But though these are indigenous, like the Indians, I doubt whether they
are any hardier than those backwoodsmen among the apple-trees, which,
though descended from cultivated stocks, plant themselves in distant
fields and forests, where the soil is favorable to them. I know of no
trees which have more difficulties to contend with, and which more
sturdily resist their foes. These are the ones whose story we have to
tell. It oftentimes reads thus:—
Near the beginning of May, we notice little thickets of apple-trees
just springing up in the pastures where cattle have been,—as the rocky
ones of our Easterbrooks Country, or the top of Nobscot Hill, in
Sudbury. One or two of these perhaps survive the drought and other
accidents,—their very birthplace defending them against the encroaching
grass and some other dangers, at first.
In two years’ time ’t had thus
Reached the level of the rocks,
Admired the stretching world,
Nor feared the wandering flocks.
But at this tender age
Its sufferings began:
There came a browsing ox
And cut it down a span.
This time, perhaps, the ox does not notice it amid the grass; but the
next year, when it has grown more stout, he recognizes it for a
fellow-emigrant from the old country, the flavor of whose leaves and
twigs he well knows; and though at first he pauses to welcome it, and
express his surprise, and gets for answer, “The same cause that brought
you here brought me,” he nevertheless browses it again, reflecting, it
may be, that he has some title to it.
Thus cut down annually, it does not despair; but, putting forth two
short twigs for every one cut off, it spreads out low along the ground
in the hollows or between the rocks, growing more stout and scrubby,
until it forms, not a tree as yet, but a little pyramidal, stiff,
twiggy mass, almost as solid and impenetrable as a rock. Some of the
densest and most impenetrable clumps of bushes that I have ever seen,
as well on account of the closeness and stubbornness of their branches
as of their thorns, have been these wild-apple scrubs. They are more
like the scrubby fir and black spruce on which you stand, and sometimes
walk, on the tops of mountains, where cold is the demon they contend
with, than anything else. No wonder they are prompted to grow thorns at
last, to defend themselves against such foes. In their thorniness,
however, there is no malice, only some malic acid.
The rocky pastures of the tract I have referred to,—for they maintain
their ground best in a rocky field,—are thickly sprinkled with these
little tufts, reminding you often of some rigid gray mosses or lichens,
and you see thousands of little trees just springing up between them,
with the seed still attached to them.
Being regularly clipped all around each year by the cows, as a hedge
with shears, they are often of a perfect conical or pyramidal form,
from one to four feet high, and more or less sharp, as if trimmed by
the gardener’s art. In the pastures on Nobscot Hill and its spurs, they
make fine dark shadows when the sun is low. They are also an excellent
covert from hawks for many small birds that roost and build in them.
Whole flocks perch in them at night, and I have seen three robins’
nests in one which was six feet in diameter.
No doubt many of these are already old trees, if you reckon from the
day they were planted, but infants still when you consider their
development and the long life before them. I counted the annual rings
of some which were just one foot high, and as wide as high, and found
that they were about twelve years old, but quite sound and thrifty!
They were so low that they were unnoticed by the walker, while many of
their contemporaries from the nurseries were already bearing
considerable crops. But what you gain in time is perhaps in this case,
too, lost in power,—that is, in the vigor of the tree. This is their
pyramidal state.
The cows continue to browse them thus for twenty years or more, keeping
them down and compelling them to spread, until at last they are so
broad that they become their own fence, when some interior shoot, which
their foes cannot reach, darts upward with joy: for it has not
forgotten its high calling, and bears its own peculiar fruit in
triumph.
Such are the tactics by which it finally defeats its bovine foes. Now,
if you have watched the progress of a particular shrub, you will see
that it is no longer a simple pyramid or cone, but that out of its apex
there rises a sprig or two, growing more lustily perchance than an
orchard-tree, since the plant now devotes the whole of its repressed
energy to these upright parts. In a short time these become a small
tree, an inverted pyramid resting on the apex of the other, so that the
whole has now the form of a vast hour-glass. The spreading bottom,
having served its purpose, finally disappears, and the generous tree
permits the now harmless cows to come in and stand in its shade, and
rub against and redden its trunk, which has grown in spite of them, and
even to taste a part of its fruit, and so disperse the seed.
Thus the cows create their own shade and food; and the tree, its
hour-glass being inverted, lives a second life, as it were.
It is an important question with some nowadays, whether you should trim
young apple-trees as high as your nose or as high as your eyes. The ox
trims them up as high as he can reach, and that is about the right
height, I think.
In spite of wandering kine, and other adverse circumstances, that
despised shrub, valued only by small birds as a covert and shelter from
hawks, has its blossom-week at last, and in coarse of time its harvest,
sincere, though small.
By the end of some October, when its leaves have fallen, I frequently
see such a central sprig, whose progress I have watched, when I thought
it had forgotten its destiny, as I had, bearing its first crop of small
green or yellow or rosy fruit, which the cows cannot get at over the
bushy and thorny hedge which surrounds it, and I make haste to taste
the new and undescribed variety. We have all heard of the numerous
varieties of fruit invented by Van Mons and Knight. This is the system
of Van Cow, and she has invented far more and more memorable varieties
than both of them.
Through what hardships it may attain to bear a sweet fruit! Though
somewhat small, it may prove equal, if not superior, in flavor to that
which has grown in a garden,—will perchance be all the sweeter and more
palatable for the very difficulties it has had to contend with. Who
knows but this chance wild fruit, planted by a cow or a bird on some
remote and rocky hillside, where it is as yet unobserved by man, may be
the choicest of all its kind, and foreign potentates shall hear of it,
and royal societies seek to propagate it, though the virtues of the
perhaps truly crabbed owner of the soil may never be heard of,—at
least, beyond the limits of his village? It was thus the Porter and the
Baldwin grew.
Every wild-apple shrub excites our expectation thus, somewhat as every
wild child. It is, perhaps, a prince in disguise. What a lesson to man!
So are human beings, referred to the highest standard, the celestial
fruit which they suggest and aspire to bear, browsed on by fate; and
only the most persistent and strongest genius defends itself and
prevails, sends a tender scion upward at last, and drops its perfect
fruit on the ungrateful earth. Poets and philosophers and statesmen
thus spring up in the country pastures, and outlast the hosts of
unoriginal men.
Such is always the pursuit of knowledge. The celestial fruits, the
golden apples of the Hesperides, are ever guarded by a hundred-headed
dragon which never sleeps, so that it is an Herculean labor to pluck
them.
This is one, and the most remarkable way, in which the wild apple is
propagated; but commonly it springs up at wide intervals in woods and
swamps, and by the sides of roads, as the soil may suit it, and grows
with comparative rapidity. Those which grow in dense woods are very
tall and slender. I frequently pluck from these trees a perfectly mild
and tamed fruit. As Palladius says, “_Et injussu consternitur ubere
mali_”: And the ground is strewn with the fruit of an unbidden
apple-tree.
It is an old notion, that, if these wild trees do not bear a valuable
fruit of their own, they are the best stocks by which to transmit to
posterity the most highly prized qualities of others. However, I am not
in search of stocks, but the wild fruit itself, whose fierce gust has
suffered no “inteneration.” It is not my
“highest plot
To plant the Bergamot.”