In winter time, the bare limbs of trees reveal many strange secrets,
which the leaves cover up in summer. Some trees we may know by the thorns
they wear.
The honey locust scarcely conceals in summer the three-branched thorns,
for which it is famous. These thorns are twigs, but they rarely bear
leaves. Each is sharpened to a needle point, and highly polished.
Sometimes it is single, oftener with a main thorn and two side branches;
sometimes short, but often reaching over a foot in length, and growing
stronger and more wicked-looking with age. Sometimes a honey locust has a
crowded group of these thorns growing out of the trunk and large limbs.
Once in a great while a honey locust is thornless, growing wild. From
such trees a thornless variety has been developed. It is, therefore,
possible to obtain from nurserymen trees of this variety.
The unbranched spines of the osage orange trees make it a formidable
hedge plant, and no fences are needed where green barriers of these trees
grow. Each shining leaf has a spike at its base, stout and sharp as a
needle, and strong as steel.
Two spines stand guard at the base of each leaf of the yellow or black
locust, and each leaflet has two little spines of the same type. The
basal spines remain after the leaves fall, so that in winter we shall
find these pairs of sentinels guarding the leaf scars up and down the
ridged twigs. On the thicker stems the thorns are larger, and the tree is
thus well-armed and able to do duty as a hedge plant, when thickly
planted.
These thorns come off with the bark, hence they are more properly called
prickles. They are not rooted in the wood of the branch as the thorns of
the honey locust are, but they belong in the class with rose and
raspberry prickles, which are mere outgrowths of the bark.
The hawthorn trees have single spines, some long and curved, some short,
some branched. All are rooted in the pith of the twig that bears them;
therefore, they are not prickles, but true thorns.
The wild plum trees have a strange habit of ending their shoots with
thorny tips, as if the branches needed such defence against browsing
cattle. Certainly these stunted, sharp-pointed twigs are useful as
weapons of defence to the little trees that grow slowly in poor soil, and
are sufferers from poverty and abuse. Perhaps it is their hard luck that
makes them crabbed and thorny. Wild apple trees show the same tendency to
have thorny twigs. The same little trees, transplanted to mellow soil,
grow soft and leafy twigs, and abandon the carrying of weapons.
Hercules’ club is a tree which beats the ailanthus at its own game. Stems
ten feet high and two inches in diameter at the base sometimes shoot up
in a single season. These clubs of Hercules are covered with spines as
thickly set as on a gooseberry bush, formidable and vicious, though only
skin deep.
On account of its tropical growth, this tree is planted for ornament in
gardens where there is room. Its leaves are wonderful. They come out with
a rich, silky, bronze sheen in spring, and when they reach full size are
often four feet long, and more than half as wide. Each one is branched
and branched again, and ends in a multitude of small oval leaflets. These
giant leaves sway in the summer winds, giving the tree the grace of a
tree fern. In late summer a great pyramid of bloom rises above the
foliage. Purplish berries, which succeed the flowers, make a fine showing
in fall and winter, when the leaves have turned to red and gold.
We dare not touch this spiny tree, but we may come close and admire its
wonderful crown of umbrella leaves, the biggest by far borne on any tree
outside of the Tropics.