorant of the gigantic asters and roses, which, as it were,
overshadow him, and ask for none of his care. It is like a little red
paint ground on a saucer, and held up against the sunset sky. Why not
take more elevated and broader views, walk in the great garden, not
skulk in a little “debauched” nook of it? consider the beauty of the
forest, and not merely of a few impounded herbs?
Let your walks now be a little more adventurous; ascend the hills. If,
about the last of October, you ascend any hill in the outskirts of our
town, and probably of yours, and look over the forest, you may
see—well, what I have endeavored to describe. All this you surely
_will_ see, and much more, if you are prepared to see it,—if you _look_
for it. Otherwise, regular and universal as this phenomenon is, whether
you stand on the hill-top or in the hollow, you will think for
threescore years and ten that all the wood is, at this season, sere and
brown. Objects are concealed from our view, not so much because they
are out of the course of our visual ray as because we do not bring our
minds and eyes to bear on them; for there is no power to see in the eye
itself, any more than in any other jelly. We do not realize how far and
widely, or how near and narrowly, we are to look. The greater part of
the phenomena of Nature are for this reason concealed from us all our
lives. The gardener sees only the gardener’s garden. Here, too, as in
political economy, the supply answers to the demand. Nature does not
cast pearls before swine. There is just as much beauty visible to us in
the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate,—not a grain more. The
actual objects which one man will see from a particular hill-top are
just as different from those which another will see as the beholders
are different. The Scarlet Oak must, in a sense, be in your eye when
you go forth. We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the
idea of it, take it into our heads,—and then we can hardly see anything
else. In my botanical rambles, I find, that, first, the idea, or image,
of a plant occupies my thoughts, though it may seem very foreign to
this locality,—no nearer than Hudson’s Bay,—and for some weeks or
months I go thinking of it, and expecting it, unconsciously, and at
length I surely see it. This is the history of my finding a score or
more of rare plants, which I could name. A man sees only what concerns
him. A botanist absorbed in the study of grasses does not distinguish
the grandest Pasture Oaks. He, as it were, tramples down Oaks
unwittingly in his walk, or at most sees only their shadows. I have
found that it required a different intention of the eye, in the same
locality, to see different plants, even when they were closely allied,
as _Juncaceoe_ and _Gramineoe_: when I was looking for the former, I
did not see the latter in the midst of them. How much more, then, it
requires different intentions of the eye and of the mind to attend to
different departments of knowledge! How differently the poet and the
naturalist look at objects!
Take a New-England selectman, and set him on the highest of our hills,
and tell him to look,—sharpening his sight to the utmost, and putting
on the glasses that suit him best, (ay, using a spy-glass, if he
likes,)—and make a full report. What, probably, will he _spy_?—what
will he _select_ to look at? Of course, he will see a Brocken spectre
of himself. He will see several meeting-houses, at least, and, perhaps,
that somebody ought to be assessed higher than he is, since he has so
handsome a wood-lot. Now take Julius Caesar, or Immanuel Swedenborg, or
a Fegee-Islander, and set him up there. Or suppose all together, and
let them compare notes afterward. Will it appear that they have enjoyed
the same prospect? What they will see will be as different as Rome was
from Heaven or Hell, or the last from the Fegee Islands. For aught we
know, as strange a man as any of these is always at our elbow.
Why, it takes a sharp-shooter to bring down even such trivial game as
snipes and woodcocks; he must take very particular aim, and know what
he is aiming at. He would stand a very small chance, if he fired at
random into the sky, being told that snipes were flying there. And so
is it with him that shoots at beauty; though he wait till the sky
falls, he will not bag any, if he does not already know its seasons and
haunts, and the color of its wing,—if he has not dreamed of it, so that
he can _anticipate_ it; then, indeed, he flushes it at every step,
shoots double and on the wing, with both barrels, even in cornfields.
The sportsman trains himself, dresses and watches unweariedly, and
loads and primes for his particular game. He prays for it, and offers
sacrifices, and so he gets it. After due and long preparation,
schooling his eye and hand, dreaming awake and asleep, with gun and
paddle and boat he goes out after meadow-hens, which most of his
townsmen never saw nor dreamed of, and paddles for miles against a
head-wind, and wades in water up to his knees, being out all day
without his dinner, and _therefore_ he gets them. He had them half-way
into his bag when he started, and has only to shove them down. The true
sportsman can shoot you almost any of his game from his windows: what
else has he windows or eyes for? It comes and perches at last on the
barrel of his gun; but the rest of the world never see it _with the
feathers on_. The geese fly exactly under his zenith, and honk when
they get there, and he will keep himself supplied by firing up his
chimney; twenty musquash have the refusal of each one of his traps
before it is empty. If he lives, and his game-spirit increases, heaven
and earth shall fail him sooner than game; and when he dies, he will go
to more extensive, and, perchance, happier hunting-grounds. The
fisherman, too, dreams of fish, sees a bobbing cork in his dreams, till
he can almost catch them in his sink-spout. I knew a girl who, being
sent to pick huckleberries, picked wild gooseberries by the quart,
where no one else knew that there were any, because she was accustomed
to pick them up country where she came from. The astronomer knows where
to go star-gathering, and sees one clearly in his mind before any have
seen it with a glass. The hen scratches and finds her food right under
where she stands; but such is not the way with the hawk.
These bright leaves which I have mentioned are not the exception, but
the rule; for I believe that all leaves, even grasses and mosses,
acquire brighter colors just before their fall. When you come to
observe faithfully the changes of each humblest plant, you find that
each has, sooner or later, its peculiar autumnal tint; and if you
undertake to make a complete list of the bright tints, it will be
nearly as long as a catalogue of the plants in your vicinity.