THE WATER-LOVING TREES
The Poplars--The Willows--The Hornbeams--The Birches--The
Alders--The Sycamores, or Buttonwoods--The Gum Trees--The Osage
Orange
THE POPLARS
The poplars are plebeian trees, but they have a place to fill and they
fill it with credit. They are the hardy, rude pioneers that go before
and prepare the way for nobler trees. Let a fire sweep a path through
the forest, and the poplar is likely to be the first tree to fill the
breach. The trees produce abundant seed, very much like that of
willows, and the wind sows it far and wide. The young trees love the
sun, and serve as nurse trees to more valuable hardwoods and conifers,
that must have shade until they become established. By the time the
more valuable species are able to take care of themselves, the poplars
have come to maturity and disappeared, for they are quick-growing,
short-lived trees. The wind plays havoc with their brittle branches.
Seldom has a good-sized poplar tree any claim to beauty.
Tenacity of life, if not of fibre, belongs to the poplar tribe. Twigs
strike root and the roots send up suckers from underground: cutting
off these suckers only encourages them to fresh activity. The only
way to get rid of the young growth that springs up about an old tree
is to use the grubbing-hoe thoroughly and patiently.
Poplar blossoms, borne in catkins, show the close relationship between
this genus and the willows. The leaves, however, are always broad and
leathery, and set on long stems. Twenty-five species are known, twelve
of which are American.
=The White Poplar=
_Populus alba_, Linn.
The white poplar is sometimes called the silver-leaved poplar because
its dark, glossy leaves are lined with cottony nap. This sprightly
contrast of light and shade in the foliage is most unusual, and very
attractive in early spring; but the leaf-linings collect soot and
dust, and this they carry to the end of the season--a fact which
should not be forgotten by those considering the advisability of
planting this tree in a city where much soft coal is burned.
The white bark of this European poplar reminds us of the birch family,
though it has no silky fringe shedding from the surface. The leaves
often imitate the maple in the divisions of their margins, justifying
the name "maple-leaved poplar."
As a dooryard tree this species has a wider popularity than it
deserves. The wind breaks the brittle branches, and when these
accidents threaten its life, the tree sends up suckers which form a
grove about the parent trunk, and defy all efforts to eradicate them,
until the grubbing-hoe and axe have been resorted to.
=The Black Poplar=
_P. nigra_, Linn.
The Lombardy poplar, a variety of the black poplar of Europe, is a
familiar tree figure along roadsides, and often marks boundary lines
between farms. Each tree is an exclamation point, its branches short
and numerous, rising toward the zenith. The roundish leaves that
twinkle on these aspiring branches make the tree pretty and
interesting when young--just the thing to accent a group of
round-headed trees in a park. But not many years are attained before
the top becomes choked with the multitude of its branches. The tree
cannot shed this dead wood and the beauty of its youth is departed.
The trunk grows coarse, warty, and buttressed at the base. Suckers are
thrown up from the roots. There is little left to challenge
admiration. Since the tree gives practically no shade, we must believe
that the first planters were attracted by its odd shape and its
readiness to grow, rather than by any belief in its fitness for avenue
and highway planting.
=The Cottonwood=
_P. deltoidea_, Marsh.
The cottonwood justifies its existence, if ever a tree did. On our
Western plains, where the watercourses are sluggish and few and often
run dry in midsummer, few trees grow; and the settler and traveler is
grateful for the cottonwoods. The pioneer on the Western prairie
planted it for shade and for wind-breaks about his first home. Many of
these trees attain great age and in protected situations are
magnificent though unsymmetrical trees, shaking out each spring a new
head of bright green, glossy foliage, each leaf responsive to the
lightest breeze.
"Necklace-bearing poplar," it has been called, from the fact that
children find pleasure in stringing for beads the green, half-grown
pods containing the minute seeds. They also delight in gathering the
long, red caterpillar-like catkins of the staminate flowers, the
pollen bearers, from the sterile trees. A fertile tree is sometimes
counted a nuisance in a dooryard because its pods set free a great
mass of cotton that collects in window screens, to the annoyance of
housewives. But this seed time is soon over.
Just these merits of quick growth, prettiness, and tenacity of life,
belong to the Carolina Poplar, a variety of native cottonwood that
lines the streets of the typical suburban tract opened near any
American city. The leaves are large and shine with a varnish which
protects them from dust and smoke. But the wind breaks the branches,
destroys the symmetry of the tree's head, and in a few years the
suburban community takes on a cheap and ugly look. The wise promoter
will alternate slow-growing maples and elms with the poplars so that
these permanent trees will be ready to take their places in a few
years.
=The Aspen=
_P. tremuloides_, Michx.
The trembling aspen, or quaking asp, is the prettiest tree of all the
poplar tribe. Its bark is gray and smooth, often greenish and nearly
white. An aspen copse is one of the loveliest things in the spring
landscape. In March the bare, angular limbs show green under their
bark, one of the first prophecies of spring; then the buds cast their
brown scales and fuzzy gray catkins are revealed. There are few shades
of olive and rose, few textures of silk and velvet that are not
duplicated as the catkins lengthen and dance like chenille fringe from
every twig. With the flowers, the new leaves open; each blade limp,
silky, as it unrolls, more like the finest white flannel than anything
else. (_See illustrations, pages 86-87._) Soon the leaves shed all of
this hairy, protective coat, passing through various tones of pink and
silver on their way to their lustrous, bright green maturity. Their
stems are flattened in a plane at right angles with the blade. Being
long and pliant besides, they catch the breeze on blade or stem, and
so the foliage is never still on the quietest of summer days. "Popple"
leaves twinkle and dance and catch the sunlight like ripples on the
surface of a stream, while the foliage of oaks and other trees near by
may be practically motionless.
=The Balsam Poplar=
_P. balsamifera_, Linn.
The balsam poplar is the balm of Gilead of the early settlers, the
Tacamahac of the Northern Indians. They squeezed the fragrant wax from
the winter buds and used it to seal up the seams in their birch-bark
canoes. The bees taught the Indian the uses of this glutinous
secretion, which the tree used to seal the bud-scales and thus keep
out water. When growth starts with the stirring of the sap, this wax
softens; then the bees collect and store it against a day of need.
Whether their homes be hollow trees or patent hives, weather-cracks
are carefully sealed up with this waterproof gum, which the bee-keeper
knows as "_propolis_."
Forests of balm of Gilead cover much of the vast British possessions
north of the United States, and reach to the ultimate islands of the
Aleutian group. They dip down into the states as far as Nebraska and
Nevada. In cultivation, the species has proved itself a tree of
excellent habit, easily propagated and transplanted, and of rapid
growth. It has all the good points of the Carolina poplar and lacks
its besetting sin of becoming so soon an unsightly cripple.
=Narrow-leaved Cottonwood=
_P. angustifolia_, James.
=Lance-leaved Cottonwood=
_P. acuminata_, Rydb.
=Mexican Cottonwood=
_P. Mexicana_, Wesm.
These three cottonwoods line the banks of mountain streams at high
elevations in the great system of mountain chains that stretch from
British Columbia southward. The dancing foliage, bright green in
summer, golden in autumn, lends a charming color note to the dun
stretches of arid plain and the sombre green of pine forests. These
trees furnish the settler fuel, shade, and wind-breaks while he is
converting his "homestead" into a home.
=Black Cottonwood=
_P. trichocarpa_, Hook.
Farther west, covering the mountain slopes from Alaska to Mexico, and
liking even better the moist, rich lowlands, is the black cottonwood,
the giant of the genus, reaching two hundred feet in height, and
seven to eight feet in trunk diameter. Tall and stately, it lifts its
broad rounded crown upon heavy upright limbs. In the Yosemite the
dark, rich green of these poplar groves along the Merced River makes a
rich, velvet margin, glorious when it turns to gold in autumn.
=Swamp Cottonwood=
_P. heterophylla_, Linn.
The swamp cottonwood of the South has leaves of variable but
distinctly poplar form, always large, broadly ovate, with slim round
petioles. The white down of the unfolding leaves often persists into
midsummer. On account of the fluttering leaves the trees were called,
by the early Acadians, "_Langues de femmes_" a mild calumny traceable
to the herbalist, Gerarde, who compares them to "women's tongues,
which seldom cease wagging."
The wood of poplars, soft, weak, and of slight value for fuel or
lumber, has within two decades come into a position of great economic
importance. Wood pulp is made of it, and out of wood pulp a thousand
articles, from toys to wheels of locomotives, are made. A state
forester declared: "If I could replace the maples in the state forest
by poplars to-day, I would do it gladly. It would be worth thousands
of dollars to the state."
THE WILLOWS
Along the watercourses the willow family finds its most congenial
habitat. It is a very large family, numbering more than one hundred
and seventy species, which are, however, mostly shrubs rather than
trees. America has seventy species of willows, and new forms are
constantly being discovered, which are the results of the crossing of
closely related species. These "natural hybrids" have greatly confused
the botany of the willow family.
Not more than half a dozen American willows ever attain the height of
good-sized trees, and many of these are more commonly found in the
tangled shrubbery of river banks, or covering long semi-arid strips of
ground far to the north, or on mountain sides where their growth is
stunted. Little trees, six inches high, bearing the characteristic
catkins and narrow leaves of the willow, are found on the arctic
tundras.
The wood of willows is pale in color, soft in texture, and of very
little use as lumber or fuel, except in localities where trees are
scarce. The Indian depended upon the inner bark of the withy willow
for material for his fish nets and lines, and farmers in the pioneer
days took the tough, supple stems, when spring made the sap run
freely, for the binding together of the rails of their fences. Knotted
tight and seasoned, these twigs hardened and lasted for years.
In Europe the white willow has long been used for the making of wooden
shoes, artificial limbs, and carriage bodies. Its wood makes the
finest charcoal for gunpowder. Willow wares, such as baskets and
wicker furniture, are as old as civilization, and that in its
primitive stages. It is a common sight in Europe to see groves of
trees from which the long twigs have been taken yearly for these uses.
The stumps are called "pollards" and the trees "pollarded willows"
whose discouraging task has been to grow a yearly crop of withes for
the basket-makers; yet each spring finds them bristling with the new
growth.
The hosts of CA|sar invading England in the First Century found the
Britons defending themselves behind willow-woven shields, and living
in huts of wattled willows, smeared with mud. From that time to the
present the uses of these long shoots have multiplied.
The roots of willows are fibrous and tough as the shoots. For this
reason they serve a useful purpose in binding the banks of streams,
especially where these are liable to flood. Nature seems to have
designed these trees for just this purpose, for a twig lying upon the
ground strikes root at every joint if the soil it falls on is
sufficiently moist. The wind breaks off twigs and the water carries
them down stream where they lodge on banks and sand bars, and these
are soon covered with billows of green.
Willows start growth early in spring, putting out their catkins, the
two sexes on different trees, before the opening of the leaves. Before
the foliage is full grown, the light seeds, each a minute speck,
floats away in a wisp of silky down. Its vitality lasts but a day, so
it must fall on wet ground at once in order to grow. But the willow
family is quite independent of its seeds in the matter of propagation.
Chop the roots and twigs into bits and each will grow. Chop a young
willow tree into sticks and fence posts and each one, if it is stuck
green into the ground, covers itself with a head of leafy twigs before
the season is over.
=Weeping Willow=
_Salix Babylonica_
The weeping willow, much planted in cemeteries and parks, came
originally from Asia and is remarkable for its narrow leaves that
seem fairly to drip from the pendulous twigs. (_See illustration, page
55._) The foliage has a wonderful lightness and cheerfulness of
expression, despite its weeping habit.
=The Pussy Willow=
_S. discolor_, Muehl.
The pussy willow is the familiar bog willow, whose gray, silky catkins
appear in earliest spring. A walk in the woods in late February often
brings us the charming surprise of a meeting with this little tree,
just when its gray pussies are pushing out from their brown scales. We
cut the twigs and bring them home and watch the wonderful color
changes that mark the full development of the flowers. Turning them in
the light, one sees under the sheen of silky hairs the varied and
evanescent hues that glow in a Hungarian opal. In midsummer a pussy
willow tree is lost among the shrubby growth in any woods. It is only
because it leads the procession of the spring flowers that every one
knows and loves it. (_See illustrations, pages 86-87._)
THE HORNBEAMS
Two genera of little trees in the same family with the birches are
frequently met in the woods, often modestly hiding under the larger
trees. One is the solitary representative of its genus: the other has
a sister species.
The hornbeams grow very slowly and their wood is close-grained, heavy,
and hard. In flexibility, strength, and ability to stand strain, it
rivals steel. Before metals so generally became competitors of woods
in construction work, hornbeam was the only wood for rake teeth,
levers, mallets, and especially for the beams of ox yokes. It outwore
the stoutest oak, the toughest elm. Springiness adapted it for fork
handles and the like. Bowls and dishes of hornbeam lasted forever, and
would never leak nor crack. "Ironwood" is the name used wherever the
wood was worked.
=American Hornbeam=
_Carpinus Carolinianum_, Walt.
The American hornbeam has bluish gray bark, very fine in texture, from
which the name "blue beech," is common in some localities. "Water
beech" points out the tree's preference for rich swamp land.
The trunk and limbs are strangely swollen, sometimes like a fluted
column, oftener irregularly, the swelling under the bark suggesting
the muscular development of a gymnast's arm.
In favorable places the hornbeams grow into regular oval heads, their
branches dividing into a multitude of wiry, supple twigs. Crowded
under oaks and other forest growth, they crouch and writhe; and their
heads flatten into tangled masses of foliage.
The delicate leaves, strong-ribbed, oval, pointed, turn to red and
orange in autumn. (_See illustration, page 87._) The paired nutlets
are provided with a parachute each, so that the wind can sow them
broadcast. This wing is leafy in texture, shaped like a maple leaf,
and curved into the shape of a boat. After they have broken apart, the
nutlets hang by threads, tough as hornbeam fibres always are. At
last, away they sail, to start new trees if they fall in moist soil.
The European hornbeam was a favorite tree for making the "pleached
alleys," of which old-world garden-lovers were proud. A row of trees
on each side of a promenade were pruned and trained to cover an
arching framework, and to interlace their supple branches so that at
length no other framework was needed, and one walked through a tunnel
of green so closely interlaced as to make walls and roof that shut out
light and wind and rain! Hedges, fences, and many fancies of the
gardener were worked out with this hornbeam, so willingly did it lend
itself to cutting and moulding into curious forms.
=Hop Hornbeam=
_Ostrya Virginiana_, Willd.
The hop hornbeam has habits like the other ironwood and an equal
reputation for the hardness of its wood. The tree, however, wears
scaly, shaggy brown bark, suggesting in its manner of scaling off the
shagbark hickory. Its nutlets are packed separate in loose papery
bags, and together form a loose, cone-like cluster, like the fruit of
a hop vine. The wind scatters these buoyant little bags, that travel
far.
This tree often twists in growing, and the trunk shows spiral furrows.
"Hard-tack," "beetle-wood," "lever-wood"--all take us back to the
pioneer who put this wood to such good uses, and who was glad to have
these little trees growing in his wood-lot. In hickories, even, he had
not the equal of them for strength and hardness.
[Illustration: _See page 70_
THE AMERICAN LINDEN
The broad leaves are unsymmetrical. Dry seed-balls are
scattered by winter winds, the leathery bracts serving as
wings]
[Illustration: _See page 78_
TREMBLING ASPEN
Catkins and newly opened, flannel-like leaves]
[Illustration: _See page 84_
THE PUSSY WILLOW
1--Mature staminate flower.
2--Immature staminate flowers.
3--Mature pistillate flowers]
[Illustration: _See page 85_
THE AMERICAN HORNBEAM
A fruiting branch showing the thin beech-like leaves and the
seeds on their leafy triangular bracts]
=Knowlton's Ironwood=
_O. Knowltoni_, Cov.
Knowlton's ironwood is found nowhere but in a thick grove on the
southern slope of the canyon of the Colorado in Arizona, about seventy
miles north of Flagstaff. Here these trees are numerous, crouching
under oaks, their twisted branches ending in drooping twigs, bearing
the characteristic pale green hops in autumn, small oval leaves, and
the catkin flowers in spring. Such a restricted distribution for a
distinct species of trees is unmatched in the annals of botany.
THE BIRCHES
Grace and gentility of appearance are attributes of this most
interesting, attractive, and valuable family of trees. _Shabby_
gentility, one may insist, thinking of the untidy, frayed-out edges
that adorn the silky outer bark of almost every birch tree in the
woods. (_See illustration, page 102._) Not one of them, however, but
lends a note of cheerfulness to the landscape. There is beauty and
daintiness in leaf, flower, and winged seed, and despite the
inferiority of most birch wood, the history of the family is a long
story of usefulness to the human race.
About thirty species of birches grow in the Northern Hemisphere, ten
of them are North American. The white birch of Europe extends across
the northern half of Asia, and is cultivated in delicate cut-leaved
and weeping forms, as a lawn and park tree in this country.
=The Canoe Birch=
_Betula papyrifera_, Marsh.
The canoe birch or paper birch is the noblest member of the family.
(_See cover of book._) Ernest Thompson Seton calls it "The White Queen
of the Woods--the source of food, drink, transport, and lodging to
those who dwell in the forest--the most bountiful provider of all the
trees." Then he enumerates the sweet syrup yielded by its sap; the
meal made by drying and grinding the inner bark; the buds and catkins
upon which the partridge feeds; and the outer bark, which is its best
gift to primitive man.
"The broad sheets of this vegetable rawhide, ripped off when the
weather is warm, and especially when the sap is moving, are tough,
light, strong, pliant, absolutely waterproof, almost imperishable in
the weather; free from insects, assailable only by fire. It roofs the
settler's shack and the forest Indian's wigwam. It supplies cups,
pails, pots, pans, spoons, boxes; under its protecting power the
matches are safe and dry; split very thin, as is easily done, it is
the writing paper of the woods, flat, light, smooth, waterproof,
tinted, and scented; but the crowning glory of the birch is this--it
furnishes the indispensable substance for the bark canoe, whose making
is the highest industrial exploit of the Indian life."
From the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from our northern tier of states
to the arctic seas, woodsmen, red and white, have found this
white-barked tree ready to their hand, their sure defense against
death by cold and by starvation. The weather is never so wet but that
shreds of birch bark burn merrily to start a campfire, and the timber
of the trunk burns readily green or dry.
=The White Birch=
_B. populifolia_, Marsh.
The white birch is a small, short-lived tree that grows in swampy
ground, its bark chalky white or grayish, with triangular rough
patches of black, where branches are or have been. (The canoe birch
has a clean bole, chalky white, with none of these ugly black
patches.)
A vagabond tree it is, with thin pointed leaves and long pencil-like
catkins and seed cones. The chief contributions of the poplar-leaved
birch to the well-being of men are that it clothes with beauty the
most uninviting situations, and that it comes again, after fire or
other general slaughter, promptly and abundantly, from stump and
scattered seed.
=The Yellow Birch=
_B. lutea_, Michx.
The yellow birch shows gleams of yellow under every rent in its gray,
silky, frayed-out surface. Here is a timber tree of considerable size
and value: its hard wood furnishes the frames of northern sledges; the
knots and burs make good mallets; the curiously knotted roots show a
curly grain, valuable to the cabinet-maker. From New England to
Minnesota, and south along the Appalachian range, this tree is found,
always telling its name by the color of its shaggy bark.
=The Red Birch=
_B. nigra_, Linn.
Red birch or river birch wears its name in its chocolate-hued or
terra-cotta bark, whose scaly surface flaunts a series of tattered
fringes to the very twig ends. Tall and graceful fountains of living
green, these birches lean over stream borders from Minnesota and New
York to the Gulf of Mexico, and reach westward to the foothills of the
Rockies. Close-grained and strong, the pale brown wood is used for
furniture, shoe lasts, and a multitude of woodenwares. In the bayous
of the lower Mississippi, where its roots and the base of the trunk
are inundated for half the year, the tree reaches its greatest size.
The cones stand erect and shed their heart-shaped, winged seeds in
June--an exception to the autumn-fruiting of all other birches.
=The Cherry Birch=
_B. lenta_, Linn.
The cherry birch has dark, irregularly checked bark like the wild
cherry, but the oval, pointed leaf, the catkin flowers, and the cone
fruits of its family. Birch beer is made of its aromatic sap and
wintergreen oil is extracted from the leaves. Indians shred the inner
bark and dry it in the spring when it is rich in starch and sugar.
These shreds, like vermicelli, are boiled with fish and form a
nourishing dish. The wood is heavy, hard, and close-grained, valuable
for the manufacture of furniture and implements, especially wheel
hubs, and for fuel. It is one of the handsomest, most symmetrical, and
most luxuriant of all our birch trees, and a worthy addition to any
park.
THE ALDERS
Closely related to the hornbeams and birches is a genus of small
water-loving trees that grow rapidly and serve definite, special uses
in the Old and New World. The genus _alnus_ includes twenty species,
nine of which grow in North America; six of these reach the height of
trees.
=The Black Alder=
_Alnus glutinosa_, Gaertn.
Of the alders, the black alders of Europe is the largest and most
important timber tree. Its range includes western Asia and northern
Africa. It was introduced successfully into our Northeastern states in
colonial times and has become naturalized in many localities. These
trees sometimes reach seventy feet in height and a trunk diameter of
three feet. Their dark green foliage, glutinous when the leaves unfold
in the spring, ranks these giant alders among the beautiful and
picturesque trees.
The lumberman esteems alder wood only for special purposes. It grows
in water and its wood resists decay better than any other kind when
saturated through indefinite periods. In the old days it was the wood
for the boat-builder. The piles of the Rialto in Venice and along the
canals of Amsterdam and other Dutch cities are of black alder. Water
pipes and troughs, pumps, barrel staves, kneading troughs, sabots and
clogs were made of alder wood. The bark and cones are rich in tannin
and a yellow dye used in making ink. Willow and alder make the best
charcoal for gunpowder. Warty excrescences on old trees and twisted
roots furnished the inlayer with small but beautifully veined and very
hard pieces, beautiful in veneer work when polished. In America the
black alder is often met in horticultural varieties. The daintiest are
the cut-leaved forms, of which _imperialis_, with leaves fingered like
a white oak, is a good example.
One of the best uses to which alders are put in Europe is planting in
hedges along borders of streams, where their closely interlacing roots
hold the banks from crumbling and keep the current clear in midstream.
No English landscape is more beautiful than one through which a little
river winds, its banks and the boggy spots tributary to it softened by
billows of living green. "He who would see the alder in perfection
must follow the banks of the Mole and Surrey through the sweet vales
of Dorking and Wickleham."
=Seaside Alder=
_A. maritima_, Nutt.
The seaside alder shares with the witch hazel the peculiar distinction
of bearing its flowers and ripening its fruit simultaneously in the
fall of the year. The alder comes first, hanging out its golden
catkins in clusters on the ends of the season's shoots in August and
September. Nothing is left of them when the witch hazel scatters its
dainty stars along the twigs in October and November. The seaside
alder follows stream borders near but not actually on the seacoast,
through eastern Delaware and Maryland, but ranges comfortably on drier
soil as far west as Oklahoma and is hardy in gardens and parks as far
north as Boston, where it blooms profusely and is much admired for
both flowers and glossy foliage through the late summer.
=Oregon Alder=
_A. Oregona_, Nutt.
The Oregon or red alder reaches eighty feet in height and its trunk
may exceed three feet in diameter. This Western tree exceeds the Old
World alder in size. The smooth, pale-gray bark reminds us of the
beech and sets this tree apart from the white alder whose bark is
brown and deeply furrowed. The flowers and cone fruits are very large.
The ovate leaves are cut-toothed and often lobed. This is the alder of
the West Coast, largest where it comes down to the sea near the shores
of Puget Sound, but climbing the mountains and canyon sides wherever
there is water, from Sitka to Santa Barbara. The reddish brown wood is
light, easily worked, and beautifully satiny when polished. In
Washington and Oregon it is largely used in the manufacture of
furniture. The Indian dug-outs are made of the butts of large trees.
THE SYCAMORES, OR BUTTONWOODS
=The Buttonwood=
_Platanus occidentalis_, Linn.
Our eastern buttonwood is a tree to which, in America, we supply the
name sycamore. Its European counterpart is the plane tree of the Old
World. It is one of the easiest trees to recognize, for its most
prominent trait is fairly shouted at us from a distance, whenever one
of these trees comes within the range of our vision. The smooth bark
that covers the branches is thin, very brittle, and has the habit of
flaking off in irregular plates, leaving white patches under these
plates that contrast sharply with the dingy olive of the unshed areas.
On old trunks the bark is reddish brown and breaks into small,
irregular plates; but above, and out among the branches, the tree
looks downright untidy, and as though it had been splashed with
whitewash by some careless painter. (_See illustrations, pages
102-103._)
White birches grow in copses in low ground, a whole regiment of their
white stems slanting upward. But the ghostly sycamore is apt to stand
alone along the river-courses, scattered among other water-loving
trees. The tree is wayward in its branching habit, its twigs irregular
and angular. When the leaves are gone, it is a distressed-looking
object, dangling its seed-balls in the wind until the central, bony
cob is bare, the seeds having all sailed away on their hairy
parachutes.
In the warmer South our buttonwood is a stalwart, large-limbed tree of
colossal trunk, that shelters oaks and maples under its protecting
arms. And there are some large specimens on Long Island.
The buttonwood leaf in a general way resembles a maple's, being as
broad as long, with three main lobes at the top. The leaf stem forms a
tent over the bud formed in summer and containing the leafy shoot of
the next year. The leaf scar, therefore, is a circle and the leaf base
a hollow cone. At first a sheathing stipule, like a little leafy
ruffle, grows at the base of each leaf, but this is shed before
midsummer.
=Oriental Plane=
_P. Orientalis_, Linn.
The oriental plane is almost as familiar a tree as our native species,
for it is planted as a street tree in every city and village, and is a
favorite shade and lawn tree besides. The city of Washington has set
the example and so has Philadelphia. One third of the street trees of
Paris are plane trees.
The chief merits of this tree immigrant are its perfect hardiness, its
fine, symmetrical, compact pyramid, its freedom from injury by smoke
and dust, and its rapid growth in the poor soil of the parkings of
city and village. In leaf and fruit and bark-shedding habit, it is
easily recognized as a sycamore, though in this species more than one
ball dangles from each stem.
The exactions of city life limit the number of tree species that will
do well. Our native sycamore patiently endures the foul breath of
factory chimneys, and helps, in the smallest, downtown city parks, to
make green oases in burning deserts of brick and stone pavements. But
it is subject to the ravages of insect and fungous enemies to a
greater extent than the oriental species.
THE GUM TREES
Southern people talk more about "gum trees" than people in the North.
Two of our three native species of Nyssa belong solely to southern
swamps, and the third, which comes north to Canada, is oftener called
by other names. All these trees are picturesque, with twiggy,
contorted branches; tough, cross-grained wood; alternate, simple,
leathery, but deciduous leaves, beautiful at all seasons; minute
flowers and fleshy, berry-like fruits.
=The Sour, or Black, Gum=
_Nyssa sylvatica_, Marsh.
The sour or black gum of the South has a wide range, being hardy to
southern Ontario and Maine. To the New Englander this is the
"pepperidge"; the Indians called it "tupelo"; but the woodsman, North
and South, calls it the gum tree, as a rule. "Black gum" refers to its
dark gray, rough bark, which is broken into many-sided plates. By
this, it is easily distinguished from the "red gum" or liquid amber,
which grows in the same situations, but is not related to it. "Sour
gum" refers to the acid, blue-black berries, one to three in a
cluster, ripe in October.
We shall know this tree by its tall, slender trunk, clothed with
short, ridged, full-twigged, horizontal branches. With no claim to
symmetry, the black gum is a striking and picturesque figure in
winter. It is beautiful in summer, covered with the dark polished
leaves, two to four inches long. In autumn patches of red appear as
the leaves begin to drop. This is the tupelo's signal that winter is
coming. Soon the tree is a pillar of fire against yellowing ashes and
hickories. The reds of the swamp maple and scarlet oak are brighter,
but no tree has a richer color than this one. A spray brought in to
decorate the mantelpiece lasts till Christmas holly displaces it. The
leaves, being leathery, do not curl and dry, as do thin maple leaves,
in the warm air of the house.
=The Cotton Gum=
_N. aquatica_, Marsh.
The cotton gum is draped in cottony white down as the new shoots start
and the leaves unfold in spring. In midsummer this down persists in
the leaf-linings, lightening the dark green of the tree-tops. The dark
blue fruits of this species have no culinary value. The wood is used
for crating material. The tree reaches its maximum height--one hundred
feet--in the cypress swamps of Louisiana and Texas, its abundant,
corky roots adapting it to its habitat.
=The Sweet Gum=
_Liquidamber styraciflua_, Linn.
The sweet gum is a tall tree with a straight trunk, four to five feet
in diameter, with slender branches covered with corky bark thrown out
in wing-like ridges. At first the head is regular and pyramidal, but
in old age it becomes irregularly oblong and comparatively narrow. The
bark is reddish brown, deeply furrowed between rough scaly plates,
marked by hard, warty excrescences.
The leaves are lobed like a maple's, but more regularly, so as to form
a five-pointed star. Brilliant green in summer, they become streaked
with crimson and yellow. Wherever these gum trees grow, the autumn
landscape is painted with the changeful splendor of the most gorgeous
sunset. "The tree is not a flame, it is a _conflagration_!" Often
along a country road the rail fence is hidden by an undergrowth of
young gum trees. Their polished star leaves may pass from green into
dull crimsons and then into lilacs and so to brown, or they may flame
into scarlets and orange instead. Always, the foliage of the sweet gum
falls before it loses its wonderful colors.
The flowers of the sweet gum are knobby little bunches; the swinging
balls covered with curving horns contain the winged seeds, small but
shaped like the key of the maple. One recognizes the gum tree in
winter by these swinging seed-balls, an inch in diameter, like the
balls of the buttonwood, except that those are smooth. (_See
illustrations, pages 102-103._) The best distinguishing mark of sweet
gums in winter are the corky ridges on the branches, and the
star-shaped leaves under the trees. Sweet gum sap is resinous and
fragrant. Chip through the bark, and an aromatic gum soon accumulates
in the wound. The farther South one goes, the more copious is the
exudation. In Mexico a Spanish explorer described, in 1651, "large
trees that exude a gum like liquid amber." This is the "copalm balm"
gathered and shipped each year to Europe from New Orleans and from
Mexican ports. The fragrant gum, _storax_ or _styrax_, derived from
forests of the oriental sweet gum in Asia Minor, is used as incense in
temples of various oriental religions. It blends with frankincense and
myrrh in the censers of Greek and Roman Catholic churches. It is used
in medicines also, and as a dry gum is the standard glove perfume in
France.
Beautiful and interesting in every stage of growth, our native sweet
gums are planted largely in the parks of Europe and are earning
recognition at home, through the efforts of tree-lovers who would make
the most of native species in ornamental planting.
The name, gum tree, is applied to our tupelos, and to the great tribe
of Australian eucalyptus trees, now largely planted in the Southwest.
=The Osage Orange=
_Toxylon pomiferum_, Raff.
Related to figs and mulberries, but solitary in the genus _toxylon_,
is the osage orange, a handsome round-headed tree, native of eastern
North America, whose fleshy roots and milky, bitter, rubbery sap
reveal its family connections with the tropical rubber plants. (_See
illustration, page 119._) The fruits are great yellow-green globes,
four to five inches in diameter, covered on the outside by crowded,
one-seeded berries. This compound fruit reveals the tree's
relationship to both figs and mulberries.
The aborigines, especially of the Osage tribe, in the middle
Mississippi Valley, cherished these trees for their orange-yellow
wood, which is hard, heavy, flexible, and strong--the best bow-wood to
be found east of the Rocky Mountains. When the settlers came the sharp
thorns with which the branches are effectually armed appealed strongly
to the busy farmers and the tree was widely planted for hedges.
Nurserymen produced them by thousands, from cuttings of root and
branch. These trees made rapid growth and seemed most promising as a
solution of the fencing problem, but they did not prove hardy in Iowa
and neighboring states. Even now remnants of those old winter-killed
hedges may be found on farm boundaries, individual trees having been
able to survive.
The native osage orange timber is about all gone, for the rich bottom
lands where it once grew most abundantly in Oklahoma and Texas have
been converted into farm land. However, the growing of osage orange
timber for posts is on the increase. Systematically maintained,
plantations pay well. The wood is exceptionally durable in soil. Good
prices are paid for posts in local markets. Twenty-five posts can be
grown to the rod in rows of a plantation; they grow rapidly and send
up new shoots from the roots.
The brilliant, leathery leaves and conspicuous green fruits make this
native bow-wood a very striking lawn tree. It holds its foliage well
into the autumn and turns at length into a mass of gold. It harbors
few insects, has handsome bark, and is altogether a distinguished,
foreign-looking tree.
Experiments of feeding osage orange leaves to silkworms have been
successfully made at different times, but nowhere in America has silk
culture succeeded. Since the white mulberry is hardy here and its
foliage is the basis of the silk-growing industry in the Old World, it
is futile to look for substitutes in the osage orange or any other
tree.