In spring the big chestnut tree is late in putting out its leaves. It is
May before the bare limbs are clothed with green. This crown is made of
long, pointed leaves, each short-stemmed, strongly ribbed, with parallel
veins on each side of the midrib, polished and sharp-toothed along its
margin. It is a superb dome of unusually handsome leaves.
When the flower procession is long past and the grain fields have turned
yellow, and the mower and reaper are humming busily, the chestnut’s crown
turns from green to gold, as if to harmonise with the landscape of
midsummer. Each twig ends in a feathery yellow plume, which waves in the
breezes, and sheds its yellow pollen abroad. The fertile flowers are at
the base of the plume. As the yellow pollen flowers fade, the green scaly
ones below them are swelling. They are the young chestnuts. The long
tongue each held out to catch pollen when it was ready for use. Each
flower has three nuts as its full quota to form. Failure to be pollenated
may cause one of the three to fail. The husk will then contain two nuts.
[Illustration: Leaves and flowers of the ear-leaved cucumber tree are the
largest in the magnolia family]
[Illustration: The orange-yellow flower cups and squared leaves of the
tulip tree]
In May the yellow locust trees still stand along the roadsides, or herded
together along the banks of streams, bare and ugly, while the trees
around them are beautifully clothed in their green garments, and adorned
with blossoms. The dead pods still cling to the locust’s branches, and
not even the buds are in sight to prove the twigs alive.
Suddenly the trees wake, push out their hidden buds into shoots which
unfold leaves made of tiny leaflets. The leafy spray is light and
graceful, pale green with a silvery sheen at first. Soon the leaves are
inundated with a flood of white blossoms, fragrant with their nectar,
which hang in clusters from each twig. The bees see the white cloud on
the locust tree, and hurry to the feast. Each curious pea-like flower has
a honey pot in its horned petal. Throughout the summer the locust trees
wave their fern-like leaves, among which the young pods swing, rosy and
green, and velvety soft. The two thorns at the base of each leaf are
there, but they are not conspicuous, unless you grasp a limb; then they
let you know where they are, and what they can do.
On a summer evening we shall see that the locust has closed its leaves,
folding the opposite leaflets together, and the whole leaf drooping from
its stem. It reminds us of the old-fashioned sensitive plant whose leaves
resembled these, folded its leaflets and drooped whenever it was touched.
Indeed, the locust tree and these plants are near relatives. The locust
leaves are sensitive to the evening air. They close if a rain comes up,
but open when the sun comes out again and the sky clears.
Locust trees have an insect enemy which bores into the solid wood, and
ruins it for lumber. Even the twigs are swollen and distorted by these
insects, which feed upon the rich sap that should go to feed the tree. It
is impossible to reach this enemy with poison, so the trees are helpless.
Except for this unfortunate fact, locusts would be a profitable crop to
raise for timber. Locust wood is very hard, durable, and strong. It is
slow to decay when in water, so it is valuable for fence posts, and for
boat building. It is used for hubs and spokes of waggon wheels, and it is
an excellent fuel. The locust timber that reaches market comes from the
mountain slopes, where the locust-borer is thus far unknown. The range of
the tree is all over the Eastern states and west to the Rocky Mountains.
We shall not find them south of the latitude of Tennessee.
[Illustration: Flowers, fruit, and the three different leaf patterns of
the sassafras tree]
[Illustration: Waxy flower of the evergreen magnolia, usually eight
inches across when open]
The catalpa’s great heart-shaped leaves, as broad as a man’s hat, come
out in May, but the leafy shoots grow a foot or more in length, and it is
well along toward Independence Day before the flower buds show streaks of
white above the foliage mass. The upturned twigs end in a spike of
blossoms, creamy in colour, but speckled within their wide throats with
purple and yellow. The rim of the flower cup is daintily scalloped, and
frilled, and the tree top is even more showy than the horse chestnut a
month earlier.
There is stateliness, even stiffness, in the figure of a blossoming horse
chestnut—a pyramid of green holding up a thousand pyramids of white. The
catalpa has a round head, and the loose flower clusters are quite
informal in their arrangement. The flowers nod gracefully on their
stems—a thing the horse chestnut flowers are unable to do.
Why are the dots of colour sprinkled in the throat of the flower? Why are
they arranged in lines that lead to the nectar sac? To guide the bees
which come in swarms in answer to the signals of colour and fragrance the
flowers fling out as lures to them.
The two stamens are ripe before the pistil. The bee rubs the pollen off
by crowding into the flower. Some of this dust is bound to be rubbed off
on the ripe stigma of an older blossom visited by this bee. Thus,
unconsciously the bee helps the tree to set good seed. Of these we will
study when we come to the tree again in autumn. Only a hint of the seed
vessel is given by looking at the oldest flower in a cluster, and
noticing the green part at the base.
The linden or basswood holds its arms out so that the broad leaves are
exposed to the sun in slanting strata, or platforms of shade, that strike
downward. The tree’s frame is roofed in with them in an almost unbroken
thatch of green. Cattle love to crop this foliage, and to enjoy the dense
shade on a hot day.
In July the dark green is illuminated by thousands of starry white
blossoms, a few at the end of a slender stem that rises out of a pale
green, leaf-like blade. There is nothing like it borne on any other tree.
The news that the basswoods are in bloom reaches the hives in good time.
One is able to hear the murmur of bees as far as he can see the flowers,
but the fragrance travels much farther. Basswood honey is higher in price
than other kinds. Is this the reason the bees are so hard at work? Small
as the individual flowers are, they have an unusual supply of nectar, and
the bees revel in the plenty of what will feed them and yield wax. They
make honey while the sun shines, counting the basswoods their best source
of the crude materials for honeymaking. It was so in the days of old.
Greek poets sang of the honey-laden lindens. Honey made from linden trees
in the Lithuanian forests was carried to Rome, where it sold for three
times the price of ordinary honey.
Bees swarm, and the new colony often takes to the woods and sets up
housekeeping in a hollow tree. This is so likely in the Southern states
to be a linden that “bee tree” is a familiar name of this tree.