TREES WITH SHOWY FLOWERS AND FRUITS
The Magnolias--The Dogwoods--The Viburnums--The Mountain
Ashes--The Rhododendron--The Mountain Laurel--The MadroA+-a--The
Sorrel Tree--The Silver Bell Trees--The Sweet Leaf--The Fringe
Tree--The Laurel Family--The Witch Hazel--The Burning Bush--The
Sumachs--The Smoke Tree--The Hollies
THE MAGNOLIAS
Four of the ten genera in the magnolia family are represented in North
America. Of these, two are trees. All are known by their large,
simple, alternate leaves, with margins entire; their showy, solitary,
terminal flowers, perfect and with all parts distinct; and their
cone-like fruits, compounded of many one- or two-seeded follicles,
shingling over each other upon a central spike. The wood is soft and
light throughout the family, and the roots are fleshy. The sap is
watery and the bark is bitter and aromatic.
The genus _magnolia_, named by Linnaeus in honor of Pierre Magnol, a
French botanist, includes twenty species; twelve are native to eastern
and southern Asia, two to Mexico, and six to eastern North America.
They are of peculiar interest to horticulturists and to the general
public, because they have the largest flowers of any trees in
cultivation. A white blossom from six inches to a foot across is bound
to attract attention and admiration when set off by a whorl of
lustrous evergreen leaves. The petals of most magnolia blossoms are
notably thick and waxy in texture and deliciously fragrant. Last but
not least are the cone-like fruits, which flush from pale green to
rose as they ripen against the dark, leathery foliage; at maturity
their follicles open in a peculiar fashion and hang out their bright
red seeds on slender elastic threads. Foliage, flowers, or cones alone
would make magnolias superb as ornamental trees. All these qualities
combined have given them a preA"minent place in every country where
ornamental planting is done. North America is fortunate in having so
large a number of species that assume tree form.
When you see a magnolia in the North blossoming before the leaves, you
may be sure it is an exotic species, and if the flowers are colored
you may be equally sure that it is a hybrid between two oriental
species, and belongs to the group of which the type is _M.
Soulangeana_. The owner may be a magnolia enthusiast, able to show you
on his premises both parents of this interesting and beautiful hybrid.
[Illustration: _See page 87_
THE TATTERED, SILKY BARK OF THE BIRCHES]
[Illustration: _See page 93_
BLOTCHED BARK OF THE SYCAMORE, AND THE SEED-BALLS THAT HANG ON
ALL WINTER]
[Illustration: _See page 97_
THE WARTY, RIDGED BARK, THE SWINGING SEED-BALLS, AND THE WINGED
SEEDS OF THE SWEET GUM]
[Illustration: _See page 109_
TULIP TREE, FLOWER AND LEAVES]
=Yulan Magnolia=
_Magnolia Yulan_
The Yulan magnolia, for centuries a favorite in Japanese gardens,
covers itself before the leaves appear with pure white, fragrant
flowers, bell-shaped and fully six inches across. In our Eastern
gardens it is quite as much at home, and though young trees are
oftenest seen, the older specimens are as large as any native
magnolia. This is one parent. The other is but a shrub, the purple
magnolia, _M. obovata_, that must be protected against the rigors of
our Northern winters. It blooms in May or June, and its purple
flowers, with rosy linings, are relatively small and almost scentless.
The children of this parentage get their tints of pink and rose and
crimson from this purple magnolia shrub.
Splendid, hardy, fragrant, big-flowered varieties have arisen from
this cross. All are small trees, suitable for planting in city yards,
where they are decorative throughout the season.
=Starry Magnolia=
_M. stellata_
The starry magnolia blooms in March or April, covering itself with
star-shaped white flowers made of strap-like petals that form a flat
whorl instead of a cup. This is the earliest magnolia and wonderfully
precocious, blooming when scarcely two feet high.
The Southern states can grow the splendid Campbell's magnolia, which
is in its glory in the high mountain valleys of the Himalayas, where
it reaches one hundred feet in height. The fragrant flower-cups, from
six to ten inches in diameter, shade from pink to crimson. It is rare
in cultivation because it is not easy to grow, and northern
horticulturists fail utterly to grow it outdoors; but the fact that it
is the most beautiful of all exotic species must encourage its culture
in the South, and difficulties will be overcome when the tree's
peculiar needs are fully understood.
=The Great Laurel Magnolia=
_M. foetida_, Sarg.
The great laurel magnolia is oftenest seen in cultivation as a small
tree of pyramidal or conical habit, with stiff, ascending branches,
bearing a lustrous mass of leathery oval leaves, five to eight inches
long, lined with dull green, or with rusty down, persistent until the
second spring. When small these magnolia trees are as conventional as
the rubber plants in hotel lobbies, whose foliage resembles theirs.
But in the forests of Louisiana, where this tree reaches its greatest
perfection, it earns the characterization that Sargent gave it, "the
most splendid ornamental tree in the American forests." With a trunk
four feet thick, and its head lifted from fifty to eighty feet above
the ground and with each leaf cluster holding up a great white flower,
waxy as a camellia, seven to eight inches across, the tree is indeed
superb. William Bartram likened these flowers to great white roses,
distinctly visible from a distance of a mile.
The purple heart of the flower, made by a spot of color at the base of
each petal, and the overpowering odor, rather sickening as the flowers
fade, lure insects to the nectar store at the bottom of the
flower-cup. This odor, disagreeable to many people, is the one
objection to this flower when brought indoors. A drawback that
florists discover is that the slightest bruise of the waxy petals
produces a brownish discoloration, which prevents the shipment of
these flowers. The splendid foliage, however, travels perfectly, and a
new and growing industry is the gathering of magnolia branches in
Southern woods for Christmas decoration. These branches are offered
in all Northern cities, and this demand threatens the extinction of
the tree, which until comparatively recent years has enjoyed immunity
because of the worthlessness of its soft wood.
The tree's natural range is from the North Carolina coast to Tampa
Bay, and west along the Gulf Coast to Texas and southern Arkansas. As
an ornamental tree, it is safely planted in Philadelphia, but its life
is precarious farther north. It is widely grown in southern California
as a street tree, notably in Pasadena and in parks and gardens for its
blossoms, foliage, and fuzzy, horny cones.
=The Swamp Bay=
_M. glauca_, Linn.
The swamp bay has lustrous, bright green leaves with silvery linings.
In Florida and across to Texas and Arkansas it grows into a superb
evergreen tree, fifty to seventy-five feet in height. Northward along
the Atlantic Coast its growth is stunted as the climate becomes more
rigorous, until it reaches Massachusetts and Long Island, where it
becomes a many-stemmed shrub, whose beautiful leaves fall in the
autumn. On the streets of cities near the New Jersey swamps the
flowers of the swamp bay are offered for sale in May. The buds are
almost globular, and each one is surrounded by a cluster of new
leaves. To spring back these waxy white petals, that are marred by a
touch, is criminal; but it is the common practice with boys who hawk
these flowers on the streets. Most of the charm is gone from flowers
thus defiled by dingy fingers.
The finest flowers are borne on strong young shoots. The florists
collect and handle them with extreme care. Much of the swamp land now
useless along the Atlantic seaboard could be profitably planted to
this magnolia, for the florist trade alone. The flowers bloom slowly
through a period of several weeks. The enterprising owner of tracts
planted to swamp bay could reap two harvests a year, almost from the
first season: the flowers in spring and the leafy shoots for holiday
decorations. In the South the leaves are evergreen.
=The Large-leaved Cucumber Tree=
_M. macrophylla_, Michx.
The large-leaved cucumber tree exceeds all other magnolias in the size
of its leaves and flowers. In fact, no tree outside the tropics can
match it, for its blades are almost a yard in length. The flowers are
great white bowls, sometimes a foot across, made of six white waxy
petals, much broader than the three protecting sepals outside. The
inner petals have purple spots at the base. The fruits are almost
globular, two to three inches long, turning red as they mature,
equally showy when the scarlet seeds dangle from the open follicles.
These trees are at home in fertile valleys among the foothills of the
Alleghanies, from North Carolina to middle Florida, and west to
central Arkansas. Their range is not continuous. They occur in
scattered groups that have come from seed.
The horticulturist has greatly aided nature in the spread of this tree
in this country and in Europe, where its flowers and leaves attract
universal attention. The mistake usually made is to plant it in the
middle of a lawn where the wind lashes the broad leaves into ribbons
before they have reached their full size. Every twig or leaf that
touches a petal mars it with a brown bruise. The only way to enjoy one
of these remarkable trees is to plant it in the most sheltered
situation, where the sunshine will reach it and the breezes will not.
Then the silver-lined foliage and the superb white blossoms can come
to perfection and the sight is worth going miles to see.
=The Cucumber Tree=
_M. acuminata_, Linn.
The cucumber tree is the hardiest of our native magnolias,
tropical-looking by reason of its heart-shaped leaves, six to ten
inches long. Its chosen habitat is rocky uplands, where the fleshy
roots can find moist soil. It ranges from western New York to
Illinois, Kentucky, and Arkansas, and follows the mountain foothills
through Pennsylvania and Tennessee into Alabama and Mississippi.
The flowers are like tulips, and though large can scarcely be seen
among the new leaves, because they are all yellowish green in color.
The petals are leaf-like and the flowers have no fragrance to make up
for their lack of beauty. Imperfect pollination results in distorted,
fleshy cones that resemble cucumbers that have twisted and shrunken in
spots as they grew. These fruits turn from pink to red as they mature,
redeeming their ugly shape by their vivid color as the leaves turn
yellow. In September, the scarlet seeds hang out and the wind whips
them until they dangle several inches below the fruit. One by one they
drop and new cucumber trees come up from this planting.
The wood of the cucumber tree is light, close-textured, weak, and pale
brown in color. It has only local use in cabinet-making and for
flooring. The tree is far more valuable in horticulture. It is a
splendid stock on which to graft less hardy magnolias. It is a superb
avenue and shade tree for Northern cities, and in this capacity it is
as yet little known. It grows vigorously from seed, and stands
transplanting, if care is used that the brittle roots are not
mutilated nor dried.
=The Umbrella Tree=
_M. tripetala_, Linn.
The umbrella tree has an umbrella-like whorl of leaves surrounding the
flower whose white cup stands above three recurving white sepals. The
whole tree suggests an umbrella, so closely thatched is its dome of
thin, bright green leaves.
The stout contorted branches and twigs lack symmetry, from the forking
habit. Side twigs strike out at right angles from an erect branch,
then turn up into a position parallel with the parent branch, and bear
terminal flowers, which induce another branching system the following
year. Despite its angularity this is the trimmest and one of the
handsomest of our native magnolias, and it has the merit of hardiness
even in New England, where it attains large size. Its native range
extends from Pennsylvania near the coast, along the Atlantic seaboard,
and westward to southern Alabama and Arkansas. It loves swamp borders
and the banks of mountain streams, but behaves well in the moderately
rich soil of parks and gardens.
=The Tulip Tree=
_Liriodendron tulipifera_, Linn.
The tulip tree is a cousin, rather than a sister, to the foregoing
magnolias. It stands alone in its genus in America, but has a sister
species that grows in the Chinese interior. A tall, stately forest
tree, it reached two hundred feet in height, and a trunk diameter of
ten feet, in the lower Ohio Valley, when it was covered with virgin
forest. This species still holds its own as a valuable lumber tree on
mountain slopes of North Carolina and Tennessee. Smaller, but still
stately and beautiful, it is found in woods from Vermont to Florida
and west to Illinois, Arkansas, and Mississippi.
In Europe the tulip tree has been a favorite since its discovery and
exportation by the American colonists. More and more it is coming to
be appreciated at home as a lawn and shade tree, for there is no time
in the year when it is not full of interest and beauty, and no time in
its life when it is not a distinct and beautiful addition to any
plantation.
In the dead of winter young tulip trees are singularly straight and
symmetrical compared with saplings of other trees. There is usually a
grove of them, planted by some older tree that towers overhead, and
still holds up its shiny cones, that take months to give up their
winged seeds. The close, thick, intricately furrowed bark of the
parent tree contrasts sharply with the smooth rind of its branches and
the stems of the saplings. Tulip trees are trim as beeches until the
trunks are old.
The winter twigs are set with oblong blunt leaf-buds. The terminal one
contains the flower, when the tree is old enough to bloom. (_See
illustration, page 103._) In spring the terminal buds of saplings best
show the peculiarity of the tree's vernation. Two green leaves with
palms together form a flat bag that encloses the new shoot. Hold this
bag up to the light and you see, as a shadow within, a curved petiole
and leaf. The bag opens along its edge seam, the leaf-stem
straightens, lifting the blade which is folded on the midrib. At the
base of the petiole stands a smaller flat green bag. As the leaf grows
to maturity the basal palms of its protecting bag shrivel and fall
away, leaving the ring scar around the leaf base.
Now the growing shoot has carried up the second bag, which opens and
another leaf expands, sheds its leafy stipules, and a third follows.
The studies of this unique vernation delight children and grown-ups.
It is absolutely unmatched in the world of trees.
The leathery blades of the tulip tree are from four to six inches
broad and long, with basal lobes, like those of a maple leaf, and the
end chopped off square. Occasionally there is a notch, made by the two
end lobes projecting a trifle beyond the midrib. The leaves are
singularly free from damage, keeping their dark lustrous beauty
through the summer, and turning to clear yellow before they fall.
The winged seeds fall first from the top of the erect cones, the wind
whirling them far, because the flat blades are long and the seed-cases
light--many of them empty in fact. Far into winter a tulip tree seems
to be blossoming, because its bare branches are tipped with the
remnants of the seed cones, faded and shining almost white against the
dark branches.
Tulip wood is soft and weak, pale brown, and light in weight. It is
easily worked and is used locally for house and boat-building. Wood
pulp consumes much of the yearly harvest. It is known as "poplar,"
whose wood it resembles. Ordinary postal cards are made of it. The
bark yields a drug used as a heart stimulant.
THE DOGWOODS
Foliage of exceptional beauty is the distinguishing trait of the trees
in the cornel family, from the standpoint of the landscape gardener
and the lover of the woods. Showy flowers and fruit belong to some of
the species; extremely hard, close-textured wood belongs to all; and
this means slow growth, which is a limitation in the eyes of the
planter who wishes quick results. But he who plants a cornel tree and
watches it season after season, finds it one of the most interesting
of nature studies through the whole round of the year.
The dogwoods are slender-twigged trees of small size, with simple,
entire leaves, strongly ribbed, and with one exception, set opposite
upon the twigs. Fifty species are distributed over the Northern
Hemisphere; one crosses the equator into Peru. Four of the seventeen
species found in the United States are trees; the rest are shrubs, one
of them the low-growing bunchberry of our Northern woods.
=The Flowering Dogwood=
_Cornus florida_, Linn.
The flowering dogwood (_see illustration, page 134_) is a little tree
whose round, bushy, flat-topped head is made of short, horizontal
branches. The twigs hold erect in the winter a multitude of buds,
large, squat, enclosed in four scales, like the husk of a hickory nut.
All the delicate tints that the water-colorist delights in are found
in these buds and the twigs that bear them. When spring comes, these
scales loosen, expand, turn green, then fade into pure white--forming
the four banners, ordinarily called petals--of the bloom of the
dogwood. The true flowers are small and clustered in the centre. These
white expanses are merely modified bud scales, the botanist will tell
you, and the notch at the end is where the horny winter scale broke
away, while its base was growing into the large white palm.
From March till May one finds the dogwood clothed in white (_see
illustration, page 118_), and the glossy leaves passing through
changing hues from rose to green. The wayward arrangement of the
blossoms on the branch is the delight of artists. Lured by the white
signals, bees and other nectar-loving insects come to the flowers,
cross-fertilizing them while they supply their own needs. In midsummer
the pale green clusters of berries replace the flowers, and when in
autumn the foliage, still glossy and smooth, changes to crimson and
scarlet, the berries are brighter still, until the birds have taken
every one.
The bark of the dogwood is checkered like alligator skin but with deep
furrows that make it very rough. The wood is used for wood engraving
blocks, for tool handles, hubs, and cogs. But it is becoming very
scarce. The deplorable destruction of the dogwoods comes not so much
from the lumberman as from the irresponsible people who tear the trees
to pieces in blossoming time. The wanton mutilation of the dogwoods in
natural woodlands belonging to cities can be curbed only by policing
the tracts. The saving of every flowering dogwood tree is a duty owed
to his community by every wood-lot owner within the range of this
hardy, handsome tree. Though exterminated over much of its range, it
is able and willing to grow in any state east of the Mississippi
River. It is one of the most deservedly popular trees planted for
ornament in this country and in Europe.
=Western Dogwood=
_C. Nuttallii_, Aud.
The Pacific Coast outdoes the rest of the country in the size of its
forest trees. Superlatives in vegetation abound where the breath of
the Japan current tempers the air. The Western dogwood often reaches
one hundred feet in height in the forests near Seattle. Its flowers
have six, instead of four, of the petal-like, white bracts, each
narrower and pointed, and without the terminal notch. The tree in
blossom is more magnificent than the eastern species, for the flowers
are often twice as large, and the spectacle of one of these trees,
after the leaves turn to scarlet in autumn, and it leans against the
sombre evergreens that cover the mountain-side, is always startling,
even in a country where surprises are the rule.
=European Dogwood=
_C. mas._
The European dogwood or cornel is often planted in the Eastern states
as an ornamental tree, but not for its flowers alone, though these
tiny, button-like clusters cover the bare branches in earliest spring.
The showy fruits look like scarlet olives hanging among the glossy
foliage in late summer. These fruits are edible, and in Europe are
used in preserves and cordials.
THE VIBURNUMS
The honeysuckle family, which includes a multitude of ornamental
shrubs, furnishes two genera with three representatives. Handsome
foliage, showy flowers, and attractive fruits justify the popularity
of this family in gardens and parks.
The viburnums are distributed over the Northern Hemisphere and extend
into the tropics. There are about one hundred species, including the
old-fashioned snowball bush, perhaps the best-known species in this
country. Discriminating gardeners have replaced it by the Japanese
snowball, because the latter has much more handsome foliage and
perfect flowers, instead of the barren flower cluster that has nothing
to show for itself once the bloom is past. This new species wears the
autumn decoration of bright red berries well into the winter.
=The Sheepberry=
_Viburnum lentago_, Linn.
In our native woods the sheepberry is a small round-headed tree, with
slim, drooping branches and oval leaves, finely cut-toothed and
tapering to wavy-winged petioles. In autumn these leathery leaves
change to orange and red, their shiny surfaces contrasting with the
dull lining, pitted with black dots. The fruit, a loose cluster of
dark blue berries, on branching red stems, is an attractive color
contrast, and the birds flutter in the trees until they have eaten the
last one. The fragrant white flowers light up the tree from April to
June with their flat clusters three to five inches across. The
opposite arrangement of the leaves and that short-winged petiole
identify the little tree, whether it grows by the swamp borders, along
the streams, or in parks and gardens. At any season it is good to look
upon. Its range covers the eastern half of the country, extending
almost to the Gulf of Mexico and west into Wyoming.
=The Rusty Nannyberry=
_V. rufidulum_, Raff.
The rusty nannyberry is easily distinguished by the rusty hairs that
clothe its new shoots and the stems and veins of the leaves. White
flower clusters are succeeded by bright blue berries of unusual size
and brilliance, ripe in October, on red-stemmed pedicles. The handsome
polished leaves are rounded at the tips. The wood of this little tree
has a very unpleasant odor, but this trait has no bearing upon its
merits as a garden ornament. It is found wild from Virginia to
Illinois and southward. In cultivation it is hardy in the latitude of
Boston.
=The Black Haw=
_V. prunifolium_, Linn.
The black haw has the characteristic flowers and fruit of its genus,
but is smaller throughout than the other two, and its branches are
stout. In European parks and gardens it is known as the "stagbush."
Its fruit turns dark when dead ripe, and persists well into the
winter. In the wilds, this little viburnum is found from southern New
England to Michigan, and south to Georgia and Texas.
THE MOUNTAIN ASHES
The handsome foliage and showy flower clusters make the mountain ashes
a favorite group of little trees for border shrubberies and other
ornamental planting. The foliage is almost fern-like in delicacy and
it spreads in a whorl below the flower clusters in spring and the
scarlet berry clusters in autumn. Far into the winter after the
foliage has dropped the berries persist, supplying the birds with
food, especially in snowy winters, when their need is greatest, and
brightening the dull thickets of bare twigs on dreary days.
=Eastern Mountain Ash=
_Sorbus Americana_, Marsh.
The common eastern mountain ash reaches thirty feet in height--a
slender, pyramidal tree, with spreading branches and delicate leaves of
from thirteen to seventeen leaflets. The flat-topped cluster of creamy
white flowers (_see illustration, page 135_) appears in May and June,
above the dark yellow-green foliage; and the scarlet berries, ripe in
September when the leaves have turned yellow, may persist until spring.
Along the borders of swamps and climbing rocky bluffs, often scattered
in plum thickets, these trees are handsome at any season. Along the
mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina home remedies are made out of
the berries. From Newfoundland to Manitoba and southward the tree grows
wild and is planted for ornament in home grounds.
=Elder-leaved Mountain Ash=
_S. sambucifolia_, Roem.
The elder-leaved mountain ash overlaps the first species, and is even
more daring as a climber. It ranges from Labrador to Alaska, follows the
Rocky Mountains to Colorado, and in the Eastern states goes no farther
south than Pennsylvania. Its leaves are graceful and drooping like the
elder. The flowers and fruits are large; the whole tree tropical
looking, its open, pyramidal head giving each leaf a chance at the sun.
=European Mountain Ash=
_S. Aucuparia_, Linn.
Most common in cultivation is the European mountain ash called in
England the rowan tree. This trim round-headed species is very neat
and conventional compared with its wild cousins, but in the craggy
highlands of Scotland and Wales it much resembles our mountain ashes.
Old superstitions cluster around the rowan tree in all rural sections.
These are preserved in the folk-lore and the literature of many
countries. Rowans were planted by cottage doors and at the gates of
church yards, being considered effectual in exorcising evil spirits.
Leafy twigs hung over the thresholds, crosses made of "Roan" wood
given out on festival days, were worn as charms or amulets. Milkmaids,
especially, depended upon these for the defeat of the "black elves"
who constantly tried to make their cows go dry, and unless prevented
got into the churns--and then the butter would never come!
The farther north a tree can grow, the more likely it is to have close
relatives in the Old World. One mountain ash of Japan is hardly
distinguishable from our western species, and some authorities believe
that our two native species are but varieties of the rowan tree of
Europe.
THE RHODODENDRON
The heath family, of about sixty-seven genera, distributed over the
temperate and tropical countries of the earth, has twenty-one genera
in the United States, seven of which have tree representatives.
Azaleas, the multitude of the heathers, the huckleberries, the
madroA+-as, call to mind flower shows we have seen--under glass, in
gardens, in parks, and among mountain fastnesses brightened by the
loveliness of the mountain laurel, azalea, and rhododendron. In this
wonderful family the leaves are simple and mostly evergreen. Rarely
are the fruits of any importance. It is the flowers in masses that
give the chief distinction to a family with over a thousand species,
which have been the subjects of study and cultivation through
centuries. The type of the family is the Scotch heather, immortalized
in song and story. In London the Christmas season is marked by the
sale of half a million little potted plants of heather! Each is about
a foot in height and bears a thousand tiny bells, rosy, with white
lips. This is the poor man's Christmas flower. It costs a shilling and
lasts a month or more.
[Illustration: _See page 111_
FLOWERING DOGWOOD]
[Illustration: _See page 99_
THE OSAGE ORANGE
Flowers appear in June, after the lustrous leaves]
Trees are scarce in the heath family. Shrubs are in the majority. The
azaleas, which the Belgian gardeners have brought to such perfection
and developed in such a great number of varieties, are among the best
known of the heaths. The profuse blossoms in potted azaleas entirely
extinguish the foliage, and the flowers are almost as lasting as if
they were artificial.
The genus rhododendron in American woods is represented by a mountain
shrub and a tree. Both are evergreen and both are widely planted for
ornament during the entire season. Carloads of these wonderful plants
are shipped from the mountain slopes of the Alleghanies for mass
planting on rocky ground, and to cover embankments along the drives in
great estates. Because of the altitude of their native habitat, they
are hardy in New England, and even as far as the Great Lakes. In time
of bloom, these masses are the great flower show of the countryside,
and in winter nothing is more beautiful than the evergreen foliage of
rhododendrons, lifted out of the snow.
=Great Laurel or Rose Bay=
_Rhododendron maximum_, Linn.
Among the Alleghany Mountains, from Virginia southward, the great
laurel rises to a height of forty feet, and interlaces its boughs with
those of Fraser's magnolia and the mountain hemlock in the dense
forest cover. Thickets of rhododendron trees are common, and though
its stature is reduced, it follows the highlands into New York, and is
one of the most striking and beautiful shrubs in the Pennsylvania
mountains. Scattered and becoming more rare and more stunted, it
reaches Lake Erie and on into New Brunswick. The leaves crown each of
the stiff branches with an umbrella-like whorl, that stands guard in
winter time about a large scaly bud. In spring the scales fall and a
cone-like flower cluster rises. Each blossom is white, marked with
yellow or orange spots, in the bell-like corolla's throat; or the
flowers may be pale rose, with deeper tones in the unopened buds. A
great tree in blossom, with its flower clusters lighting up the
umbrella-like whorls of glossy, evergreen leaves, illuminates the
woods, and makes every other tree look commonplace beside it.
In late summer, green capsules, each with a curving style at the top,
cluster where the flowers stood, but these are scarcely ornamental.
The evergreen leaves and the buds, full of promise for June
blossoming, are the beautiful features of rhododendrons in winter.
The wonderful array of color and profusion of bloom, seen in an
exhibit of rhododendrons and azaleas, is the most convincing proof of
what crossing and careful selection can do in developing races of
flowering plants. The ancestry of all these tub-plants is a matter of
record, and goes back to a few comparatively insignificant wild
species, competing with all the rest of the native flora for a
livelihood.
THE MOUNTAIN LAUREL
The mountain laurel (_Kalmia latifolia_, Linn.) grows from Nova Scotia
to Lake Erie and southward through New England and New York, and along
the Alleghanies to northern Georgia. Hardier than the rhododendrons,
smaller in blossoms and in foliage, the laurel is in many points its
superior in beauty. In June and July the polished evergreen foliage of
the kalmia bushes is almost overwhelmed by the masses of its exquisite
pink blossoms, beside which the bloom of rhododendrons looks coarse
and crude in coloring. Coral-red fluted buds with pointed tips show
the richest color, making with the yellow-green of the new leaves one
of the most exquisite color combinations in any spring shrubbery. The
largest buds open first, spreading into wide five-lobed corollas, with
two pockets in the base of each forming a circle of ten pockets. Ten
stamens stand about the free central pistil, and the anther of each is
hid in a pocket of the corolla--the slender filament bent backward.
This is a curious contrivance for insuring cross-fertilization through
the help of the bees. (_See "Flowers Worth Knowing."_)
Linnaeus commemorated in the name of this genus the devoted and
arduous labors of Peter Kalm, the Swedish botanist, who sent back to
his master at the university of Upsala specimens of the wonderful and
varied flora found in his travels in eastern North America. Most of
the names accredited to Linnaeus were given to plants he never saw
except as dried herbarium specimens from the New World.
THE MADROA'A
The madroA+-a (_Arbutus Menziesii_, Pursh.), another member of the Heath
family, is one of the superbly beautiful trees in the forests that
stretch from British Columbia southward into California. South of the
bay of San Francisco and on the dry eastern slopes of California
mountains it is stunted to a shrub, but on the high, well-drained
slopes through the coast region and in the redwood forests of northern
California it is a tree that reaches a hundred feet in height.
John Muir writes: "The madroA+-a, clad in thin, smooth, red and yellow
bark, with big, glossy leaves, seems in the dark coniferous forests of
Washington and Vancouver Island like some lost wanderer from the
magnolia groves in the South." All the year around this is one of the
most beautiful of American trees. It bears large conical clusters of
white flowers above the vivid green of its leathery leaves, that are
wonderfully lightened by silvery linings. In autumn the red-brown of
the branches is enriched and intensified by the luxuriant clusters of
scarlet berries against the red and orange of the two-year-old leaves.
Among the giant redwoods this tree commands the highest admiration.
THE SORREL TREE
The sorrel tree, or sour-wood (_Oxydendrum arboreum_, DC.) belongs
among the heaths. Its vivid scarlet autumn foliage is its chief claim
to the admiration of gardeners. In spring the little tree is beautiful
in its bronze-green foliage, and in late July and August it bears long
branching racemes of tiny bell-shaped white flowers. This multitude of
little bells suggests the tree's relationship to the blossoming
heather we see in florists' shops.
The leaves give the tree its two common names: they have a sour taste,
resembling that of the herbaceous sorrels. The twigs, even in the dead
of winter, yield this refreshing acid sap, that flows through the
veins of the membranous leaves in summer. Many a hunter, temporarily
lost in Southern woods, quenches his thirst by nibbling young shoots
of the sour-wood.
After the flower comes a downy capsule, five-celled, with numerous
pointed seeds. The leaves are not unlike those of a plum tree except
that they attain a length of five to seven inches. In the woods from
Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, southward to Florida, Alabama,
Louisiana, and Arkansas this tree ranges, and we often see it in
cultivation as far north as Boston. It grows to its largest size on
the western slopes of the Big Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, attaining
here a height of sixty feet. In cultivation it is one of the little,
slender-stemmed, dainty trees, beautiful at any season. It is the sole
representative of its genus in the world, so far as botanists know.
THE SILVER BELL TREES
The silver bell tree (_Mohrodendron tetraptera_, Britt.) earns its
name in May when among the green leaves the clustered bell flowers
gradually pale from green to white, with rosy tints that seem to come
from the ruddy flower-stems. A "snowdrop tree" may be eighty feet in
height, in the mountains of east Tennessee and western North Carolina,
but ordinarily we see it in gardens and parks as a delicate,
slender-branched tree, that stands out from every other species in the
border as the loveliest thing that blooms there.
Not a moment in spring lacks interest if one has a little mohrodendron
tree to watch. For weeks the ruddy twigs grow ruddier by the opening
of leaf and flower buds; then comes the slow fading of the flowers,
when sun and rain seem to work together to bleach them into utter
purity of color and texture. Gradually the white bells fade and a
queer little green, tapering seed-case enlarges and ripens. Through
the late summer these pale green fruits are exceedingly ornamental as
the leaves turn to pale yellow.
In cultivation, the silver bell tree is hardy in the New England
states, but in its native woods it grows north no farther than West
Virginia and Illinois. It is easily transplanted and pruned to bush
form, if one desires to keep the blossoming down where the perfection
of the flowers can be enjoyed at close range.
=Snowdrop Tree=
_M. diptera_, Britt.
A second species called the snowdrop tree skirts the swamps along the
South Atlantic and Gulf coast and follows the Mississippi bayous to
southern Arkansas. It is smaller in stature than the silver bell tree,
but has larger leaves and more showy flowers. The botanical names
record the chief specific difference between the two species: this one
has but two wings on its seed-cases, while the other has four. This
species is hardy no farther north than Philadelphia. The flowers have
their bells cleft almost to the base, whereas the bell of the other
species is merely notched at the top.
THE SWEET LEAF
Two genera of trees in this country are temperate zone representatives
of a tropical family which furnishes benzoine, torax, and other
valuable balsams of commerce. It is easy to see that these trees are
strangers from warm countries, for many of their traits are singularly
unfamiliar.
=The Sweet Leaf=
_Symplocos tinctoria_, L'Her.
The sweet leaf is our sole representative of a large genus of trees
native to the forests of Australia and the tropics in Asia and South
America. They yield important drugs and dyestuffs, particularly in
British India. But the sweet leaf is a small tree, rarely over twenty
feet in height, with ashy gray bark, warty and narrowly fissured. In
earliest spring its twigs are clothed with yellow or white blossoms
that come in a procession and cover the tree from March until May,
preceding the leaves, and breathing a wonderful fragrance into the
air. The leaves are small, leathery, dark green, lustrous above,
deciduous in the regions of colder winters, persistent from one to two
years in the warmer part of its range. The flowers are succeeded by
brown berries that ripen in summer, or early autumn. The flesh is dry
about the single seed.
Horses and cattle greedily browse upon the foliage, which has a
distinctly sweet taste. The bark and leaves both yield a yellow dye,
and the roots a tonic from their bitter, aromatic sap.
"Horse sugar" is another local name for this little tree, which is
found sparingly from Delaware to Florida, west to the Blue Ridge
Mountains, and in the Gulf states to Louisiana and northward into
Arkansas and to eastern Texas. It is a shade-loving tree, usually
found under the forest cover of taller species, skirting the borders
of cypress swamps, and climbing to elevations of nearly three
thousand feet on the slopes of the Blue Ridge.
A wonderful new species of _symplocos_ has come into cultivation from
Japan and will enjoy a constantly increasing popularity. Its fragrant
white blossoms, before the leaves, make the tree look like a hawthorn;
but its unique distinction is that the racemed flowers give place to
berries of a brilliant turquoise blue, which make this shrubby tree a
most striking and beautiful object in the autumn when the leaves are
turning yellow.
THE FRINGE TREE
Native to the middle and southern portions of the United States is a
slender little tree (_Chionanthus Virginica_, Linn.), whose sister
species inhabits northern and central China. Both of them cover their
branches with delicate, fragrant white flowers, in loose drooping
panicles, when the leaves are about one third grown. Each flower has
four slender curving petals an inch long, but exceedingly narrow. In
May and June the tree is decked with a bridal veil of white that makes
it one of the most ethereal and the most elegant of lawn and park
trees at this supreme moment of the year. Later the leaves broaden and
reach six to eight inches in length, tapering narrowly to the short
petioles. Thick and dark green, with plain margins, and conspicuously
looped venation near the edges, these leaves suggest a young magnolia
tree. Blue fruits the size of plums succeed the flowers in September,
denying the magnolia theory and shading to black before they fall. The
flesh is dry and seeds solitary under the thick skin of the drupe.
As in many other instances, European gardeners have led in the
appreciation of this American ornamental tree. However, New England
has planted it freely in parks and gardens, and popularity will follow
wherever it becomes known. Its natural distribution is from southern
Pennsylvania to Florida, and west to Arkansas and Texas. In
cultivation it is hardy and flourishes far north of its natural range.
No garden that can have a fringe tree should be without it.
Fortunately its wood is negligible in quantity, and the temptation to
chop down these trees does not come to the ignorant man with an axe.
Whoever goes to the woods in May is rewarded for many miles of
tramping if he comes upon a "snow-flower tree" in the height of its
blooming season, led perhaps by its delicate fragrance when the little
tree is overshadowed by the deep green of the forest cover. It is an
experience that will not be forgotten soon.
THE LAUREL FAMILY
The laurel family, a large group of aromatic trees and shrubs found
chiefly in the tropics, includes with our sassafras, laurels, and bays
the cinnamon and camphor trees.
=California Laurel=
_Umbellaria Californica_, Nutt.
The California laurel climbs the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada
from the forests of southwestern Oregon to the San Bernardino range
near Los Angeles. "Up North" it is called pepperwood. It is a lover of
wet soil, so it keeps near streams. With the broad-leaved maple it
gives character to the deciduous growth near the northern boundaries
of California, where it reaches eighty to ninety feet in height, and a
trunk diameter of four to five feet. Sometimes it is tall, but usually
it divides near the ground into several large diverging stems, forming
a broad round head. In southern California, and at high elevations, it
oftenest occurs as a low shrub.
The willow-like leaves, lustrous and evergreen, last often through the
sixth season. Unfolding in winter or early spring, they continue to
appear as the branches lengthen until late in the autumn, turning to
beautiful yellow or orange and falling one by one. Beginning during
the second season, they continue to drop, as new shoots loosen their
hold. These leaves are rich in an aromatic oil which causes them to
burn readily when piled green upon a campfire. Plum-like purple fruits
succeed the small white fragrant flowers, borne in clusters in the
axils of the leaves. The seeds germinate before the fruit begins to
decay. Indeed the plantlet has attained considerable size before the
acid flesh shows any signs of change.
This tree is a superb addition to the parks and gardens of the Pacific
Coast. It is strikingly handsome in a land of handsome trees, native
and exotic. Its wood is the most beautiful and valuable produced in
the forests of Pacific North America for the interior finish of houses
and for furniture. It is heavy, hard, strong, fine-grained, light
brown, of a rich tone, with paler sap-wood, that includes the annual
growth of thirty or forty seasons. The leaves yield by distillation a
pungent, aromatic, volatile oil, and the fruit a fatty acid
commercially valuable.
=The Red Bay=
_Persea Borbonia_, Streng.
Another laurel native to stream and swamp borders, from Virginia to
Texas and north to Arkansas, is the red bay, whose bark, thick, red,
and furrowed into scaly ridges on the trunk, becomes smooth and green
on the branches. The evergreen leaves are narrowly oval, three to four
inches long, bright green, polished, with pale linings. The white
flowers are very minute bells borne in axillary clusters, succeeded in
autumn by blue or black shiny berries, one half inch long, one-seeded,
making a pretty contrast with the clear yellow of the year-old leaves
and the bright green of the new ones.
This native laurel, lover of rich, moist soil, deserves the place in
cultivation more commonly granted its European cousin, _Laurus
nobilis_, Linn., the familiar tub laurel of hotel verandas in the
Northern states, and much grown out of doors in southern California
and in milder climates east. The tree is occasionally sixty to seventy
feet high, with trunk two to three feet in diameter. Such specimens
furnish the cabinet-maker and carpenter with a beautiful, bright red,
close-grained wood for fine interior finish and furniture. Formerly it
was used in the construction of river boats, but the timber supply is
now very limited.
=The Avocado=
_P. gratissima_, Gaertn.
In Florida and southern California the avocado or alligator pear is
being extensively cultivated. This laurel grows wild in the West
Indies, Brazil, Peru, and Mexico. Its berry attains the size of a
large pear. It has been developed in several commercial varieties, all
having smooth green or purple skin, and soft oily pulp like marrow
surrounding a single gigantic seed. It is usually cut in two like a
melon and eaten raw as a salad dressed with vinegar, salt, and pepper.
Once a stranger acquires the taste, he is extremely fond of this new
salad fruit. The growing of the trees is easy and very profitable. At
present the fruits are in great demand in city markets, and the prices
are too high for any but the rich to enjoy this luxury.
Where a market is difficult to reach, the abundant oil is expressed
from these fruits and used for illumination and the manufacture of
soap. The seeds yield an indelible ink.
It is interesting to the student of trees to note how many tropical
families have representation in North America, due to the fact that
Florida extends into the tropics, and the West Indies seem to form a
sort of bridge over which Central American and South American species
have reached the Floridian Keys and the mainland.
=The Sassafras=
_Sassafras_, Karst.
The sole remnant of an ancient genus is the aromatic sassafras
familiar as a roadside tree that flames in autumn with the star gum
and the swamp maples. In the deep woods it reaches a height of more
than a hundred feet and is an important lumber tree. In the arctic
regions and in the rocky strata of our western mountains, fossil
leaves of sassafras are preserved, and the same traces are found in
Europe, giving to the geologist proofs that the genus once had a much
wider range than now. But no living representative of the genus was
known outside of eastern North America, until the report of a recently
discovered sassafras in China.
The Indians in Florida named the sassafras to the inquiring colonists
who came with Columbus. They explained its curative properties, and
its reputation traveled up the Atlantic seaboard. The first cargo of
home products shipped by the colonists back to England from
Massachusetts contained a large consignment of sassafras roots. To-day
we look for an exhibit of sassafras bark in drug-store windows in
spring. People buy it and make sassafras tea which they drink "to
clear the blood." "In the Southwestern states the dried leaves are
much used as an ingredient in soups, for which they are well adapted
by the abundance of mucilage they contain. For this purpose the mature
green leaves are dried, powdered (the stringy portions being
separated), sifted and preserved for use. This preparation mixed with
soups gives them a ropy consistence and a peculiar flavor, much
relished by those accustomed to it. To such soups are given the names
_gombo file_ and _gombo zab_." (_Seton._)
Emerson says that in New England a decoction of sassafras bark gave to
the housewife's homespun woolen cloth a permanent orange dye. The name
"Ague Tree" originated with the use of sassafras bark tea as a
stimulant that warmed and brought out the perspiration freely for
victims of the malarial "ague," or "chills and fever."
Sassafras wood is dull orange-yellow, soft, weak, light, brittle, and
coarse-grained, but it is amazingly durable in contact with the soil,
as the pioneers learned when they used it to make posts and fence
rails. It is largely used also in cooperage, and in the building of
light boats. Oil of sassafras distilled from the bark of the roots is
used for perfuming soaps and flavoring medicines.
With all its practical uses listed above, we must all have learned to
know the tree if it grows in our neighborhood, and if we observe it
closely, month by month throughout the year, we shall all agree that
its beauty justifies its selection for planting in our home grounds,
and surpasses all its medicinal and other commercial offerings to the
world.
In winter the sassafras tree is most picturesque by reason of the
short, stout, twisted branches that spread almost at right angles from
the central shaft, and form a narrow, usually flat, often
unsymmetrical head. The bark is rough, reddish brown, deeply and
irregularly divided into broad scaly plates or ridges. The branches
end in slim, pale yellow-green twigs that are set with pointed, bright
green buds, giving the tree an appearance of being thoroughly alive
while others, bare of leaves, look dead in winter.
What country boy or girl has not lingered on the way home from school
to nibble the dainty green buds of the sassafras, or to dig at the
roots with his jack-knife for a sliver of aromatic bark?
As spring comes on the bare twigs are covered with a delicate green of
the opening leaves, brightened by clusters of yellow flowers (_see
illustration, page 150_) whose starry calyxes are alike on all of the
trees; but only on the fertile trees are the flowers succeeded by the
blue berries, softening on their scarlet pedicels, if only the birds
can wait until they are ripe.
Midsummer is the time to hunt for "mittens" and to note how many
different forms of leaves belong on the same sassafras tree. First,
there is the simple ovate leaf; second, a larger blade oval in form
but with one side extended and lobed to form a thumb, making the whole
leaf look like the pattern of a mitten cut out by an unskilled hand;
third, a symmetrical, three-lobed leaf, the pattern of a narrow mitten
with a large thumb on each side. Not infrequently do all these forms
occur on a single twig. Only the mulberry, among our native trees,
shows such a variety of leaf forms as the sassafras. There is quite as
great variation in the size of the leaves. One law seems to prevail
among sassafras trees: more of the oval leaves than the lobed ones are
found on mature trees. It is the roadside sapling, with its foliage
within easy reach, that delights boys and girls with its wonderful
variety of leaf patterns. Here the size of the leaves greatly
surpasses that of the foliage on full-grown trees, and the autumnal
colors are more glorious in the roadside thickets than in the
tree-tops far above them.
Sassafras trees grow readily from seed in any loose, moist soil. A
single tree spreads by a multitude of fleshy root-stalks, and these
natural root-cuttings bear transplanting as easily as a poplar. Every
garden border should have one specimen at least to add its flame to
the conflagration of autumn foliage and the charming contrast of its
blue berries on their coral stalks.
THE WITCH HAZEL
Eighteen genera compose the sub-tropical family in which _hamamelis_
is the type. Two or three Asiatic species and one American are known.
The witch hazel (_Hamamelis Virginiana_, Linn.) is a stout,
many-stemmed shrub or a small tree, with rough unsymmetrical leaves,
strongly veined, coarsely toothed, and roughly diamond-shaped. The
twigs, when bare, are set with hairy sickle-shaped buds. Nowhere in
summer would an undergrowth of witch hazel trees attract attention.
But in autumn, when other trees have reached a state of utter rest,
the witch hazel wakes and bursts into bloom. Among the dead leaves
which stubbornly cling as they yellow, and often persist until spring,
the tiny buds, the size of a pin-head, open into starry blossoms with
petals like gold threads. The witch hazel thicket is veiled with these
gold-mesh flowers, as ethereal as the haunting perfume which they
exhale. Frost crisps the delicate petals but they curl, up like
shavings and stay till spring. At no time is the weather cold enough
to destroy this November flower show.
Among the blossoms are the pods in clusters, gaping wide if the seeds
are shed; closed tight, with little monkey faces, if not yet open. The
harvest of witch hazel seeds is worth going far to see. Damp weather
delays this most interesting little game. Dry frosty weather is ideal
for it.
Go into a witch hazel thicket on some fine morning in early November
and sit down on the drift of dead leaves that carpet the woods floor.
The silence is broken now and then by a sharp report like a bullet
striking against the bark of a near-by trunk, or skipping among the
leaves. Perhaps a twinge on the ear shows that you have been a target
for some tiny projectile, sent to its mark with force enough to hurt.
[Illustration: _See page 111_
BARK, BLOSSOM, FRUIT, AND WINTER FLOWER BUDS OF THE FLOWERING
DOGWOOD]
[Illustration: _See page 116_
THE MOUNTAIN ASH
The flat, crowded cluster of tiny white flowers is set in a
whorl of dark-green leaves in May or June]
The fusillade comes from the ripened pods, which have a remarkable
ability to throw their seeds, and thus do for the parent tree what the
winged seeds of other trees accomplish. The lining of the two-celled pod
is believed to shorten and produce a spring that drives the seeds forth
with surprising force when they are loosened from their attachment. This
occurs when the lips part. Frost and sun seem to decide just when to
spring the trap and let fly the little black seeds.
A young botanist went into the woods to find out just how far a witch
hazel tree can throw its seeds. She chose an isolated tree and spread
white muslin under it for many yards in four directions. The most
remote of the many seeds she caught that day fell eighteen feet from
the base of the tree.
The Indians in America were the first people to use the bark of the
witch hazel for curing inflammations. An infusion of the twigs and
roots is now made by boiling them for twenty-four hours in water to
which alcohol has been added. "Witch hazel extract," distilled from
this mixture, is the most popular preparation to use for bruises and
sprains, and to allay the pain of burns. Druggists and chemists have
failed to discover any medicinal properties in bark or leaf, but the
public has faith in it. The alcohol is probably the effective agent.
Witch hazel comes honestly by its name. The English "witch hazel" is a
species of elm to which superstitious miners went to get forked twigs
to use as divining rods. No one in the countryside would dream of
sinking a shaft for coal without the use of this forked twig. In any
old and isolated country district in America there is usually a man
whose reputation is based in his skilful use of a forked witch hazel
twig. Sent for before a well is dug, he slowly walks over the ground,
holding the twig erect by its two supple forks, one in each hand. When
he passes over the spot where the hidden springs of water are, the
twig goes down, without any volition of the "water-witch." At least,
so he says, and if water is struck by digging, his claims are
vindicated and scoffers hide their heads.
THE BURNING BUSH
American gardeners cherish with regard that amounts almost to
affection any shrub or tree which will lend color, especially
brilliant color, to the winter landscape. Thus the holly, the Japanese
barberry, many of the haws, the mountain ash, and the rugosa rose will
be found in the shrubbery borders of many gardens, supplying the birds
with food when the ground is covered with snow, and sprinkling the
brightness of their red berries against the monotony of dull green
conifers.
The burning bush (_Euonymus atropurpureus_, Jacq.) lends its scarlet
fruits to the vivid colors that paint any winter landscape. They hang
on slender stalks, clustered where the leaves were attached. Four
flattish lobes, deeply separated by constrictions, form each of these
strange-looking fruits. In October each is pale purplish in color and
one half an inch across. Now the husk parts and curls back, revealing
the seeds, each of the four enveloped in a loose scarlet wrinkled
coat. Until midwinter the little tree is indeed a burning bush,
glowing brighter as the advancing season opens wider the purple husks,
and the little swinging Maltese cross, made by the four scarlet
berries, is the only thing one sees, looking up from below. Birds take
the berries, though they are bitter and poisonous.
In spring the slender branchlets of this little tree are covered with
opposite, pointed leaves, two to five inches long, and in their axils
are borne purplish flowers, with four spreading recurving petals. In
the centre of each is supported a square platform upon which are the
spreading anthers and styles. It does not require much botanical
knowledge to see a family relationship between this tree and the woody
vine we call "bitter-sweet"; the flowers and fruits are alike in many
features.
In Oklahoma and Arkansas and eastern Texas the burning bush becomes a
good-sized tree and its hard, close-grained wood is peculiarly adapted
to making spindles, knitting needles, skewers, and toothpicks.
"Prickwood" is the English name. Chinese and Japanese species have
been added to our list of flowering trees and vines. Two shrubby
species of _Euonymus_ belong to the flora of North America, but the
bulk of the large family is tropical.
Our dainty little American tree skirts the edges of deep woods from
New York to Montana, and southward to the Gulf. In cultivation it
extends throughout New England. "Wahoo," the common name in the South,
is probably of Indian origin.
THE SUMACHS
The sumach family contains more than fifty genera, confined for the
most part to the warmer regions of the globe. Two fruit trees within
this family are the mango and the pistachio nut tree. Commercially
important also is the turpentine tree of southern Europe. The Japanese
lacquer tree yields the black varnish used in all lacquered wares.
The cultivated sumachs of southern Europe are important in the tanning
industry, their leaves containing from twenty-five to thirty per cent.
of tannic acid.
In the flora of the United States three genera of the family have tree
representatives. The genus _Rhus_, with a total of one hundred and
twenty species, stands first. Most of these belong to South Africa;
sixteen to North America where their distribution covers practically
the entire continent. Of these, four attain the habit of small trees.
Fleshy roots, pithy branchlets, and milky, or sometimes caustic or
watery juice, belong to the sumachs, which are oftenest seen as
roadside thickets or fringing the borders of woods. The foliage is
fern-like, odd-pinnate, rarely simple. The flowers are conspicuous by
their crowding into terminal or axillary panicles, followed by bony
fruits, densely crowded like the flowers.
=The Staghorn Sumach=
_Rhus hirta_, Sudw.
The staghorn sumach is named for the densely hairy, forking
branchlets, which look much like the horns of a stag "in the velvet."
The foliage and fruit are also densely clothed with stiff pale hairs,
usually red or bright yellow.
The leaves reach two feet in length, with twenty or thirty oblong,
often sickle-shaped leaflets, set opposite on the stem, and
terminating in a single odd leaflet. Bright yellow-green until half
grown, dark green and dull above when mature, often nearly white on
the under surface, these leaves turn in autumn to bright scarlet,
shading into purple, crimson, and orange. No sunset was ever more
changeful and glorious than a patch of staghorn sumach that covers the
ugliness of a railroad siding in October. After the leaves have
fallen, the dull red fuzzy fruits persist, offering food to belated
bird migrants and gradually fading to browns before spring.
The maximum height of this largest of northern sumachs is thirty-five
feet. The wood of such large specimens is sometimes used for
walking-sticks and for tabourets and such fancy work as inlaying.
Coarse, soft, and brittle, it is satiny when polished, and
attractively streaked with orange and green. The young shoots are cut
and their pith contents removed to make pipes for drawing maple sap
from the trees in sugaring time.
But the best use of the tree is for ornamental planting. In summer,
the ugliness of the most unsightly bank is covered where this tree is
allowed to run wild and throw up its root suckers unchecked. The mass
effect of its fern-like foliage in spring is superb, when the green is
lightened by the fine clusters of pink blossoms. No tree carries its
autumn foliage longer nor blazes with greater splendor in the soft
sunshine of the late year. The hairy staghorn branches, bared of
leaves, hold aloft their fruits like lighted candelabra far into the
waning winter. For screens and border shrubs this sumach may become
objectionable, by reason of its habit of spreading by suckers as well
as seed.
Its choice of situations is broken uplands and dry, gravelly banks.
Its range extends from New Brunswick to Minnesota and southward
through the Northern states, and along the mountains to the Gulf
states. In cultivation, it is found in the Middle West and on the
Atlantic seaboard, and is a favorite in central and northern Europe.
=The Dwarf Sumach=
_R. copallina_, Linn.
The black dwarf, or mountain sumach, is smaller, with softer, closer
velvet coating its twigs and lining its leaves, than the burly
staghorn sumach wears. It grows all over the eastern half of the
United States, even to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and rises
to thirty feet in height above a short, stout trunk in the mountains
of Tennessee and North Carolina. Its leaves are the most beautiful in
the sumach family. They are six to eight inches long, the central
stalk bearing nine to twenty-one dark green leaflets, lustrous above,
lined with silvery pubescence. A striking peculiarity is that the
central leaf-stem is winged on each side with a leafy frill between
the pairs of leaflets. In autumn, the foliage mass changes to varying
shades of scarlet and crimson. The flower clusters are copious and
loose, and the heavy fruits nod from their great weight and show the
most beautiful shades, ranging from yellow to dull red. Sterile soil
is often covered by extensive growths of this charming shrubby tree
which spreads by underground root-stocks. It is the latest of all the
sumachs to bloom.
In the South the leaves are sometimes gathered in summer to be dried
and pulverized for use in tanning leather. A yellow dyestuff is also
extracted from them. It is a favorite sumach for ornamental planting
in this country and in Europe.
=The Poison Sumach=
_R. Vernix_, Linn.
The poison sumach is a small tree with slender drooping branches,
smooth, reddish brown, dotted on the twigs with orange-colored
breathing holes, becoming orange-brown and gray as the bark thickens.
The trunk is often somewhat fluted under a smooth gray rind. This is
one of the most brilliant and beautiful of all the sumachs, but
_unfortunately it is deadly poisonous, more to be dreaded than the
poison ivy of our woods_, and the poisonwood of Florida, both of which
are near relatives. By certain traits we may always know, with
absolute certainty, a poison sumach when we find it. _Look at the
berries. If they droop and are grayish white, avoid touching the
tree_, no matter how alluring the wonderful scarlet foliage is.
_Poison sumachs grow only in the swamps. We should suspect any sumach
that stands with its feet in the water_, whether it bears flowers and
fruit or not. The temptation is strongest when one is in the woods
gathering brilliant foliage for decoration of the home for the
holidays. The bitter poisonous juice that exudes from broken stems
turns black almost at once. This warning comes late, however, for as
it dries upon the hands it poisons the skin. Handled with care, this
juice becomes a black, lustrous, durable varnish, but it is not in
general use.
=The Smooth Sumach=
_R. glabra_, Linn.
The smooth sumach (_see illustrations, pages 150-151_) is quite as
familiar as the staghorn, as a roadside shrub. It forms thickets in
exactly the same way, and its foliage, flowers and fruit make it most
desirable for decorative planting, especially for glorious autumnal
effects. The stems are smooth and coated with a pale bluish bloom.
This is the distinguishing mark, at any season, of the sumach that
often equals the other species in height, but does not belong in this
book, for the reason that it never attains the stature of a tree.
THE SMOKE TREE
A favorite tree in American and European gardens is the smoke tree
(_Cotinus_), a genus which has native representatives in both
continents. The European _C. Cotinus_, Sarg., was brought to this
country by early horticulturists and in some respects it is superior
to our native_ C. Americanus_, Nutt. Cultivation for centuries has
given the immigrant species greater vigor and hardiness, which
produces more exuberant growth throughout. Bring in a sapling of the
native tree and it looks a starveling by comparison.
The glory of the smoke tree is the utter failure of its clustered
flowers to set seed. Branching terminal panicles of minute flowers are
held high above the dark green simple leaves. As they change in autumn
to brilliant shades of orange and scarlet, the seed clusters are held
aloft. The seeds are few but the panicles have expanded and show a
peculiar feathery development of the bracts that take the place of the
fruits. The clusters take on tones of pink and lavender and in the
aggregate they form a great cloud made up of graceful, delicate
plumes. At a little distance the tree appears as if a great cloud of
rosy smoke rested upon its gorgeous foliage. Or the haze may be so
pale as to look like mist. This wonderful development of the flower
cluster is unique among garden shrubs and it places _Cotinus_ in a
class by itself. No garden with a shrubbery border is complete without
a smoke tree, which is interesting and beautiful at any season.
In its native haunts our American smoke tree is found in small
isolated groves or thickets, along the sides of rocky ravines or dry
barren hillsides in Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas, and in eastern
Tennessee and northern Alabama.
THE HOLLIES
The holly family, of five genera, is distributed from the north to the
south temperate zones, with representation in every continent. It
includes trees and shrubs of one hundred and seventy-five species,
seventy of which grow in northern Brazil. The dried and powdered
leaves of two holly trees of Paraguay are commercially known as matA(C),
or Paraguay tea, to which the people of South America are addicted, as
we are to the tea of China. "Yerba matA(C)" has a remarkable, stimulating
effect upon the human system, fortifying it for incredible exertions
and endurance. Indulged in to excess, it has much the effect of
alcohol.
China and Japan have thirty different species of holly. America has
fourteen, four of which assume tree form; the rest are shrubby
"winterberries."
=European Holly=
_Ilex aquifolium_, Linn.
The holly of Europe is perhaps the most popular ornamental tree in the
world, cultivated in Europe through centuries, and now coming to be a
favorite garden plant wherever hardy in the United States. Some
indication of its popularity abroad is found in the fact that one
hundred and fifty-three distinct horticultural varieties are in
cultivation. The Englishman makes hedges of it, and depends upon it to
give life and color to his lawn and flower borders in the winter. The
fellfare or fieldfare, a little thrush, feeds upon the tempting red
berries in winter; but even when these dashes of color are all gone,
the brilliance of the spiny-margined leaves enlivens any landscape.
Americans know the European holly chiefly through importations of the
cut branches offered in the markets for Christmas decoration. The leaf
is small, brilliantly polished, and very deeply indented between long,
spiny tips, giving it a far more decorative quality than the native
evergreen holly of the South.
Many varieties of the European holly are found in American gardens,
particularly near eastern cities. North of Washington they must be
tied up in straw for the winter, and in the latitude of Boston it is a
struggle to keep them alive. From southern California to Vancouver, no
such precautions are necessary, and the little trees deserve a much
wider popularity than they yet enjoy. Grown commercially, they are the
finest of Christmas greens.
=American Holly=
_I. Opaca_, Ait.
The American holly also yields its branches for Christmas greens. In
the remotest village in the North one may now buy at any grocery store
a sprig of red-berried holly to usher in the holiday season. The tree
is a small one at best, slow-growing, pyramidal, twenty to forty feet
in height, with short, horizontal branches and tough, close-grained
white wood. It is rare to find so close an imitation of ivory, in
color and texture, as holly wood supplies. It is the delight of the
wood engraver, who uses it for his blocks. Scroll work and turnery
employ it. It is used for tool handles, walking-sticks, and
whip-stocks. Veneer of holly is used in inlay work.
In southern woods and barren fallow fields where hollies grow,
collectors, without discrimination, cut many trees each autumn, strip
them of their branches, and leave the trunks to rot upon the ground.
The increasing demand for Christmas holly seriously threatens the
present supply, for no methods are being practised for its renewal. It
will not be long before the wood engraver will have to buy his blocks
by the pound, as he does the eastern boxwood.
The range of this holly tree extends from southern Maine to Florida,
throughout the Gulf states, and north into Indiana and Missouri.
=The Yaupon=
_I. vomitoria_, Ait.
The yaupon is a shrubby tree of spreading habit, with
very small, oval, evergreen leaves and red berries. It
grows from Virginia to Florida and west to Texas and
Arkansas. A nauseating beverage, made by boiling its
leaves, was the famous "black drink" of the Indians. A
yearly ceremonial, in which the whole tribe took part, was
the persistent drinking of this tea for several days, the
object being a thorough cleansing of the system.