plants is that which relates to the matter of self-reliance. Some are
made to stand alone, others to twine, and others to creep. If it were
allowable to attribute human feelings to them, we should perhaps be safe
in assuming that the upright look down upon the climbers, and the
climbers in turn upon the creepers; for who of us does not felicitate
himself upon his independence, such as it is, or such as he imagines it
to be? But if independence is indeed a boon,--and I, for one, am too
thoroughbred a New Englander ever to doubt it,--it is not the only good,
nor even the highest. The nettle, standing straight and prim, asking no
favors of anybody, may rail at the grape-vine, which must lay hold of
something, small matter what, by which to steady itself; but the nettle
might well be willing to forego somewhat of its self-sufficiency, if by
so doing it could bring forth grapes. The smilax, also, with its thorns,
its pugnacious habit, and its stony, juiceless berries, a sort of
handsome vixen among vines,--the smilax, which can climb though it
cannot stand erect, has little occasion to lord it over the strawberry.
If one has done nothing, or worse than nothing, it is hardly worth while
to boast of the original fashion in which he has gone about it.
Moreover, the very plants of which we are speaking bear witness to the
fact that it is possible to accept help, and still retain to the full
one's own individuality. The strawberry is no more a plagiarist than the
smilax, nor the grape than the nettle. If the vine clings to the cedar,
the connection is but mechanical. Its spirit and life are as independent
of the savin as of the planet Jupiter. Even the dodder, which not only
twines about other weeds, but actually sucks its life from them, does
not thereby lose an iota of its native character. If a man is only
original to begin with,--so the parable seems to run,--he is under a
kind of necessity to remain so (as Shakespeare did), no matter how much
help he may draw from alien sources.
This truth of the vegetable world is the more noteworthy, because, along
with it there goes a very strong and persistent habit of individual
variation. The plant is faithful to the spirit of its inherited law, but
is not in bondage to the letter. Our "high-bush blackberries," to take a
familiar illustration, are all of one species, but it does not follow
that they are all exactly alike. So far from it, I knew in my time--and
the school-boys of the present day are not less accurately informed, we
may presume--where to find berries of all shapes, sizes, and flavors.
Some were sour, and some were bitter, and some (I can taste them yet)
were finger-shaped and sweet. And what is true of _Rubus villosus_ is
probably true of all plants, though in varying degrees. I do not recall
a single article of our annual wild crop--blueberries, huckleberries,
blackberries, cherries, grapes, pig-nuts (a bad name for a good thing),
shagbarks, acorns, and so forth--in which there was not this constant
inequality among plants of the same species, perfectly well defined, and
never lost sight of by us juvenile connoisseurs. If we failed to find
the same true of other vines and bushes, which for our purposes bore
blossoms only, the explanation is not far to seek. Our perceptions,
aesthetic and gastronomic, were unequally developed. We were in the case
of the man to whom a poet is a poet, though he knows very well that
there are cooks and cooks.
It is this slight but everywhere present admixture of the personal
quality--call it individuality, or what you will--that saves the world,
animal and vegetable alike, from stagnation. Every bush, every bird,
every man, together with its unmistakable and ineradicable likeness to
the parent stock, has received also a something, be it more or less,
that distinguishes it from all its fellows. Let our observation be
delicate enough, and we shall perceive that there are no duplicates of
any kind, the world over. It is part of the very unity of the world,
this universally diffused diversity.
It does a sympathetic observer good to see how humanly plants differ in
their likes and dislikes. One is catholic: as common people say, it is
not particular; it can live and thrive almost anywhere. Another must
have precisely such and such conditions, and is to be found, therefore,
only in very restricted localities. The _Dionaea_, or Venus's fly-trap,
is a famous example of this fastidiousness, growing in a small district
of North Carolina, and, as far as appears, nowhere else,--a highly
specialized plant, with no generic relative. Another instance is
furnished by a water lily (_Nymphaea elegans_), the rediscovery of which
is chronicled in a late issue of one of our botanical journals.[17]
"This lily was originally found in 1849, and has never been seen since,
holding its place in botanical literature for these almost forty years
on the strength of a single collection at a single vaguely described
station on the broad prairies of southwestern Texas;" now, after all
this time, it turns up again in another quarter of the same State. And
every student could report cases of a similar character, though less
striking than these, of course, within the limits of his own local
researches. If you ask me where I find dandelions, I answer, anywhere;
but if you wish me to show you the sweet colt's-foot (_Nardosmia
palmata_), you must go with me to one particular spot. Any of my
neighbors will tell you where the pink moccasin flower grows; but if it
is the yellow one you are in search of, I shall swear you to secrecy
before conducting you to its swampy hiding-place. Some plants, like some
people (but the plants, be it noted, are mostly weeds), seem to flourish
best away from home; others die under the most careful transplanting.
Some are lovers of the open, and cannot be too much in the sun; others
lurk in deep woods, under the triple shadow of tree and bush and fern.
Some take to sandy hill-tops; others must stand knee-deep in water. One
insists upon the richest of meadow loam; another is content with the
face of a rock. We may say of them as truly as of ourselves, _De
gustibus non est disputandum_. Otherwise, how would the earth ever be
clothed with verdure?
[17] The _Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club_ for January, 1888, page
13.
But plants are subject to other whims not less pronounced than these
which have to do with the choice of a dwelling-place. We may call it the
general rule that leaves come before flowers; but how many of our trees
and shrubs reverse this order! The singular habit of the witch-hazel,
whose blossoms open as the leaves fall, may be presumed to be familiar
to all readers; and hardly less curious is the freak of the chestnut,
which, almost if not quite alone among our amentaceous trees, does not
put on its splendid coronation robes till late in June, and is
frequently at the height of its magnificence in mid-July. What a pretty
piece of variety have we, again, in the diurnal and the nocturnal
bloomers! For my own part, being a watcher of birds, and therefore
almost of necessity an early stirrer abroad, I profess a special regard
for such plants as save their beauty for night-time and cloudy weather.
The evening primrose is no favorite with most people, I take it, but I
seldom fail to pick a blossom or two with the dew on them. Those to whom
I carry them usually exclaim as over some wonderful exotic, though the
primrose is an inveterate haunter of the roadside. Yet its blossoms
have only to be looked at and smelled of to make their way, homely as is
the stalk that produces them. They love darkness rather than light, but
it certainly is not "because their deeds are evil." One might as well
cast the opprobrious text in the face of the moon and stars. Now and
then some enterprising journalist, for want of better employment,
investigates anew the habits of literary workers; and it invariably
transpires that some can do their best only by daylight, while the minds
of others seem to be good for nothing till the sun goes down; and the
wise reader, who reads not so much to gain information as to see whether
the writer tells the truth, shakes his head, and says, "Oh, it is all in
use." Of course it is all in use, just as it is with whippoorwills and
the morning-glory.
The mention of the evening primrose calls for the further remark that
plants, not less than ourselves, have a trick of combining opposite
qualities,--a coarse-grained and scraggy habit, for instance, with
blossoms of exquisite fragrance and beauty. The most gorgeous flowers
sometimes exhale an abominable odor, and it is not unheard of that
inconspicuous or even downright homely sorts should be accounted
precious for their sweetness; while, as everybody knows, few members of
our native flora are more graceful in appearance than the very two whose
simple touch is poison. Could anything be more characteristic of human
nature than just such inconsistencies? Suavity and trickery, harshness
and integrity, a fiery temper and a gentle heart,--how often do we see
the good and the bad dwelling together! We would have ordered things
differently, I dare say, had they been left to us,--the good should have
been all good, and the bad all bad; and yet, if it be a grief to feel
that the holiest men have their failings, it ought perhaps to be a
consolation, rather than an additional sorrow, to perceive that the most
vicious are not without their virtues. Beyond which, shall we presume to
suggest that as poisons have their use, so moral evil, give it time
enough, may turn out to be not altogether a curse?
I have treated my subject too fancifully, I fear. Indeed, there comes
over me at this moment a sudden suspicion that my subject itself is
nothing but a fancy, or, worse yet, a profanation. If the flowers could
talk, who knows how earnestly they might deprecate all such misguided
attempts at doing them honor,--as if it were anything but a slander,
this imputation to them of the foibles, or even the self-styled good
qualities, of our poor humanity! What an egoist is man! I seem to hear
them saying; look where he will, at the world or at its Creator, he sees
nothing but the reflection of his own image.
IN PRAISE OF THE WEYMOUTH PINE.
"I seek in the motion of the forest, in the sound of the
pines, some accents of the eternal language."
SENANCOUR.
I could never think it surprising that the ancients worshiped trees;
that groves were believed to be the dwelling places of the gods; that
Xerxes delighted in the great plane-tree of Lydia; that he decked it
with golden ornaments and appointed for it a sentry, one of "the
immortal ten thousand." Feelings of this kind are natural; among natural
men they seem to have been well-nigh universal. The wonder is that any
should be without them. For myself, I cannot recollect the day when I
did not regard the Weymouth pine (the white pine I was taught to call
it, but now, for reasons of my own, I prefer the English name) with
something like reverence. Especially was this true of one,--a tree of
stupendous girth and height, under which I played, and up which I
climbed till my cap seemed almost to rub against the sky. That pine
ought to be standing yet; I would go far to lie in its shadow. But alas!
no village Xerxes concerned himself for its safety, and long, long ago
it was brought to earth, it and all its fair lesser companions. There is
no wisdom in the grave, and it is nothing to them now that I remember
them so kindly. Some of them went to the making of boxes, I suppose,
some to the kindling of kitchen fires. In like noble spirit did the
illustrious Bobo, for the love of roast pig, burn down his father's
house.
No such pines are to be seen now. I have said it for these twenty years,
and mean no offense, surely, to the one under which, in thankful mood, I
happen at this moment to be reclining. Yet a murmur runs through its
branches as I pencil the words. Perhaps it is saying to itself that
giants are, and always have been, things of the past,--things gazed at
over the beholder's shoulder and through the mists of years; and that
this venerable monarch of my boyhood, this relic of times remote, has
probably grown faster since it was cut down than ever it did while
standing. I care not to argue the point. Rather, let me be glad that a
tree is a tree, whether large or small. What a wonder of wonders it
would seem to unaccustomed eyes! As some lover of imaginative delights
wished that he could forget Shakespeare and read him new, so I would
cheerfully lose all memory of my king of Weymouth pines, if by that
means I might for once look upon a tree as upon something I had never
seen or dreamed of.
For that purpose, were it given me to choose, I would have one that had
grown by itself; full of branches on all sides, but with no suggestion
of primness; in short, a perfect tree, a miracle hardly to be found in
any forest, since the forest would be no better than a park if the
separate members of it were allowed room to develop each after its own
law. Nature is too cunning an artist to spoil the total effect of her
picture by too fond a regard for the beauty of particular details.
I once passed a lazy, dreamy afternoon in a small clearing on a Canadian
mountain-side, where the lumbermen had left standing a few scattered
butternuts. I can see them now,--misshapen giants, patriarchal
monstrosities, their huge trunks leaning awkwardly this way and that,
and each bearing at the top a ludicrously small, one-sided bunch of
leafy boughs. All about me was the ancient wood. For a week I had been
wandering through it with delight. Such beeches and maples, birches and
butternuts! I had not thought of any imperfection. I had been in
sympathy with the artist, and had enjoyed his work in the same spirit in
which it had been wrought. Now, however, with these unhappy butternuts
in my eye, I began to look, not at the forest, but at the trees, and I
found that the spared butternuts were in no sense exceptional. _All_ the
trees were deformed. They had grown as they could, not as their innate
proclivities would have led them. A tree is no better than a man; it
cannot be itself if it stands too much in a crowd.
I set it down, unwillingly, to the discredit of the Weymouth pine,--a
symptom of some ancestral taint, perhaps,--that it suffers less than
most trees from being thus encroached upon. Yet it does not entirely
escape. True, it leans neither to left nor right, its trunk is seldom
contorted; if it grow at all it must grow straight toward the zenith;
but it is sadly maimed, nevertheless,--hardly more than a tall stick
with a broom at the top. If you would see a typical white pine you must
go elsewhere to look for it. I remember one such, standing by itself in
a broad Concord River meadow; not remarkable for its size, but of a
symmetry and beauty that make the traveler turn again and again, till he
is a mile away, to gaze upon it. No pine-tree ever grew like that in a
wood.
I go sometimes through a certain hamlet, which has sprung suddenly into
being on a hill-top where formerly stood a pine grove. The builders of
the houses have preserved (doubtless they use that word) a goodly number
of the trees. But though I have been wont to esteem the poorest tree as
better than none, I am almost ready to forswear my opinion at sight of
these slender trunks, so ungainly and unsupported. The first breeze, one
would say, must bring them down upon the roofs they were never meant to
shade. Poor naked things! I fancy they look abashed at being dragged
thus unexpectedly and inappropriately into broad daylight. If I were to
see the householder lifting his axe against one of them I think I should
not say, "Woodman, spare _that_ tree!" Let it go to the fire, the sooner
the better, and be out of its misery.
Not that I blame the tree, or the power that made it what it is. The
forest, like every other community, prospers--we may rather say
exists--at the expense of individual perfection. But the expense is true
economy, for, however it may be in ethics, in aesthetics the end
justifies the means. The solitary pine, unhindered, symmetrical, green
to its lowermost twig, as it rises out of the meadow or stands a-tiptoe
on the rocky ledge, is a thing of beauty, a pleasure to every eye. A
pity and a shame that it should not be more common! But the pine
_forest_, dark, spacious, slumberous, musical! Here is something better
than beauty, dearer than pleasure. When we enter this cathedral, unless
we enter it unworthily, we speak not of such things. Every tree may be
imperfect, with half its branches dead for want of room or want of sun,
but until the devotee turns critic--an easy step, alas, for
half-hearted worshipers--we are conscious of no lack. Magnificence can
do without prettiness, and a touch of solemnity is better than any
amusement.
Where shall we hear better preaching, more searching comment upon life
and death, than in this same cathedral? Verily, the pine is a priest of
the true religion. It speaks never of itself, never its own words.
Silent it stands till the Spirit breathes upon it. Then all its
innumerable leaves awake and speak as they are moved. Then "he that hath
ears to hear, let him hear." Wonderful is human speech,--the work of
generations upon generations, each striving to express itself, its
feelings, its thoughts, its needs, its sufferings, its joys, its
inexpressible desires. Wonderful is human speech, for its complexity,
its delicacy, its power. But the pine-tree, under the visitations of the
heavenly influence, utters things incommunicable; it whispers to us of
things we have never said and never can say,--things that lie deeper
than words, deeper than thought. Blessed are our ears if we hear, for
the message is not to be understood by every comer, nor, indeed, by
any, except at happy moments. In this temple all hearing is given by
inspiration, for which reason the pine-tree's language is inarticulate,
as Jesus spake in parables.
The pine wood loves a clean floor, and is intolerant of undergrowth.
Grasses and sedges, with all bushes, it frowns upon, as a model
housekeeper frowns upon dirt. A plain brown carpet suits it best, with a
modest figure of green--preferably of evergreen--woven into it; a
tracery of partridge-berry vine, or, it may be, of club moss, with here
and there a tuft of pipsissewa and pyrola. Its mood is sombre, its taste
severe. Yet I please myself with noticing that the pine wood, like the
rest of us, is not without its freak, its amiable inconsistency, its one
"tender spot," as we say of each other. It makes a pet of one of our
oddest, brightest, and showiest flowers, the pink lady's-slipper, and by
some means or other has enticed it away from the peat bog, where it
surely should be growing, along with the calopogon, the pogonia, and the
arethusa, and here it is, like some rare exotic, thriving in a bed of
sand and on a mat of brown needles. Who will undertake to explain the
occult "elective affinity" by which this rosy orchid is made so much at
home under the heavy shadow of the Weymouth pine?
According to the common saying, there is no accounting for tastes. If by
this is meant simply that _we_ cannot account for them, the statement is
true enough. But if we are to speak exactly, there are no likes nor
dislikes except for cause. Every freak of taste, like every vagary of
opinion, has its origin and history, and, with sufficient knowledge on
our part, could be explained and justified. The pine-tree and the orchid
are not friends by accident, however the case may look to us who cannot
see behind the present nor beneath the surface. There are no mysteries
_per se_, but only to the ignorant. Yet ignorance itself, disparagingly
as we talk of it, has its favorable side,--as it is pleasant sometimes
to withdraw from the sun and wander for a season in the half-light of
the forest. Perhaps we need be in no haste to reach a world where there
is never any darkness. In some moods, at least, I go with the
partridge-berry vine and the lady's-slipper. It is good, I think, to
live awhile longer in the shadow; to see as through a glass darkly; and
to hear overhead, not plain words, but inarticulate murmurs.
I am not to be understood as praising the pine at the expense of other
trees. All things considered, no evergreen can be equal to a
summer-green, on which we see the leaves budding, unfolding, ripening,
and falling,--a "worlde whiche neweth everie daie." What would winter be
worth without the naked branches of maples and elms, beeches and oaks?
We speak of them sadly:
"Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang."
But the sadness is of a pleasing sort, that could ill be spared by any
who know the pleasures of sentiment and sober reflection. But though one
tree differeth from another tree in glory, we may surely rejoice in them
all. One ministers to our mood to-day, another to-morrow.
"I hate those trees that never lose their foliage;
They seem to have no sympathy with Nature;
Winter and summer are alike to them."
So says Ternissa, in Landor's dialogue. I know what she means. But I do
not "hate" an impassive, unchangeable temper, whether in a tree or in a
man. I have so little of such a spirit myself that I am glad to see
some tokens of it--not too frequent, indeed, nor too self-assertive--in
the world about me. And so I say, let me never be, for any long time
together, where there are no Weymouth pines at which I may gaze from
afar, or under which I may lie and listen. They boast not (rare
stoics!), but they set us a brave example. No "blasts that blow the
poplar white" can cause the pine-tree to blanch. No frost has power to
strip it of a single leaf. Its wood is soft, but how dauntless its
spirit!--a truly encouraging paradox, lending itself, at our private
need, to endless consolatory moralizings. The great majority of my
brothers must be comforted, I think, by any fresh reminder that the
battle is not to the strong.
For myself, then, like the lowly partridge-berry vine, I would be always
the pine-tree's neighbor. Who knows but by lifelong fellowship with it I
may absorb something of its virtue? Summer and winter, its fragrant
breath rises to heaven; and of it we may say, with more truth than
Landor said of the over-sweet fragrance of the linden, "Happy the man
whose aspirations are pure enough to mingle with it!"
INDEX.
Asters, 62, 214, 217.
Autumnal flowers, 212.
Autumnal ornithology, 191.
Bearberry, 72, 78.
Bittern, 71.
Blackberry, 63, 210, 224.
Bluebird, 179, 184, 185.
Butterflies:--
in November, 36.
on Mt. Mansfield, 104.
Catbird, 176.
Cedar-bird, 33.
Chestnut-tree, 228.
Chewink, 191.
Chickadee, 49, 55.
Cowbird, 83.
Creeper:--
black-and-white, 85.
brown, 49.
Crossbill, white-winged, 27.
Cuckoo, 192.
Dandelion, 219.
December birds, 54.
December flowers, 60.
Diapensia, 23, 25, 30.
Dodder, 223.
Evening primrose, 228.
Flicker, 53, 69.
Flowers:--
in November, 36.
in December, 60.
on Cape Cod, 80.
on Mt. Lafayette, 22, 25.
on Mt. Mansfield, 103.
Flycatcher:--
great-crested, 9.
least, 9.
olive-sided, 9, 10.
phoebe, 9, 10, 179.
Traill's, 9.
yellow-bellied, 9.
Golden Aster, 80.
Golden-rods, 81, 214, 215.
Goldfinch, 177.
Grass Finch (Vesper Sparrow), 5, 110.
Greenland Sandwort, 23, 25, 31, 103.
Groundsel, 61.
Habenaria dilatata, 103.
Heron, great blue, 197.
Holy-Grass, 25.
Humming-bird:--
Rivoli, 139.
ruby-throated, 111, 135.
Hyla Pickeringii, 36, 38.
Jay:--
Canada, 100.
blue, 100.
Kingbird, 9, 148, 179.
Lady's-slipper, 79, 227, 239.
Lapland Azalea, 31.
Lark:--
meadow, 53, 176.
shore (or horned), 53.
Linnaea, 216-218.
Maryland Yellow-throat, 149, 192.
Mount Cannon, 33.
Mount Lafayette, 15, 24.
Mount Mansfield, 90.
November in Eastern Massachusetts, 36.
Nuthatch, Red-bellied, 49, 55, 190.
Oriole, Baltimore, 123, 176, 179.
Peck's Geum, 23, 25, 31.
Phoebe, 9, 10, 179.
Pine Grosbeak, 26.
Pine, white, 232.
Plover:--
golden, 202.
killdeer, 39, 41.
Poverty-Grass, 72, 81.
Purple Gerardia, 81, 213.
Redstart, 16, 190, 191.
Robin, 55, 153, 184.
Roses, 32, 81, 209.
Scarlet Tanager, 176, 191.
Screech Owl, 177.
Smilax:--
glauca, 80.
rotundifolia, 80, 223.
Snow Bunting, 53.
Sparrow:--
chipping, 179.
field, 176.
Ipswich, 53, 54.
song, 53, 85, 176.
vesper, 5, 110.
white-throated, 16, 52, 91, 92, 102, 110, 190.
Strawberry, 32, 223.
Swallow, white-breasted, (Tree Swallow), 180, 183.
Swift, Chimney, 110, 182.
Thistles, 207.
Thrush:--
gray-cheeked, 16, 19, 94, 95, 97, 191.
hermit, 19, 97.
olive-backed, (or Swainson's), 19, 51, 97, 99, 191.
water, 84.
Wilson's (or veery), 17, 19, 98.
wood, 98.
Turnstone, 86.
Veery (Wilson's Thrush), 17, 19, 98.
Violets, 212, 219, 221.
Vireo:--
Philadelphia, 11.
red-eyed, 11, 83, 153, 191.
solitary (or blue-headed), 11, 13, 191.
warbling, 14.