The best time to begin to study the trees is to-day! The place to begin
is right where you are, provided there is a tree near enough, for a
lesson about trees will be very dull unless there is a tree to look at,
to ask questions of, and to get answers from. But suppose it is winter
time, and the tree is bare. Then you have a chance to see the wonderful
framework of trunk and branches, the way the twigs spread apart on the
outer limbs, while the great boughs near the trunk are almost bare. Each
branch is trying to hold its twigs out into the sunshine, and each twig
is set with buds. When these buds open, and most of them send out leafy
shoots, the tree will be a shady summerhouse with a thick, leafy roof
that the sun cannot look through. Among the big branches near the trunk
very few leaves will be found compared with the number the outer twigs
bear.
How can we tell whether the tree is alive or dead in winter? Break off a
twig. Is there a layer of green just inside the brown bark? This is the
sign that the tree is alive. Dead twigs are withered, and their buds are
not plump and bright. The green is gone from under the bark of these
twigs.
Under each bud is the scar of last year’s leaf, and if you look on the
ground you are pretty sure to find a dead leaf whose stem fits exactly
into that scar. If there are a number of these leaves under the tree, you
may feel sure that they fell from the tree last autumn. Look carefully
among the leaves, and on the branches for the seeds of this tree. If
there is an acorn left on the tree, you may be sure that you have the
tree’s name!
The name is the thing we wish first to know when we meet a stranger. If
an acorn is found growing on a tree, that tree has given us its name, for
trees that bear acorns are all oaks. An acorn is a kind of nut, and there
are many kinds of oaks, each with its own acorn pattern, unlike that of
other oaks. Yet all acorns sit in their little acorn cups, and we do not
confuse them with nuts of other trees. So we know the family name of all
trees whose fruits are acorns. They are all oaks, and there are fifty
kinds in our own country, growing wild in American forests. But if those
of all countries are counted, there are in all more than three hundred
kinds.
If, instead of acorns, pods hang on the twigs, the tree belongs to the
locust family, related to our garden peas and beans. The signs by which
we learn to know trees are not many. The bark of the white birch is so
silky white that everybody knows that tree. The sycamore sheds its bark
in thin, irregular sheets, leaving patches of dirty white streaking the
trunk and limbs, as if the tree had been daubed and spattered with
whitewash. This tree is so strikingly different from others that nearly
everybody knows it by name. Or they call it “buttonwood.” The seed-balls
hang on slender stems, swinging in the winter wind.
The winter signs to notice are the bark, the buds, and the leaf scars,
the shape of the tree, and the way it branches. The fruit it bears may be
seen in summer, autumn, or winter. The flowers come in warm weather, some
kinds early, some later, and the leaves are new in spring, and most trees
shed them in autumn. There is no time of year when there are not three or
four of the important signs hung out on every tree to guide those who are
trying to find out its name, and learn the story of its interesting life.
And the finding out of tree names is not dreary and hard, but a good game
to be played out-of-doors.