THE NUT TREES
The Walnuts--The Hickories--The Beech--The Chestnuts--The
Oaks--The White Oak Group--The Black Oak Group--The
Horse-Chestnuts, or Buckeyes--The Lindens, or Basswoods
THE WALNUTS
Hickories are included with their near relatives, the walnuts, in one
of the most important of all our native tree groups. They are
distinct, yet they have many traits in common--the flowers and the nut
fruits, the hard resinous wood, with aromatic sap and leaves of many
leaflets, instead of a single blade.
The walnuts are decidedly "worth knowing." All produce valuable timber
and edible nuts, and all are good shade trees. Four native walnuts are
well known in this country, for in October, every tree in every bit of
woods is likely to be visited by school boys with bags, eager to
gather the nuts before some other boy finds the tree, and thus
establishes a prior claim upon it. The curiously gnawed shells outside
the winter storehouse of some furry woods-dweller reveal the most
successful competitor boys have, the constant watcher of the nut
trees, a harvester who works at nothing else while the season is on.
=The Southwestern Walnut=
_Juglans rupestris_, Engelm.
The walnut of the Southwest grows into a spreading, luxuriant tree,
where its roots find water. But on the canyon sides, and higher on
mountain slopes, it becomes a stunted shrub, because of lack of
moisture.
The nut is smaller than that of the eastern walnuts and has a thick
shell, but the kernel is sweet and keeps its rich flavor for a long
time. The Mexicans and Indians are glad to have this nut added to the
stores they gather for their winter food.
One striking feature of this tree is the pale, cottony down on its
twigs, which sometimes persists three or four years. The long limbs
droop at the extremities, almost deserving to be called "weeping." But
nothing could be more cheerful in color than the yellow-green foliage,
shining in the sun, against the white bark of the tree. In autumn the
foliage turns bright yellow. A specimen, much admired, grows in the
Arnold Arboretum in Boston.
=The California Walnut=
_J. californica_, Wats.
The California walnut is a stocky, round-headed tree, with heavy,
drooping branches, and bark that is white and smooth on limbs and on
trunks of young trees. Ultimately the trunk turns nearly black, and is
checked into broad, irregular ridges. In bottom lands, along the
courses of rivers, back thirty miles from the coast, these trees are
found, from the Sacramento Valley to the southern slopes of the San
Bernardino Mountains.
The foliage is bright pale green, feathery, the leaflets often curved
to sickle form, showing paler silky linings. Californians admire and
plant this tree for shade and ornament. Its greatest value is as a
hardy stock upon which the "English" walnut is grafted by nurserymen,
for planting orchards of this commercial nut. The fruit of the native
nut is excellent, but it cannot compete with the thin-shelled nut that
came from Persia, _via_ England.
=The Butternut, White Walnut, or Oilnut=
_J. cinerea_, Linn.
In eastern woods the butternut is known by its long, pointed nuts,
with deeply and raggedly sculptured shells, in fuzzy, clammy, sticky
husks that stain the hands of him who attempts to get at the oily meat
before the husks are dry. This dark stain was an important dye in the
time when homespun cotton cloth was worn by men and boys. The modern
khaki resembles in color the "butternut jeans," in which backwoods
regiments of the Civil War were clad. Butternut husks and bark yield
also a drug of cathartic properties.
Pickling green oilnuts in their husks is a housewifely industry, on
the summer programme of many housewives still, if the woods near by
furnish the raw material for employing her great-grandmother's recipe,
brought from England, or perhaps from France. The green nuts are
tested with a knitting needle. If it goes through them with no
difficulty, and yet the nuts are of good size, they are ready.
Vigorous rubbing removes the fuzz after the nuts are scalded. Then
they are pickled whole, in spiced vinegar, and are a rare, delectable
relish with meats for the winter table.
[Illustration: WEEPING BEECH
_See page 42_]
[Illustration: BLACK WALNUT
_See page 31_]
A butternut tree, beside the road, or elsewhere, with room to grow,
has a short trunk, and a low, broad head, with a downward droop to the
horizontal limbs. The bark is light brown, the limbs grayish green,
the twigs and leaves all ooze a clammy, waxy, aromatic sap, and are
covered with fine hairs of velvety abundance.
Because it is low and rather wayward in growth, late to leaf out in
spring, and early to shed its leaves in summer, the butternut is not a
good street tree. It breaks easily in the wind, and crippled trees are
more common than well-grown specimens. Insect and fungous enemies
beset the species, and take advantage of breaks to invade the twigs
through the chambered pith. Short-lived trees they are, whose brown,
satiny wood is used in cabinet work, but is not plentiful.
=The Black Walnut=
_J. nigra_, Linn.
The black walnut (_see illustrations, pages 31, 70_) is the second
species east of the Rocky Mountains, and the tree chiefly depended
upon, during the century just closed, by the makers of furniture of
the more expensive grades. Black walnut wood is brown, with purplish
tones in it, and a silvery lustre, when polished. Its hardness and
strength commend it to the boat and ship builder. Gunstock factories
use quantities of this wood. In furniture and interior woodwork, the
curly walnut, found in the old stumps of trees cut long before, is
especially sought for veneering panels. Old furniture, of designs that
have passed out, are often sold to the factories, and their seasoned
wood cut thin for veneering.
Walnut trees one hundred and fifty feet high were not uncommon in the
forests primeval, in the basin of the Ohio and Wabash rivers. These
giants held up their majestic heads far over the tops of oaks and
maples in the woods. They were slaughtered, rolled together, and
burned by the pioneers, clearing the land for agriculture. These men
had a special grudge against walnut trees, they were so stubborn--so
hard to make away with. How unfortunate it is that our ancestors had
the patience to go forward and conquer the unconquerable ones. Had
they weakly surrendered, and let these trees stand, we should have had
them for the various uses to which we put the finest lumber trees
to-day.
Unhappily, the growing of young trees has not been extensively
undertaken to replace those destroyed. The newer forestry is awake to
the need, and the loss may be made good, from this time forward.
The black walnut is nearly globular, deeply sculptured, with a sweet
nut rich in oil, very good if one eats but a few at a time. Locally,
they find their way to market, but they soon become rancid in the
grocer's barrel. At home, boys spread them, in their smooth,
yellow-pitted husks, on the roof of the woodshed, for instance, so the
husks can dry while the nuts are seasoning. No walnut opens its husk
in regular segments, as the hickories all do. But the husking is not
hard. The thick shells require careful management of the hammer or
nut-cracker, to avoid breaking the meats.
Dark as is its wood and bark, no walnut tree in full leaf is sombre.
The foliage is bright, lustrous, yellow-green, graceful, dancing. A
majestic tree, with a luxuriant crown from May till September, this
walnut needs room to display its notable contour and size. It deserves
more popularity than it enjoys as a tree for parks. No tree is more
interesting to watch as it grows.
The bitter spongy husk deters the squirrels from gnawing into the nut
until the husk is dry and brittle. Hidden in the ground, the shell
absorbs moisture, and winter frost cracks it, by the gentle but
irresistible force of expanding particles of water as they turn to
ice. So the plantlet has no hindrance to its growth when spring opens.
Imitating nature, the nurseryman lays his walnuts and butternuts in a
bed of sand or gravel, one layer above another, and lets the rain and
the cold do the rest. In spring the "stratified" nuts are ready for
planting. Sometimes careful cracking of the shell prepares the nut to
sprout when planted.
The Japanese walnuts (_J. Sieboldiana_ and _J. cordiformis_) are grown
to a limited extent in states where the English walnut is not hardy.
They are butternuts, and very much superior to our native species. A
Manchurian walnut has been successfully introduced, but few people but
the pioneers in nut culture know anything about these exotic species.
South America and the West Indies have native species. So we shall not
be surprised, in our travels, to find walnuts in the woods of many
continents.
=The English Walnut=
_J. regia_, Linn.
Originally at home in the forests of Persia and northwestern India,
the English walnut was grown for its excellent nuts in the warm
countries of Europe and Asia. It was a tree of great reputation when
Linnaeus gave it the specific name that means _royal_. Indeed, this is
the tree which gave to all the family the name "_Juglans_," which
means, "Jove's acorn," in the writings of Roman authors. Kings made
each other presents of these nuts, and so the range of the species was
extended, even to England, by the planting of nuts from the south.
It became the fad of gardeners, before the fifteenth century, to
improve the varieties, and to compete with others in getting the
thinnest shell, the largest nut, the sweetest kernel, just as
horticulturists do now. In 1640 the herbalist Parkinson wrote about a
variety of "French wallnuts, which are the greatest of any, within
whose shell are often put a paire of fine gloves, neatly foulded up
together." Another variety he mentions "whose shell is so tender that
it may easily be broken between one's fingers, and the nut itsself
is very sweete."
In England, the climate prevents the ripening of the fruit of walnut
trees. But the nuts reach good size, and are pickled green, for use as
a relish; or made into catsups--husks and all being used, when a
needle will still puncture the fruit with ease.
In America, the first importations of the walnuts came from the
Mediterranean countries, by way of England, "the mother country." In
contradistinction to our black walnuts and butternuts, these nuts from
overseas were called by the loyal colonists "English walnuts," and so
they remain to this day in the markets of this country.
It was natural and easy to grow these trees in the Southern states.
But little had been done to improve them, or to grow them extensively
for market, until California undertook to compete with Europe for the
growing American trade. Now the crop reaches thousands of tons of
nuts, and millions of dollars come back each year to the owners of
walnut ranches. Hardy varieties have extended the range of
nut-orcharding; and so has the grafting of tender varieties on stock
of the native black walnut of California.
The beauty of this Eurasian walnut tree would justify planting it
merely for the adornment of parks and private grounds. Its broad dome
of bright green foliage in summer, and its clean gray trunk and bare
branches in winter, are attractive features in a landscape that has
few deciduous trees. A fine dooryard tree that bears delicious nuts,
after furnishing a grateful shade all summer, is deserving the
popularity it enjoys with small farmers and owners of the simplest
California homes.
As a lumber tree, the walnut of Europe has long been commercially
important. It is the staple wood for gun-stocks, and during wars the
price has reached absurd heights, one country bidding against its
rival to get control of the visible supply. Furniture makers use
quantities of the curly walnut often found in stumps of old trees. The
heart wood, always a rich brown, is often watered and crimped in
curious and intricate patterns, that when polished blend the loveliest
dark and light shades with the characteristic walnut lustre, to reward
the skilled craftsman.
In the United States this wood is rarely seen, because the trees are
grown for their nuts. They require several years to come into bearing,
are long-lived, have few enemies, and need little pruning as bearing
age approaches.
THE HICKORIES
Americans have a right to be proud that the twelve hickory species are
all natives of this country. Eleven of the twelve are found in the
eastern half of the United States; one, only, strays into the forests
of Mexico. No other country has a native hickory.
Indians of the Algonkin tribe named this tree family, and taught the
early colonists in Virginia to use for food the ripe nuts of the
shagbark and mockernut. After cracking the shells, the procedure was
to boil and strain the mixture, which gave them a rich, soupy liquid.
Into this they stirred a coarse meal, made by grinding between stones
the Indian corn. The mush was cooked slowly, then made into cakes,
which were baked on hot stones. No more delicious nor wholesome food
can be imagined than this. Frequently the soup was eaten alone; its
name, "Powcohicora," gave the trees their English name, part of which
the botanist, Rafinesque, took, Latinized, and set up as the name of
the genus.
Cut a twig of any hickory tree, and you realize that the wood is
close-grained and very springy. The pith is solid, with a star form in
cross-section, corresponding to the ranking of the leaves on the
twigs. The wind strews no branches under a hickory tree, for the
fibres of the wood are strong and flexible enough to resist a
hurricane. (_See illustrations, pages 6, 71._)
Hickory wood is unequalled for implements which must resist great
strain and constant jarring. The running-gear of wagons and carriages,
handles of pitchforks, axes, and like implements require it. Thin
strips, woven into baskets for heavy market use, are almost
indestructible. No fuel is better than seasoned hickory wood.
=Shagbark or Shellbark=
_Hicoria ovata_, Britt.
The shagbark has gray bark that is shed in thin, tough, vertical
strips. Attached by the middle, these strips often spring outward, at
top and bottom, giving the bole a most untidy look (_see
illustrations, pages 6, 71_), and threatening the trousers of any boy
bold enough to try climbing into the smooth-barked top to beat off the
nuts.
In spite of the ragged-looking trunk, a shagbark grown in the open is
a noble tree. The limbs are angular, but they express strength to the
utmost twig, as the bare oblong of the tree's lofty head is etched
against a wintry sky.
The nuts are the chief blessing this tree confers upon the youngsters
of any neighborhood. Individual trees differ in the size and quality
of their fruit. The children know the best trees, and so do the
squirrels, their chief competitors at harvest time.
Frost causes the eager lads to seek their favorite trees, and
underneath they find the four-parted husks dropping away from the
angled nuts. There is no waiting, as with walnuts, for husking time to
come. The tree is prompt about dropping its fruit. Spread for a few
weeks, where they can dry, and thieving squirrels will let them alone,
hickory nuts reach perfect condition for eating. Fat, proteid, and
carbohydrates are found in concentrated form in those delicious meats.
We may not know their dietetic value, but we all remember how good and
how satisfying they are. No tree brings to the human family more
valuable offerings than this one, rugged and ragged though it be.
=The Big Shellbark=
_H. lacinata_, Sarg.
The big shellbark, like the little shellbark, is a common forest tree
in the Middle West and Middle Atlantic states. It has a shaggy trunk,
stout limbs, picturesquely angular, and it bears nuts that are sweet
and of delicious flavor. In winter the orange-colored twigs, large
terminal buds, and persistent stems of the dead leaves are
distinguishing traits. These petioles shed the five to nine long
leaflets and then stay on, their enlarged bases firmly tied by fibre
bundles to the scar, though the stems writhe and curve as if eager to
be free to die among the fallen blades.
"King nuts," as the fruit of this tree is labelled in the markets, do
not equal the little hickory nuts in quality, and their thick shells
cover meats very little larger. But the nut in its husk on the tree is
often three inches long--a very impressive sight to hungry
nut-gatherers.
In summer the downy leaf-linings and the uncommon size of the leaves
best distinguish this tree from its near relative, whose five leaflets
are smooth throughout, small, very rarely counting seven.
[Illustration: _See page 42_
WHITE OAK]
[Illustration: _See page 51_
BUR, OR MOSSY-CUP, OAK--LEAVES AND FRUIT]
=The Pecan=
_H. Pecan_, Britt.
The pecan tree bears the best nuts in the hickory family. This species
is coming to be a profitable orchard tree in many sections of the
South. Most of the pecan nuts in the market come from wild trees in
the Mississippi Basin. But late years have seen great strides taken to
establish pecan growing as a paying horticultural enterprise in states
outside, as well as within, the tree's natural range. And these
efforts are succeeding.
Experiment stations have tested seedling trees and selected varieties
of known merit, until they know by actual experiment that pecans can
be raised successfully in the Carolinas and in other states where the
native species does not grow wild. Thin-shelled varieties, with the
astringent red shell-lining almost eliminated, have been bred by
selection, and propagated by building on native stock. The trees have
proved to be fast-growing, early-fruiting, and easy to grow and
protect from enemies.
The market pays the highest price for pecans. The popularity of this
nut is deserved, because by analysis it has the highest food value
combined with the most delicate and delicious flavor. No nut is so
rich in nutriment. None has so low a percentage of waste. The demand
for nuts is constantly increasing as the public learns that the
proteid the body needs can be obtained from nuts as well as from meat.
Pecans have suffered in competition with other nuts because they are
difficult to get out of the shells without breaking the meats. The
old-fashioned hammer and block is not the method for them. A cracker I
saw in use on the street corner in Chicago delighted me. Clamped to
the nut-vendor's stall, it received the nut between two steel cups
and, by the turn of a wheel, crowded it so that the shell buckled and
broke where it is thinnest, around the middle, and the meat came out
whole.
=The Mockernut=
_H. alba_, Britt.
The mockernut is a mockery to him who hopes for nuts like those of
either shagbark. The husk is often three inches long. Inside is a
good-sized nut, angled above the middle, suggesting the shagbark. But
what a thick, obstinate shell, when one attempts to "break and enter!"
And what a trifling, insipid meat one finds, to repay the effort!
Quite often there is nothing but a spongy remnant or the shell is
empty. (_See illustration, page 7._)
As a shade tree, the mockernut has real value, showing in winter a
tall, slender pyramidal form, with large terminal buds tipping the
velvety, resinous twigs. The bark is smooth as that of an ash, with
shallow, wavy furrows, as if surfaced with a silky layer of new
healing tissue, thrown up to fill up all depressions. Mockernut leaves
are large, downy, yellow-green, turning to gold in autumn. Crushed
they give out an aroma suggesting a delicate perfume.
The flowers are abundant, and yet the most surprising show of colors
on this tree comes in late April, when the great buds swell. The outer
scales fall, and the inner ones expand into ruddy silken sheathes that
stand erect around the central cluster of leaves, not yet awake, and
every branch seems to hold up a great red tulip! The sight is
wonderful. Nothing looks more flower-like than these opening hickory
buds, and to the unobserving passerby the transformation is nothing
short of a miracle. In a day, the leaves rise and spread their
delicate leaflets, lengthening and becoming smooth, as the now useless
red scales fall in a shower to the ground.
=The Pignut=
_H. glabra_, Britt.
The pignut deserves the better name, "smooth hickory," a more
ingratiating introduction to strangers. A graceful, symmetrical tree,
with spreading limbs that end in delicate, pendulous branches, and
gray bark checked into a maze of intersecting furrows, it is an
ornament to any park, even in the dead of winter. In summer the tree
laughs in the face of the sun, its smooth, glossy, yellow-green
leaflets, five to seven on a stem, lined with pale green or yellow. In
spring the clustered fringes among the opening leaves are the green
and gold stamen flowers. The curiously angled fertile flowers, at the
tips of twigs, are green, with yellow stigmas. Autumn turns the
foliage to orange and brown, and lets fall the pear-shaped or rounded
fruit, each nut obscurely four-angled and held fast at the base by the
thin, 4-ridged husk, that splits scarcely to the middle. The kernel is
insipid, sometimes bitter, occasionally rather sweet. Country boys
scorn the pignut trees, leaving their fruit for eager but
unsophisticated nut-gatherers from the towns.
Pigs used to be turned into the woods to fatten on beech- and
oak-"mast." They eagerly devoured the thin-shelled nuts of _H.
glabra_, and thus the tree earned the friendly regard of farmers, and
a name that preserves an interesting bit of pioneer history.
The range of the pignut is from Maine to Florida on the Atlantic
seaboard, west to the middle of Nebraska and Texas, and from Ontario
and Michigan south to the Gulf.
THE BEECH
=The American Beech=
_Fagus Americanus_, Sweet.
One of the most widely distributed trees in our country, this is also
one of the most useful and most beautiful in any forest. It is the
sole representative of its genus in the Western Hemisphere. One
species is a valuable timber tree in Europe. Three are natives of
Asia. A genus near of kin includes the beech trees of the Southern
Hemisphere, twelve species in all. There is closer resemblance,
however, between our beeches and their next of kin, the chestnuts and
oaks.
From the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, from Florida to Texas,
from New England to Wisconsin, beech trees grow; and where they grow
they are very likely to form "pure forests," on the slopes of
mountains and rich river bottoms. The largest specimens grow in the
basin of the lower Ohio River, and on the warm slopes of the Alleghany
Mountains.
Standing alone, with room for full development, the beech is a fine,
symmetrical tree, with horizontal or slightly drooping branches,
numerous, thickly set with slender, flexible twigs. The stout trunk
supports a round or conical head of very dense foliage. One hundred
and twenty feet is the maximum height, with a trunk diameter of three
to four feet. (_See illustrations, pages 22, 30._)
The older the trees, the greater the amount of red heart wood in
proportion to the white sap-wood, next to the bark. Red and white
beech wood are distinguished by lumbermen. Red beech makes superior
floors, toolhandles, chairs, and the like, and there is no more
perfect fuel than seasoned beech wood.
It is unreasonable to think that any but the blind could live where
beech trees grow and not know these trees at a glance. The bark is
close, unfurrowed, gray, often almost white, and marked with blotches,
often nearly round of paler hue.
The branches are dark and smooth and the twigs polished to the long,
pointed winter buds. Throughout, the tree is a model of elegant
attire, both in color and texture of the investing bark.
In the growing season the leaves are the tree's chief attraction. They
are closely plaited, and covered with silvery down, when the bud
scales are pushed off in the spring. In a day, the protective fuzz
disappears, and the full-grown leaf is seen, thin, strongly
feather-veined, uniformly green, saw-toothed. Summer shows the foliage
mass almost as fresh, and autumn turns its green to pale gold. Still
unblemished, it clings, often until the end of winter, lighting the
woods with a ghostly glow, as the rain fades the color out. The silky
texture is never quite lost.
The delicate flowers of the beech tree are rarely seen, they fade so
soon; the stamen tassels drop off and the forming nuts, with their
prickly burs, are more and more in evidence in the leaf angles near
the ends of new shoots. With the first frost the burs open, the four
walls part, releasing the two nuts, three-angled, like a grain of
buckwheat.
The name of this grain was suggested by its resemblance in form to the
beechnut, or "buck mast," sweet, nutritious food of so many dwellers
in the forest. Buck mast was the food of man when he lived in caves
and under the forest cover. We know that beechnuts have a rich,
delicate flavor that offsets the disadvantages of their small size
and the difficulty of opening their thin but leathery shells. All
along the centuries European peoples have counted on this nut, and oil
expressed from it, for their own food and the dried leaves for forage
for their cattle in winter.
The American pioneer turned his hogs into the beech woods to fatten on
the beech-mast, and Thanksgiving turkeys were always finer if they
competed with the wild turkey on the same fare.
Birds and lesser mammals do much to plant trees when they carry away,
for immediate or future use, seeds that are not winged for flight.
Beechnuts are light enough to profit, to some extent, by a high wind.
And beech trees in their infancy do well under the shade of other
trees. So each fruiting tree is the mother of many young ones. But the
seedling trees are not so numerous and important as the sapling growth
that rises from the roots of parent trees. By these alone, a few
isolated beeches will manage to take possession of the ground around
them and to clothe it with so dense a foliage screen that all young
growth, except certain ferns and grasses, dies for lack of sun. Before
we can realize what is going on, the tract is a pure forest of beech,
rapidly enlarging on all sides by the same campaign of extension.
THE CHESTNUTS
=Chestnut and Chinquapin=
_Castanea dentata_, Borh., and _C. pumila_, Mill.
Our native chestnut and its little brother, the chinquapin, are the
American cousins of the sweet chestnut of southern Europe. Japan has
contributed to American horticulture a native species which bears
large but not very sweet nuts, that are good when cooked. Our two
trees bear sweet nuts, of a flavor that no mode of cooking improves.
In truth, there is no finer nut; and the time to enjoy it to the
highest degree is a few weeks after the frost opens the burs and lets
the nuts fall. "Along about Thanksgiving," they have lost some of
their moisture and are prime.
In foreign countries the chestnut is a rich, nourishing food,
comparable to the potato. Who could go into ecstasies over a vegetable
that is a staple food for the peasants of Europe, Asia, and North
Africa? Our chestnut is no staple. It is a delicacy. It is treasure
trove from the autumn woods, and the gathering of the crop is a game
in which boys and squirrels are rivals.
Ernest Thompson Seton, always a boy, knows the impatience with which
the opening of the burs is watched for, as the belated frosts keep
off, and the burs hang tantalizingly closed. The cruel wounds made by
the spines and the raw taste of the immature nuts are poor recompense
for the labor of nutting before Nature gives the sign that all's
ready.
Here is Mr. Seton's estimate of the chestnut of "brown October's
woods."
"Whenever you see something kept under lock and key, bars and bolts,
guarded and double-guarded, you may be sure it is very precious,
greatly coveted. The nut of this tree is hung high aloft, wrapped in a
silk wrapper, which is enclosed in a case of sole leather, which again
is packed in a mass of shock-absorbing, vermin-proof pulp, sealed up
in a waterproof, ironwood case, and finally cased in a vegetable
porcupine of spines, almost impregnable. There is no nut so protected;
there is no nut in our woods to compare with it as food."
What a disaster then is the newly arisen bark disease that has already
killed every chestnut tree throughout large areas in the Eastern
states. Scientists have thus far struggled with it in vain and it is
probable that all chestnuts east of the Rockies are doomed.
Chinquapins grow to be medium-sized trees in Texas and Arkansas, but
east of the Mississippi they are smaller, and east of the Alleghanies,
mere shrubby undergrowth, covering rocky banks or crouching along
swamp borders. They are smaller throughout, but resemble the chestnut
in leaf, flowers, and fruit. The bur contains a single nut.
The chestnut tree grows large and attains great age, its sturdy, rough
gray trunk crowned with an oblong head of irregular branches, hidden
in summer by the abundant foliage mass. (_See illustration, page 23._)
The ugly cripple that lightning has maimed covers its wounds when May
wakes the late-opening buds and the leaves attain full size.
Each leaf tapers at both ends, its length three or four times its
width. Strong-ribbed and sharp-toothed, and wavy on the midrib, dark,
polished, like leather, these units form a wonderful dome, lightened
in midsummer by the pencil-like plumes of the staminate flowers, with
the fertile ones at their bases. As autumn comes on the leaf crown
turns to gold, and the mature fruits are still green spiny balls. The
first frost and the time to drop the nuts are dates that every
schoolboy knows come close together.
When a chestnut tree falls by the axe, the roots restore the loss by
sending up sprouts around the stump. The mouldering pile nourishes a
circle of young trees, full of vigor, because they have the large
tree's roots gathering food for them. No wonder their growth is rapid.
Besides this mode of reproduction, chestnut trees, growing here and
there throughout a mixed forest, are the offspring of trees whose nuts
were put away, or dropped and lost by squirrels. When spring relieves
the danger of famine, many of the rodent class abandon their winter
stores before they are all devoured. Such caches add many nut trees to
our native woods.
THE OAKS
This is the great family of the cup-bearers, whose fruit, the acorn,
is borne in a scaly cup that never breaks into quarters, as does the
husk that holds a chestnut, beechnut, or hickory nut. All oak trees
bear acorns as soon as they come to fruiting age. This is the sign by
which they are known the world over. Seldom is a full-grown oak
without its little insignia, for the cups cling after the nut falls,
and one grand division of the family requires two seasons to mature
its fruit. For this reason, half-grown acorns are seen on the twigs
after the ripe ones fall.
We cannot say of oak trees that they all have sturdy trunks, rough
bark, and gnarled limbs, for not all of them have these
characteristics. But there is a certain likeness in oak leaves. They
are simple, five-ranked, generally oval, and the margins are generally
cut into lobes by deep or shallow bays. Most oak leaves have leathery
texture, strong veins, and short petioles. They are leaves that
outlast the summer, and sometimes persist until spring growth unseats
the stalks; sometimes, as in the "live oaks," they hang on three to
five years.
The twigs of oak trees are more or less distinctly five-angled, and
the winter buds cluster at the ends. This insures a group of young
shoots, crowded with leaves, on the ends of branches, and a dense
outer dome of foliage on the tree.
Nearly three hundred distinct species of oaks are recognized by
botanists, and the list is growing. New species are in the making. For
instance, a white oak and a bur oak grow near enough for the wind to
"cross-fertilize" their pistillate flowers. The acorns of such mixed
parentage produce trees that differ from both parents, yet reveal
characteristics of both. They are "hybrids," and may be called new
varieties of either parent. Other species of oak are intercrossing by
the same process--the interchange of pollen at the time of blossoming.
This proves that the oak family is young, compared with many other
families, whose members are too distantly related to intercross.
Though geologically young, the oak family is one of the most
important, furnishing timber of superior strength and durability for
bridge-building, ship-building, and other construction work. Tanning
has depended largely upon oak bark. As fuel, all oak trees are
valuable.
Fifty species of oak are native to North American forests. Twice as
many grow east of the Rocky Mountains as west of the Great Divide. No
species naturally passes this barrier. The temperate zone species
extend southward into tropical regions, by keeping to high altitudes.
Thus we find American oaks in the Andes and Colombia; Asiatic species
occur in the Indian Archipelago. No Old World species is native to
America. Each continent has its own.
East of the Rocky Mountains the oaks hold a place of preA"minence among
broad-leaved trees. They are trees of large size, and they often
attain great age. They are beautiful trees, and therefore highly
valued for ornamental planting. This has led to the introduction of
oaks from other countries. We have set European, Japanese, and
Siberian oaks in our finest parks. Europe has borrowed from our woods
the red oak and many others. All countries are richer by this
horticultural exchange of trees.
Our native oaks fall into two groups: the annual-fruiting and the
biennial-fruiting species. The first group matures its acorns in a
single season; the second requires two seasons. It happens that
annuals have leaves with rounded lobes, while biennials have leaves
with lobes that end in angles and bristly tips. The bark of the annual
trees is generally pale; that of the biennials, dark. Hence the white
oak group and the black oak group may be easily distinguished at a
glance, by the bark, the leaf, and the acorn crop.
THE WHITE OAK GROUP
=The White Oak=
_Quercus alba_, Linn.
The white oak has no rival for first place in the esteem of tree-lover
and lumberman. Its broad, rounded dome, sturdy trunk, and strong arms
(_see illustration, page 38_), and its wide-ranging roots enable a
solitary tree to resist storms that destroy or maim other kinds.
Strength and tenacity in the fibre of root and branch make it possible
for individuals to live to a great age, far beyond the two centuries
required to bring it to maturity. Such trees stir within us a feeling
of reverence and patriotism. They are patriarchs whose struggles
typify the pioneer's indomitable resistance to forces that destroyed
all but the strong.
White oak trees in the forest grow tall, lose their lower branches
early, and lift but a small head to the sun. The logs, quarter-sawed,
reveal the broad, gleaming "mirrors" that make a white oak table
beautiful. The botanist calls these the _medullary rays_--thin,
irregular plates of tissue-building cells, that extend out from the
central pith, sometimes quite to the sap-wood, crowding between the
wood fibres, which in the heart-wood are no longer alive. A slab will
show only an edge of these mirrors. But any section from bark to pith
will reveal them.
The pale brown wood of the white oak distinctly shows the narrow rings
of annual growth. Each season begins with a coarse, porous band of
"_spring wood_," followed by a narrower band of fine, close-grained
"_summer wood_." White oak is streaked with irregular, dark lines.
These are the porous lines of spring wood, discolored by foreign
matter. Count them, allow a year for each, and you know how long one
white oak tree required to make an inch of wood.
The supreme moment in the white oak's year comes in spring, when the
gray old tree wakes, the buds swell and cast off their brown scales,
and the young leaves appear. The tree is veiled, not with a garment of
green, but with a mist of rose and silver, each twig hung with soft
limp velvety leaves, red-lined, and covered with a close mat of silky
hairs. It is a spectacle that seems unreal, because it is so lovely
and gone so soon. The protecting hairs and pigments disappear, and the
green leafage takes its place, brightened by the yellow tassels of the
stamen flowers, and the growing season is on.
In autumn the pale-lined leaves of the white oak turn slowly to sombre
violet and dull purplish tones. Clinging there, after the acorns have
all fallen and been gathered by squirrels, the foliage fades into the
gray of the bark and may persist until spring growth sets in.
=The Bur Oak=
_Q. macrocarpa_, Michx.
The bur oak (_see illustration, page 39_) is called the mossy-cup on
account of the loose, fringed scales about the rim of the cup that
holds the large acorn--largest in the whole oak family. Often the nut
is completely enclosed by the cup; often it is small. This variable
fruit is sweet, and it is the winter store of many furry wood-folk.
The leaf has the rounded lobing of the family, with the special
peculiarity of being almost cut in two by a pair of deep and wide
opposite sinuses, between the broad middle, and the narrow, tapering
base. Not all leaves show this odd form, but it is the prevailing
pattern. The dark green blade has a pale, fuzzy lining, that lasts
until the leaves turn brown and yellow.
The bur oak is a rugged, ragged tree, compared with the white oak. Its
irregular form is picturesque, its wayward limbs are clothed in a
loose garment of untidy, half-shed bark. The twigs are roughened with
broad, corky wings. The trunk is brownish, with loosened flakes of
gray, separated by shallow fissures.
The wood is classed with white oak, though darker in color. It has the
same ornamental mirrors, dear to the heart of the cabinet-maker. It
serves all the purposes for which a tough, strong, durable wood is
needed.
The range of the species is from Nova Scotia to Montana, and it grows
in large tracts from Winnipeg to Texas, doing well in the arid soil of
western Nebraska and Dakota. Suckers from the roots spread these trees
till they form the "oak openings" of the bluffs of the Missouri and
other streams of Iowa and Minnesota. In Kansas it is the commonest oak
tree. The largest trees of this species grow in rich bottom lands in
the Ohio Valley.
=The Post Oak=
_Q. minor_, Sarg.
The post oak has wood that is noted for its durability when placed in
contact with the soil. It is in demand for fence posts, railroad ties,
and for casks and boat timbers. "Iron oak" is a name that refers to
the qualities of the wood. "Knees" of post oak used to be especially
in demand.
In the Mississippi Basin this tree attains its largest size and
greatest abundance on gravelly uplands. It is the commonest oak of
central Texas, on the sandy plains and limestone hills. Farther north,
it is more rare and smaller, becoming an undersized oak in New York
and westward to Kansas.
In winter the post oak keeps its cloak of harsh-feeling, thick,
coarse-veined leaves. Tough fibres fasten them to the twigs. In
summer the foliage mass is almost black, with gray leaf-linings. The
lobes and sinuses are large and squarish, the blades four or five
inches long. The limbs, tortuous, horizontal, form a dense head.
=The Chestnut Oak=
_Q. Prinus_, Linn.
The chestnut oak has many nicknames and all are descriptive. Its
leaves are similar in outline and size to those of the chestnut. The
margin is coarsely toothed, not lobed, like the typical oak leaf.
"Tanbark oak" refers to the rich store of tannin in the bark, which
makes this species the victim of the bark-peeler for the tanneries
wherever it grows. "Rock chestnut oak" is a title that lumbermen have
given to the oak with exceptionally hard wood, heavy and durable in
soil, adapted for railroad ties, posts, and the like.
Unlike other white oaks, the bark of this tree is dark in color and
deeply fissured. Without a look at the leaves, one might call it a
black oak.
The centre of distribution for this species seems to be the foothill
country of the Appalachian Mountains, in Tennessee and North Carolina.
Here it predominates, and grows to its largest size. From Maine to
Georgia it chooses rocky, dry uplands, grows vigorously and rapidly,
and its acorns often sprout before falling from the cup!
The chestnut oak is one of the most desirable kinds of trees to plant
in parks. It is symmetrical, with handsome bark and foliage. The
leaves turn yellow and keep their fine texture through the season. The
acorn is one of the handsomest and largest, and squirrels are
delighted with its sweet kernel.
=The Mississippi Valley Chestnut Oak=
_Q. acuminata_, Sarg.
In the Mississippi Valley the chestnut oak is _Q. acuminata_, Sarg.,
with a more slender and more finely-toothed leaf that bears a very
close resemblance to that of the chestnut. The foliage mass is
brilliant, yellow-green, each leaf with a pale lining, and hung on a
flexible stem. "Yellow oak" is another name, earned again when in
autumn the leaves turn to orange shades mingled with red.
On the Wabash River banks these trees surpass one hundred feet in
height and three feet in diameter. The base of the trunk is often
buttressed. Back from the rich bottom lands, on limestone and flinty
ridges, where water is scarce, these trees are stunted. In parks they
are handsome, and very desirable. The bark is silvery white, tinged
with brown, and rarely exceeds one half an inch in thickness.
=The Swamp White Oak=
_Q. platanoides_, Sudw.
The swamp white oak loves to stand in wet ground, sometimes even in
actual swamps. Its small branches shed their bark like the buttonwood,
the flakes curling back and showing the bright green under layer. On
the trunk the bark is thick, and broken irregularly into broad, flat
ridges coated with close, gray-brown scales often tinged with red.
[Illustration: _See page 65_
HORSE-CHESTNUT IN BLOSSOM]
[Illustration: _See page 83_
WEEPING WILLOW]
In its youth the swamp white oak is comely and symmetrical, its untidy
moulting habit concealed by the abundant foliage. One botanist calls
this species _bicolor_, because the polished yellow-green upper surfaces
contrast so pleasantly with the white scurf that lines each leaf
throughout the summer. Yellow is the autumn color. Never a hint of red
warms this oak of the swamps, even when planted as a street or park tree
in well-drained ground.
=The Basket Oak=
_Q. Michauxii_, Nutt.
The basket oak is so like the preceding species as to be listed by
some botanists as the southern form of _Q. platanoides_. They meet on
a vague line that crosses Maryland, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Both have
large leaves silver-lined, with undulating border, of the chestnut oak
pattern. Both are trees of the waterside, tall, with round heads of
gnarled limbs. The red-tinged white bark sets the basket oak apart
from all others. Its head is broader and its trunk stouter than in the
other species. The paired acorns are almost without stalks, the nuts
large, the kernels sweet. In autumn, farmers turn their hogs into the
woods to fatten on this oak-mast. The edibility of these nuts may
account for the common name, "cow oak."
The wood splits readily into thin, tough plates of the summer wood.
This is because the layer formed in spring is very porous. Bushel
baskets, china crates, and similar woven wares are made of these oak
splints. The wood is also used in cooperage and implement
construction, and it makes excellent firewood.
=The Live Oak=
_Q. Virginiana_, Mill.
The live oak with its small oval leaves, without a cleft in the plain
margins, looks like anything but an oak to the Northerner who walks
along a street planted with this evergreen in Richmond or New Orleans.
It is not especially good for street use, though often chosen. It
develops a broad, rounded dome, by the lengthening of the irregular
limbs in a horizontal direction. The trunk becomes massive and
buttressed to support the burden.
The "knees" of this oak were in keenest demand for ship-building
before steel took the place of wood. In all lines of construction,
this lumber ranks with the best white oak. The short trunk is the
disadvantage, from the lumberman's viewpoint. Its beauty, when
polished, would make it the wood _par excellence_ for elegant
furniture, except that it is difficult to work, and it splits easily.
The Spanish moss that drapes the limbs of live oaks in the South gives
them a greenish pallor and an unkempt appearance that seems more
interesting than beautiful to many observers. It is only when the
sight is familiar, I think, that it is pleasing. Northern trees are so
clean-limbed and so regular about shedding their leaves when they
fade, that these patient hosts, loaded down with the pendent skeins of
the tillandsia, seem to be imposed upon. In fact, the "moss" is not a
parasite, sapping the life of the tree, but a lodger, that finds its
own food supply without help.
=California White Oak=
_Q. lobata_, NA(C)e.
The California white oak far exceeds the Eastern white oak in the
spread of its mighty arms. The dome is often two hundred feet in
breadth and the trunk reaches ten feet in diameter. Such specimens are
often low in proportion, the trunk breaking into its grand divisions
within twenty feet of the ground. The ultimate spray is made of
slender, supple twigs, on which the many-lobed leaves taper to the
short stalks. Dark green above, the blades are lined with pale
pubescence. The acorns are slender, pointed, and often exceed two
inches in length. Their cups are comparatively shallow, and they fall
out when ripe.
The bare framework of one of these giant oaks shows a wonderful maze
of gnarled branches, whose grotesque angularities are multiplied with
added years and complicated by damage and repair.
It is hard to say whether the grace and nobility of the verdure-clad
tree, or the tortuous branching system revealed in winter, appeals
more strongly to the admiration of the stranger and the pride of the
native Californian, who delights in this noble oak at all seasons. Its
comparatively worthless wood has spared the trees to adorn the
park-like landscapes of the wide middle valleys of the state.
=Pacific Post Oak=
_Q. Garryana_, Hook.
The Pacific post oak is the only oak in British Columbia, whence it
follows down the valleys of the Coast Range to the Santa Cruz
Mountains. It is a tree nearly one hundred feet high, with a broad,
compact head, in western Washington and Oregon. Dark green, lustrous
leaves, with paler linings, attain almost a leathery texture when full
grown. They are four to six inches long and coarsely lobed. In autumn
they sometimes turn bright scarlet.
The wood is hard, strong, tough, and close-grained. It is employed in
the manufacture of wagons and furniture, and in ship-building and
cooperage. It is a superior fuel.
THE BLACK OAK GROUP
A large group of our native oaks require two seasons to mature their
acorns; have dark-colored bark and foliage, have leaves whose lobes
are sharp-angled and taper to bristly points and tough acorn shells
lined with a silky-hairy coat.
=The Black Oak=
_Q. velutina_, Lam.
The black oak of the vast region east of the Rocky Mountains is the
type or pattern species. Its leathery, dark green leaves are divided
by curving sinuses into squarish lobes, each ending in one or more
bristly tips. The lobes are paired, and each has a strong vein from
the midrib. Underneath, the leaf is always scurfy, even when the
ripening turns its color from bronze to brown, yellow or dull red.
Under the deep-furrowed, brown surface bark is a yellow layer, rich in
tannin, and a dyestuff called _quercitron_. This makes the tree
valuable for its bark. The wood is coarse-grained, hard, difficult to
work, and chiefly employed as fuel.
A distinguishing trait of the bare tree is the large fuzzy winter bud.
The unfolding leaves in spring are bright red above, with a silvery
lining.
The autumn acorn crop may be heavy or light. Trees have their "off
years," for various reasons. But always, as leaves and fruit fall and
bare the twigs, one sees, among the winter buds, the half-grown acorns
waiting for their second season of growth.
The pointed nut soon loosens, for the cup though deep has straight
sides. The kernel is yellow and bitter.
=The Scarlet Oak=
_Q. coccinea_, Moench.
The scarlet oak is like a flaming torch set among the dull browns and
yellows in our autumnal woods. In spring the opening leaves are red;
so are the tasselled catkins and the forked pistils, that turn into
the acorns later on. This is a favorite ornamental tree in Europe and
our own country. Its points of beauty are not all in its colors.
The tree is slender, delicate in branch, twig, and leaf--quite out of
the sturdy, picturesque class in which most oaks belong. The leaf is
thin, silky smooth, its lobes separated by sinuses so deep that it is
a mere skeleton compared with the black oak's. The trimness of the
leaf is matched by the neat acorn, whose scaly cup has none of the
looseness seen in the burly black oak. The scales are smooth,
tight-fitting, and they curl in at the rim.
There is lightness and grace in a scarlet oak, for its twigs are slim
and supple as a willow's, and the leaves flutter on long, flexible
stems. Above the drifts of the first snowfall, the brilliance of the
scarlet foliage makes a picture long to be remembered against the blue
of a clear autumnal sky.
The largest trees of this species grow in the fertile uplands in the
Ohio Valley. But the most brilliant hues are seen in trees of smaller
size, that grow in New England woods. In the comparatively dull-hued
autumn woods of Iowa and Nebraska the scarlet oak is the most vivid
and most admired tree.
=The Pin Oak=
_Q. palustris_, Linn.
The pin oak earns its name by the sharp, short, spur-like twigs that
cluster on the branches, crowding each other to death and then
persisting to give the tree a bristly appearance. The tree in winter
bears small resemblance to other oaks. The trunk is slender, the shaft
carried up to the top, as straight as a pine's. The branches are very
numerous and regular, striking out at right angles from the stem, the
lower tier shorter than those directly above them, and drooping often
to the ground.
On the winter twigs, among the characteristic "pins," are the
half-grown acorns that proclaim the tree an oak beyond a doubt, and a
_black_ oak, requiring a second summer for the maturing of its fruit.
It is likely that there will be found on older twigs a few of the
full-grown acorns, or perhaps only the trim, shallow saucers from
which the shiny, striped, brown acorns have fallen. Hunt among the
dead leaves and these little acorns will be discovered for, though
pretty to look at, they are bitter and squirrels leave them where they
fall.
The leaves match the slender twigs in delicacy of pattern. Thin,
deeply cut, shining, with pale linings, they flutter on slender stems,
smaller but often matching the leaves of the scarlet oak in pattern.
Sometimes they are more like the red oak in outline. In autumn they
turn red and are a glory in the woods.
One trait has made this tree a favorite for shade and ornament. It has
a shock of fibrous roots, and for this reason is easily transplanted.
It grows rapidly in any moist, rich soil. It keeps its leaves clean
and beautiful throughout the season. Washington, D. C., has its
streets planted to native trees, one species lining the sides of a
single street or avenue for miles. The pin oaks are superb on the
thoroughfare that reaches from the Capitol to the Navy Yard. They
retain the beauty of their youth because each tree has been given a
chance to grow to its best estate. In spring the opening leaves and
pistillate flowers are red, giving the silvery green tree-top a warm
flush that cheers the passerby. In European countries this oak is a
prime favorite for public and private parks.
=The Red Oak=
_Q. rubra_, Linn.
The red oak grows rapidly, like the pin oak, and is a great favorite
in parks overseas, where it takes on the rich autumnal red shades that
give it its name at home. Such color is unknown in native woods in
England.
The head of this oak is usually narrow and rounded; the branches,
short and stout, are inclined to go their own way, giving the tree
more of picturesqueness than of symmetry, as age advances. Sometimes
the dome is broad and rounded like that of a white oak, and in the
woods, where competition is keen, the trunk may reach one hundred and
fifty feet in height.
The red oak leaf is large, smooth, rather thin, its oval broken by
triangular sinuses and forward-aiming lobes, that end in bristly
points. The blade is broadest between the apex and the middle, where
the two largest lobes are. No oak has leaves more variable than this.
Under the dark brown, close-knit bark of a full-grown red oak tree is
a reddish layer that shows in the furrows. The twigs and leaf-stems
are red. A flush of pink covers the opening leaves, and they are lined
with white down which is soon shed.
The bloom is very abundant and conspicuous, the fringe-like
pollen-bearing aments four or five inches long, drooping from the
twigs in clusters, when the leaves are half-grown in May.
The acorns of the red oak are large, and set in shallow saucers, with
incurving rims. Few creatures taste their bitter white kernels.
=The Willow Oak=
_Q. Phellos_, Linn.
The willow oak has long, narrow, pointed leaves that suggest a willow,
and not at all an oak. The supple twigs, too, are willow-like, and the
tree is a lover of the waterside. But there is the acorn, seated in a
shallow, scaly cup, like a pin oak's. There is no denying the tree's
family connections.
A southern tree, deservedly popular in cities for shade and ornamental
planting, it is nevertheless hardy in Philadelphia and New York; and
a good little specimen seems to thrive in Boston, in the Arnold
Arboretum. As a lumber tree, the species is unimportant.
=The Shingle, or Laurel, Oak=
_Q. imbricaria_, Michx.
The shingle or laurel oak may be met in any woodland from Pennsylvania
to Nebraska, and south to Georgia and Arkansas. It may be large or
small; a well-grown specimen reaches sixty feet, with a broad,
pyramidal, open head.
The chief beauty of the tree, at any season, is the foliage
mass--dark, lustrous, pale lined, the margin usually unbroken by any
indentations. In autumn the yellow, channelled midribs turn red, and
all the blades to purplish crimson, and this color stays a long time.
It is a wonderful sight to see the evening sunlight streaming through
the loose, open head of a laurel oak. No wonder people plant it for
shade and for the beauty it adds to home grounds and public parks.
=The Mountain Live Oak=
_Q. chrysolepis_, Liebm.
The mountain live oak cannot be seen without climbing the western
slopes of the mountains from Oregon to Lower California, and eastward
into New Mexico and Arizona. On levels where avalanches deposit
detritus from the higher slopes, sufficient fertility and moisture are
found to maintain groves of these oaks, wide-domed, with massive,
horizontal branches from short, buttressed trunks--the Western
counterpart of the live oak of the South, but lacking the familiar
drapery of pale green moss.
The leaves are leathery, polished, oval blades, one or two inches in
length, with unbroken margins, abundant on intricately divided, supple
twigs, that droop with their burden and respond to the lightest
breeze. The leaves persist until the bronze-green new foliage expands
to replace the old, and keep the tree-tops evergreen.
The acorns are large, and their thick, shallow saucers are covered
with yellow fuzz. For this character, the tree is called the gold-cup
oak. In June, the copious bloom is yellow. Even at an altitude of
eight thousand feet the familiar gold-cup acorns are borne on shrubby
oaks not more than a foot high!
The maximum height of the species is sixty feet. The wood is the most
valuable oak of the West Coast. It is used for wagons and agricultural
implements.
=The Live Oak=
_Q. agrifolia_, NA(C)e.
The live oak (_Q. agrifolia_, NA(C)e.) called also "Encina," is the
huge-limbed, holly-leaved live oak of the lowlands, that reaches its
greatest abundance and maximum stature in the valleys south of San
Francisco Bay. The giant oaks of the University campus at Berkeley
stretch out ponderous arms, in wayward fashion, that reach far from
the stocky trunk and often rest their mighty elbows on the ground. The
pointed acorns, usually exceeding an inch in length, are collected by
woodpeckers, and tucked away for further reference in holes they make
in the bark of the same oaks.
From the mountain slopes to the sea, and from Mendocino County to
Lower California, groves of this semi-prostrate giant are found,
furnishing abundant supply of fuel, but no lumber of any consequence,
because the trunks are so short and the limbs so crooked.
THE HORSE-CHESTNUTS, OR BUCKEYES
=The Horse-chestnut=
_Aesculus Hippocastanum_, Linn.
At the head of this family stands a stately tree, native of the
mountains of northern Greece and Asia Minor, which was introduced into
European parks and planted there as an avenue tree when landscape
gardening came into vogue. By way of England it came to America, and
in Eastern villages one often sees a giant horse-chestnut, perhaps the
sole remnant of the street planting of an earlier day.
Longfellow's "spreading chestnut tree" was a horse-chestnut. And the
boys who watched the smith at his work doubtless filled their pockets
with the shiny brown nuts and played the game of "conquerors" every
autumn as regularly as they flew their kites in spring. What boy has
not tied a chestnut to each end of a string, whirled them round and
round at a bewildering rate of speed and finally let them fly to catch
on telegraph wires, where they dangle for months and bother tidy
folks?
The glory of the horse-chestnut comes at blooming time, when the
upturning branches, like arms of candelabra, are each tipped with a
white blossom-cluster, pointed like a candle flame. (_See
illustration, page 54._) Each flower of the pyramid has its
throat-dashes of yellow and red, and the curving yellow stamens are
thrust far out of the dainty ruffled border of the corolla.
Bees and wasps make music in the tree-top, sucking the nectar out of
the flowers. Unhappily for us humans, caterpillars of the leopard and
tussock moths feed upon the tender tissues of this tree, defacing the
foliage and making the whole tree unsightly by their presence.
Sidewalks under horse-chestnut trees are always littered with
something the tree is dropping. In early spring the shiny, wax-covered
leaf buds cast off and they stick to slate and cement most
tenaciously. Scarcely have the folded leaflets spread, tent-like,
before some of them, damaged by wind or late frosts or insects'
injury, begin to curl and drop, and as the leaves attain full size,
they crowd, and this causes continual shedding. In early autumn the
leaflets begin to be cast, the seven fingers gradually loosening from
the end of the leaf-stalk; then comes a day when all of the foliage
mass lets go, and one may wade knee deep under the tree in the dead
leaves. The tree is still ugly from clinging leaf-stems and the slow
breaking of the prickly husks that enclose the nuts.
With all these faults, the horse-chestnut holds its popularity in the
suburbs of great cities, for it lives despite smoke and soot. Bushey
Park in London has five rows of these trees on either side of a wide
avenue. When they are in bloom the fact is announced in the newspapers
and all London turns out to see the sight. Paris uses the tree
extensively; nearly twenty thousand of them line her streets, and
thrive despite the poverty of the soil.
The American buckeyes are less sturdy in form and less showy in
flower than the European species, but they have the horse-shoe print
with the nails in it where the leaf-stalk meets the twig. The brown
nuts, with the dull white patch which fastens them in the husk,
justifies the name "buckeye." One nibble at the nut will prove to any
one that, as a fruit, it is too bitter for even horses. Bitter,
astringent bark is characteristic of the family.
=The Ohio Buckeye=
_Ae. glabra_, Willd.
The Ohio buckeye has five yellow-green leaflets, smooth when full
grown, pale, greenish yellow flowers, not at all conspicuous, and
bitter nuts in spiny husks. The whole tree exhales a strong,
disagreeable odor. The wood is peculiarly adapted to the making of
artificial limbs.
The great abundance of this little tree in the Ohio Valley accounts
for Ohio being called the "Buckeye State."
=The Sweet Buckeye=
_Ae. octandra_, Marsh.
The sweet buckeye is a handsome, large tree with greenish yellow,
tubular flowers and leaves of five slender, elliptical leaflets.
Cattle will eat the nuts and paste made from them is preferred by
bookbinders; it holds well, and book-loving insects will not attack
it. These trees grow on mountain slopes of the Alleghanies from
western Pennsylvania southward, and west to Iowa and Texas.
=The California Buckeye=
_Ae. californica_, Nutt.
The California buckeye spreads wide branches from a squat trunk, and
clothes its sturdy twigs with unmistakable horse-chestnut leaves and
pyramids of white flowers. Sometimes these are tinted with rose, and
the tree is very beautiful. The brown nuts are irregular in shape and
enclosed in somewhat pear-shaped, two-valved husks.
This western buckeye follows the borders of streams from the
Sacramento Valley southward; they are largest north of San Francisco
Bay, in the canyons of the Coast Range.
Shrubby, red-flowered buckeyes, often seen in gardens and in the
shrubbery borders of parks, are horticultural crosses between the
European horse-chestnut and a shrubby, red-flowered native buckeye
that occurs in the lower Mississippi Valley.
THE LINDENS, OR BASSWOODS
This tropical family, with about thirty-five genera, has a single tree
genus, _tilia_, in North America. This genus has eighteen or twenty
species, all told, with representatives in all temperate regions of
the Northern Hemisphere, with the exception of Central America,
Central Asia, and the Himalayas.
Tilia wood is soft, pale-colored, light, of even grain, adaptable for
wood-carving, sounding-boards of pianos, woodenwares of all kinds, and
for the manufacture of paper. The inner bark is tough and fibrous. It
has been used since the human race was young, in the making of ropes,
fish nets, and like necessities. It was a favorite tying material in
nurseries and greenhouses until the more adaptable raffia came in to
take its place. The bark of young trees is stripped in spring to make
the shoes of the Russian peasantry. An infusion of basswood flowers
has long been a home remedy for indigestion, nervousness, coughs, and
hoarseness. Experiments in Germany have successfully extracted a table
oil from the seed-balls. A nutritious paste resembling chocolate has
been made from its nuts, which are delicious when fresh. In winter the
buds, as well as the tiny nuts, stand between the lost trapper and
starvation. The flowers yield large quantities of nectar, and honey
made near linden forests is unsurpassed in delicacy of flavor.
About the time of Louis XIV, the French fashion arose of planting
avenues to lindens, where horse-chestnuts had formerly been the
favorite tree. The fashion spread to England of bordering with "lime
trees" approaches to the homes of the gentry. "Pleached alleys" were
made with these fast-growing trees that submitted so successfully to
severe pruning and training. All sorts of grotesque figures were
carved out of the growing lime trees in the days before topiary work
in gardens submitted to the rules of landscape art, and slower growing
trees were chosen for such purposes.
In cultivation, lindens have the virtues of swift growth, superb
framework, clean, smooth bark, and late, profuse, beautiful and
fragrant bloom, which is followed by interesting seed clusters, winged
with a pale blade that lightens the foliage mass. One fault is the
early dropping of the leaves, which are usually marred by the wind
soon after they reach mature size. Propagation is easy from cuttings
and from seed.
=The American Linden, or Basswood=
_Tilia Americana_, Linn.
The American linden or basswood is a stately spreading tree reaching
one hundred and twenty feet in height and a trunk diameter of four
feet. The bark is brown, furrowed, and scaly, the branches gray and
smooth, the twigs ruddy. The alternate leaves are obliquely
heart-shaped, saw-toothed, with prominent veins that branch at the
base, only on the side next to the petiole. (_See illustration, page
86._) Occasionally the leaf blades are eight inches long. A dense
shade is cast by a linden tree in midsummer.
The blossoms, cream-white and clustered on pale green, leaf-like
blades, open by hundreds in June and July, actually dripping with
nectar, and illuminating the platforms of green leaves. A bird flying
overhead looks down upon a tree covered with broad leaf blades
overlapping like shingles on a roof. It must look underneath to see
the flowers that delight us as we look up into the tree-top from our
station on the ground.
In midsummer the linden foliage becomes coarse and wind-whipped; the
soft leaf-substance is attacked by insects that feed upon it; plant
lice deface them with patches of honey-dew, and the sticky surfaces
catch dust and soot. Riddled and torn, they drop in desultory fashion,
their faded yellow not at all like the satisfying gold of beech and
hickory leaves.
[Illustration: _See page 31_
THE BLACK WALNUT
The young shoots are velvety and aromatic. The pistillate
flowers, in groups of 3 to 5, are on terminal spikes]
[Illustration: _See page 37_
SHAGBARK HICKORY IS KNOWN AND NAMED BY ITS LOOSE,
STRIPPING BARK]
The flight of basswood seeds on their wing-like blades goes on
throughout the winter. This alone would account for the fact that
basswoods greatly outnumbered all other trees in the virgin forests of
the Ohio Valley. The seeds are not the tree's sole dependence. Suckers
grow up about the stump of a tree the lumberman has taken, or the
lightning has stricken. Any twig is likely to strike root, and any
cutting made from a root as well.
The finest specimen I know grew from a walking-stick cut in the woods
and thrust into the ground, by a mere chance, when the rambler reached
home. It is the roof tree of a mansion, tall enough to waft its
fragrance into the third-story windows, and to reach high above the
chimney pots.
The range of this tree extends from New Brunswick to Dakota and south
to Virginia and Texas. Its wood is used for carriage bodies,
furniture, cooperage, paper pulp, charcoal, and fuel.
=The Bee Tree, or White Basswood=
_T. heterophylla_, Vent.
The bee tree or white basswood of the South has narrower leaves than
the species just described, and they vary in form and size; but always
have linings of fine, silvery down, and the fruits are fuzzy. A
wonderful, dazzling play of white, pale green, and deeper shades is
seen when one of these trees flutters its leaf mass against a
background, sombre with hemlocks and an undergrowth of rhododendron.
The favorite haunts of this species are the sides of mountain streams.
Wild bees store their hoard of honey in the hollow trunks of old
trees; and it is the favorite holiday of many country folk to locate
these natural hives and despoil them. In order to do this the tree
must come down, and the revenge of the outraged swarm is sometimes a
high price to pay for the stolen sweets.
This linden is found from Ithaca, New York, southward along the
Appalachian Mountains to northern Alabama, and westward into Illinois
and Tennessee. It is best and most abundant in the mountains of
eastern Tennessee and North Carolina, at a considerable altitude.
=The Downy Basswood=
_T. pubescens_, Ait.
The downy basswood has leaves that are green on both sides, but its
young shoots and leaf-linings are coated with rusty hairs. It is a
miniature throughout of the American basswood, except that the blade
that bears the flower-cluster is rounded at its base, while the others
taper narrowly to the short stem. This species occurs on Long Island,
and is sparingly seen along the coast from the Carolinas to Texas.
=The Common Lime=
_T. vulgaris_
"Unter den Linden," the famous avenue in Berlin, is planted with the
small-leaved common lime of Europe, beside which the American basswood
is a coarse-looking tree. Very disappointing docked trees they are,
along this thoroughfare; for city streets are never places where a
tree can reach its best estate. In the rural sections of France and
Germany this tree reaches noble stature and great age.
Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist, had his name from a fine linden tree,
when his peasant father rose to the dignity of a surname. "Linn" is
the Swedish word for linden. "Carl Linne," meaning "Charles of the
linden tree," it was at first when he played as a boy in the shadow of
its great branches. "Carolus Linnaeus" he became when he was appointed
professor of the university at Upsala, and through all time since.
Gerarde discourses quaintly upon the linden tree in his "Grete
Herball" published in England in 1597. "The male tree," he says, "is
to me unknown." We smile at his notion that there are male and female
trees in this family, but we wonder at the accuracy of observation
evinced by one who lived and wrote before the science of botany had
any existence. Evidently Master Gerarde had a good pair of eyes, and
he has well expressed the things he saw. I quote a paragraph:
"The female line, or linden tree waxeth very great and thicke,
spreading forth its branches wide and fare abroad, being a tree which
yieldeth a most pleasant shadow, under and within whose boughs may be
made brave summer houses and banqueting arbors, because the more that
it is surcharged with weight of timber and such like, the better it
doth flourish. The bark is brownish, very smooth and plaine on the
outside, but that which is next to the timber is white, moist and
tough, serving very well for ropes, trases and halters. The timber is
whitish, plaine, and without knots; yea, very soft and gentle in the
cutting and handling. The leaves are smooth, greene, shining and
large, somewhat snipt or toothed about the edges: the floures are
little, whitish, of a good savour, and very many in number; growing
clustered together from out of the middle of the leaf: out of which
proceedeth a small whitish long narrow leafe: after the floures
succeed cornered sharp pointed nuts, of the bignesse of hasell nuts.
This tree seemeth to be a kinde of elme, and the people of Essex
(whereas great plenty groweth by the waysides) do call it broad-leafed
elme."