to tell of the blossoms of this same Carolina poplar, which are
decidedly interesting. Just when the sun has thoroughly warmed up the
air of spring there is a sudden, rapid thickening of buds over one's
head on this poplar. One year the tree under my observation swelled and
swelled its buds, which were shining more and more in the sun, until I
was sure the next day would bring a burst of leaves. But the weather was
dry, and it was not until that wonderful solvent and accelerator of
growing things, a warm spring rain, fell softly upon the tree, that the
pent-up life force was given vent. Then came, not leaves, but these long
catkins, springing out with great rapidity, until in a few hours the
tree glowed with their redness. A second edition of the shower, falling
sharply, brought many of the catkins to the ground, where they lay about
like large caterpillars.
The whole process of this blooming was interesting, curious, but hardly
beautiful, and it seemed to fit in with the restless character of the
poplar family--a family of trees with more vigor than dignity, more
sprightliness than grace. As Professor Bailey says of the cottonwood,
"It is cheerful and restive. One is not moved to lie under it as he is
under a maple or an oak." Yet there are not wanting some poplars of
impressive character.
One occurs to me, growing on a wide street of my home town, opposite a
church with a graceful spire. This white or silver-leaved poplar has for
many years been a regular prey of the gang of tree-trimmers, utterly
without knowledge of or regard for trees, that infests this town. They
hack it shamefully, and I look at it and say, "Well, the old poplar is
ruined now, surely!" But a season passes, and I look again, to see that
the tremendous vigor of the tree has triumphed over the butchers; its
sores have been concealed, new limbs have pushed out, and it has again,
in its unusual height, assumed a dignity not a whit inferior to that of
the church spire opposite.
[Illustration: Winter aspect of the cottonwood tree]
This white poplar is at its best on the bank of a stream, where its
small forest of "suckers" most efficiently protects the slope against
the destructive action of floods. One such tree with its family and
friends I saw in full bloom along the Susquehanna, and it gave an
impression of solidity and size, as well as of lusty vigor, and I have
always liked it since. The cheerful bark is not the least of its
attractions--but it is a tree for its own place, and not for every
place, by reason of the tremendous colonizing power of its root-sprouts.
I wonder, by the way, if many realize the persistence and vigor of the
roots of a tree of the "suckering" habit? Some years ago an ailanthus, a
tree of vigor and beauty of foliage but nastiness of flower odor, was
cut away from its home when excavation was being made for a building,
which gave me opportunity to follow a few of its roots. One of them
traveled in search of food, and toward the opportunity of sending up a
shoot, over a hundred feet!
The impending scarcity of spruce logs to feed the hungry maws of the
machines that make paper for our daily journals has turned attention to
several forms of the rapid-growing poplar for this use. The aspen is
acceptable, and also the Carolina poplar, and these trees are being
planted in large quantities for the eventual making of wood-pulp. Even
today, many newspapers are printed on poplar, and exposure to the rays
of the truth-searching sun for a few hours will disclose the yellowness
of the paper, if not of the tree from which it has been ground.
[Illustration: Lombardy poplar]
Few whose eyes are turned upward toward the trees have failed to note
that exclamation-point of growth, the Lombardy poplar. Originating in
that portion of Europe indicated by its common name, and, indeed, a
botanical form of the European black poplar, it is nevertheless widely
distributed in America. When it has been properly placed, it introduces
truly a note of distinction into the landscape. Towering high in the
air, and carrying the eye along its narrowly oval contour to a skyward
point, it is lofty and pleasing in a park. It agreeably breaks the
sky-line in many places, and is emphatic in dignified groups. To plant
it in rows is wrong; and I say this as an innocent offender myself. In
boyhood I lived along the banks of the broad but shallow Susquehanna,
and enjoyed the boating possible upon that stream when it was not
reduced, as graphically described by a disgusted riverman, to merely a
heavy dew. Many times I lost my way returning to the steep bluff near my
home after the sun had gone to rest, and a hard pull against the swift
current would ensue as I skirted the bank, straining eyes for landmarks
in the dusk. It occurred to me to plant six Lombardy poplars on the top
of the bluff, which might serve as easily recognized landmarks. Four of
them grew, and are now large trees, somewhat offensive to a quickened
sense of appropriateness. Long since the old home has been swallowed up
by the city's advance, and I suppose none who now see those four spires
of green on the river-bank even guess at the reason for their existence.
The poplar family, as a whole, is exuberant with vigor, and interesting
more on that account than by reason of its general dignity or strength
or elegance. It is well worth a little attention and study, and the
consideration particularly of its bloom periods, to which I commend the
tree-sense of my readers as they take the tree walks that ought to
punctuate these chapters.
The Elm and the Tulip
America has much that is unique in plant and tree growth, as one learns
who sees first the collections of American plants shown with pride by
acute gardeners and estate owners in England and on the European
Continent. Many a citizen of our country must needs confess with some
shame that his first estimation of the singular beauty of the American
laurel has been born in England, where the imported plants are carefully
nurtured; and the European to whom the rhododendrons of his own country
and of the Himalayas are familiar is ready to exclaim in rapture at the
superb effect and tropical richness of our American species, far more
lusty and more truly beautiful here than the introductions which must be
heavily paid for and constantly coddled.
For no trees, however, may Americans feel more pride than for our
American elms and our no less American tulip, the latter miscalled
tulip "poplar." Both are trees practically unique to the country, both
are widespread over Eastern North America, both are thoroughly trees of
the people, both attain majestic proportions, both are long-lived and
able to endure much hardship without a full giving up of either beauty
or dignity.
The American elm--how shall I properly speak of its exceeding grace and
beauty! In any landscape it introduces an element of distinction and
elegance not given by any other tree. Looking across a field at a
cluster of trees, there may be a doubt as to the identity of an oak, a
chestnut, a maple, an ash, but no mistake can be made in regard to an
elm--it stands alone in the simple elegance of its vase-like form, while
its feathery branchlets, waving in the lightest breeze, add to the
refined and classic effect. I use the word "classic" advisedly, because,
although apparently out of place in describing a tree, it nevertheless
seems needed for the form of the American elm.
The elm is never rugged as is the oak, but it gives no impression of
effeminacy or weakness. Its uprightness is forceful and strong, and its
clean and shapely bole impresses the beholder as a joining of gently
outcurving columns, ample in strength and of an elegance belonging to
itself alone. If I may dare to compare man-made architectural forms with
the trees that graced the garden of Eden, I would liken the American elm
(it is also the water elm and the white elm, and botanically _Ulmus
Americana_) to the Grecian types, combining stability with elegance,
rather than to the more rugged works of the Goths. Yet the free swing of
the elm's wide-spreading branches inevitably suggests the pointed Gothic
arch in simplicity and obvious strength.
It is difficult to say when the American elm is most worthy of
admiration. In summer those same arching branches are clothed and tipped
with foliage of such elegance and delicacy as the form of the tree would
seem to predicate. The leaf itself is ornate, its straight ribs making
up a serrated and pointed oval form of the most interesting character.
These leaves hang by slender stems, inviting the gentlest zephyr to
start them to singing of comfort in days of summer heat. The elm is
fully clothed down to the drooping tips of the branchlets with foliage,
which, though deepest green above, reflects, under its dense shade, a
soft light from the paler green of the lower side. It is no wonder that
New England claims fame for her elms, which, loved and cared for, arch
over the long village streets that give character to the homes of the
descendants of the Puritan fathers. The fully grown elm presents to the
sun a darkly absorbent hue, and to the passer-by who rests beneath its
shade the most grateful and restful color in all the rainbow's palette.
[Illustration: A mature American elm]
Then, too, the evaporative power of these same leaves is simply
enormous, and generally undreamed of. Who would think that a great,
spreading elm, reaching into the air of August a hundred feet, and
shading a circle of nearly as great diameter, was daily cooling the
atmosphere with tons of water, silently drawn from the bosom of Mother
Earth!
Like many other common trees, the American elm blooms almost unnoticed.
When the silver maple bravely pushes out its hardy buds in earliest
spring--or often in what might be called latest winter--the elm is
ready, and the sudden swelling of the twigs, away above our heads in
March or April, is not caused by the springing leaves, but is the
flowering effort of this noble tree. The bloom sets curiously about the
yet bare branches, and the little brownish yellow or reddish flowers are
seemingly only a bunch of stamens. They do their work promptly, and the
little flat fruits, or "samaras," are ripened and dropped before most of
us realize that the spring is fully upon us. These seeds germinate
readily, and I recall the great pleasure with which a noted
horticultural professor showed me what he called his "elm lawn," one
summer. It seemed that almost every one of the thousands of seeds that,
just about the time his preparations for sowing a lawn were completed,
had softly fallen from the great elm which guards and shades his
dooryard, had found good ground, and the result was a miniature forest
of tiny trees, giving an effect of solid green which was truly a tree
lawn.
[Illustration: The delicate tracery of the American elm in winter]
But, after all, I think it is in winter that the American elm is at its
finest, for then stand forth most fully revealed the wonderful symmetry
of its structure and the elegance of its lines. It has one advantage in
its great size, which is well above the average, for it lifts its
graceful head a hundred feet or more above the earth. The stem is
usually clean and regular, and the branches spread out in closely
symmetrical relation, so that, as seen against the cold sky of winter,
leafless and bare, they seem all related parts of a most harmonious
whole. Other great trees are notable for the general effect of strength
or massiveness, individual branches departing much from the average line
of the whole structure; but the American elm is regular in all its
parts, as well as of general stateliness.
As I have noted, the people of the New England States value and cherish
their great elms, and they are accustomed to think themselves the only
possessors of this unique tree. We have, however, as good elms in
Pennsylvania as there are in New England, and I hope the day is not far
distant when we shall esteem them as highly. The old elm monarch which
stands at the gingerbread brownstone entrance of the Capitol Park in
Pennsylvania's seat of government has had a hard battle, defenseless as
it is, against the indifference of those whom it has shaded for
generations, and who carelessly permitted the telegraph and telephone
linemen to use it or chop it at their will. But latterly there has been
an awakening which means protection, I think, for this fine old
landmark.
The two superb elms, known as "Paul and Virginia," that make notable the
north shore of the Susquehanna at Wilkesbarre, are subjects of local
pride; which seems, however, not strong enough to prevent the erection
of a couple of nasty little shanties against their great trunks. There
can be no doubt, however, that the sentiment of reverence for great
trees, and of justice to them for their beneficent influence, is
spreading westward and southward from New England. It gives me keen
pleasure to learn of instances where paths, pavements or roadways have
been changed, to avoid doing violence to good trees; and a recent
account of the creation of a trust fund for the care of a great oak, as
well as a unique instance in Georgia, where a deed has been recorded
giving a fine elm a quasi-legal title to its own ground, show that the
rights of trees are coming to be recognized.
I have said little of the habitat, as the botanist puts it, of the
American elm. It graces all North America east of the Rockies, and the
specimens one sees in Michigan or Canada are as happy, apparently, as if
they grew in Connecticut or in Virginia. Our increasingly beautiful
national Capital, the one city with an intelligent and controlled system
of tree-planting, shows magnificent avenues of flourishing elms.
But I must not forget some other elms, beautiful and satisfactory in
many places. It is no discredit to our own American elm to say that the
English elm is a superb tree in America. It seems to be
characteristically British in its sturdy habit, and forms a grand trunk.
[Illustration: The English elm in winter]
The juicy inner bark of the red or "slippery" elm was always acceptable,
in lieu of the chewing-gum which had not then become so common, to a
certain ever-hungry boy who used to think as much of what a tree would
furnish that was eatable as he now does of its beauty. Later, the other
uses of the bark of this tree became known to the same boy, but it was
many years before he came really to know the slippery elm. One day a
tree branch overhead showed what seemed to be remarkable little green
flowers, which on examination proved to be, instead, the very
interesting fruit of this elm, each little seed securely held inside a
very neat and small flat bag. Looking at it earlier the next spring, the
conspicuous reddish brown color of the bud-scales was noted.
I have never seen the "wahoo," or winged elm of the South, and there are
several other native elms, as well as a number of introductions from the
Eastern Hemisphere, with which acquaintance is yet to be made. All of
them together, I will maintain with the quixotic enthusiasm of lack of
knowledge, are not worth as much as one-half hour spent in looking up
under the leafy canopy of our own preeminent American elm--a tree
surely among those given by the Creator for the healing of the nations.
The tulip-tree, so called obviously because of the shape of its flowers,
has a most mellifluous and pleasing botanical name, _Liriodendron
Tulipifera_--is not that euphonious? Just plain "liriodendron"--how much
better that sounds as a designation for one of the noblest of American
forest trees than the misleading "common" names! "Tulip-tree," for a
resemblance of the form only of its extraordinary blooms; "yellow
poplar," probably because it is not yellow, and is in no way related to
the poplars; and "whitewood," the Western name, because its wood is
whiter than that of some other native trees. "Liriodendron" translated
means "lily-tree," says my learned friend who knows Greek, and that is a
fitting designation for this tree, which proudly holds forth its
flowers, as notable and beautiful as any lily, and far more dignified
and refined than the gaudy tulip. I like to repeat this smooth-sounding,
truly descriptive and dignified name for a tree worthy all admiration.
Liriodendron! Away with the "common" names, when there is such a
pleasing scientific cognomen available!
By the way, why should people who will twist their American tongues all
awry in an attempt to pronounce French words in which the necessary
snort is unexpressed visually and half the characters are "silent,"
mostly exclaim at the alleged difficulty of calling trees and plants by
their world names, current among educated people everywhere, while
preferring some misleading "common" name? Very few scientific plant
names are as difficult to pronounce as is the word "chrysanthemum," and
yet the latter comes as glibly from the tongue as do "geranium,"
"rhododendron," and the like. Let us, then, at least when we have as
good a name as liriodendron for so good a tree, use it in preference to
the most decidedly "common" names that belie and mislead.
I have said that this same tulip-tree--which I will call liriodendron
hereafter, at a venture--is a notable American tree, peculiar to this
country. So believed the botanists for many years, until an inquiring
investigator found that China, too, had the same tree, in a limited
way. We will still claim it as an American native, and tell the Chinamen
they are fortunate to have such a superb tree in their little-known
forests. They have undoubtedly taken advantage, in their art forms, of
its peculiarly shaped leaves, if not of the flowers and the curious
"candlesticks" that succeed them.
[Illustration: Winter effect of tulip trees]
Let us consider this liriodendron first as a forest tree, as an
inhabitant of the "great woods" that awed the first intelligent
observers from Europe, many generations back. Few of our native trees
reach such a majestic height, here on the eastern side of the continent,
its habitat. Ordinarily it builds its harmonious structure to a height
of seventy or a hundred feet; but occasional individuals double this
altitude, and reach a trunk diameter of ten feet. While in the close
forest it towers up with a smooth, clean bole, in open places it assumes
its naturally somewhat conical form very promptly. Utterly dissimilar in
form from the American elm, it seems to stand for dignity, solidity and
vigor, and yet to yield nothing in the way of true elegance. The
botanists tell us it prefers deep and moist soil, but I know that it
lives and seems happy in many soils and in many places. Always and
everywhere it shows a clean, distinct trunk, its brown bark uniformly
furrowed, but in such a manner as to give a nearly smooth appearance at
a little distance. The branches do not leave the stem so imperceptibly
as do those which give the elm its very distinct form, but rather start
at a right angle, leaving the distinct central column of solid strength
unimpaired. The winter tracery of these branches, and the whole effect
of the liriodendron without foliage, is extremely distinct and pleasing.
I have in mind a noble group of great liriodendrons which I first saw
against an early April sky of blue and white. The trees had grown close,
and had interlaced their somewhat twisty branches, so that the general
impression was that of one great tree supported on several stems. The
pure beauty of these very tall and very stately trees, thus grouped and
with every twig sharply outlined, I shall always remember.
The liriodendron is more fortunate than some other trees, for it has
several points of attractiveness. Its stature and its structure are
alike notable, its foliage entirely unique, and its flowers and
seed-pods even more interesting. The leaf is very easily recognized when
once known. It is large, but not in any way coarse, and is thrust forth
as the tree grows, in a peculiarly pleasing way. Sheathed in the manner
characteristic of the magnolia family, of which the liriodendron is a
notable member, the leaves come to the light practically folded back on
themselves, between the two protecting envelopes, which remain until
the leaf has stretched out smoothly. Yellowish green at first, they
rapidly take on the bright, strong green of maturity. The texture is
singularly refined, and it is a pleasure to handle these smooth leaves,
of a shape which stamps them at once on the memory, and of a coloring,
both above and below, that is most attractive. They are maintained on
long, slender stems, or "petioles," and these stems give a great range
of flexibility, so that the leaves of the liriodendron are, as Henry
Ward Beecher puts it, "intensely individual, each one moving to suit
himself."
[Illustration: A great liriodendron in bloom]
Of course all this moving, and this out-breaking of the leaves from
their envelopes, take place far above one's head, on mature trees. It
will be found well worth while, however, for the tree-lover to look in
the woods for the rather numerous young trees of the tulip, and to
observe the very interesting way in which the growth proceeds. The
beautiful form and color of the leaves may also be thus conveniently
noted, as also in the autumn the soft, clear yellow early assumed.
It is the height and spread of the liriodendron that keep its truly
wonderful flowers out of the public eye. If they were produced on a
small tree like the familiar dogwood, for instance, so that they might
be nearer to the ground, they would receive more of the admiration so
fully their due. In Washington, where, as I have said, trees are planted
by design and not at random, there are whole avenues of liriodendrons,
and it was my good fortune one May to drive between these lines of
strong and shapely young trees just when they were in full bloom. The
appearance of these beautiful cups, each one held upright, not drooping,
was most striking and elegant. Some time, other municipalities will
learn wisdom from the example set in Washington, and we may expect to
see some variety in our street trees, now monotonously confined for the
most part to the maples, poplars, and a few good trees that would be
more valued if interspersed with other equally good trees of different
character. The pin-oak, the elm, the sweet-gum, or liquidambar, the
ginkgo, and a half-dozen or more beautiful and sturdy trees, do
admirably for street planting, and ought to be better known and much
more freely used.
[Illustration: Flowers of the liriodendron]
I have seen many rare orchids brought thousands of miles and petted into
a curious bloom--indeed, often more curious than beautiful. If the bloom
of the liriodendron, in all its delicate and daring mingling of green
and yellow, cream and orange, with its exquisite interior filaments,
could be labeled as a ten-thousand-dollar orchid beauty from Borneo, its
delicious perfume would hardly be needed to complete the raptures with
which it would be received into fashionable flower society. But these
lovely cups stand every spring above our heads by millions, their
fragrance and form, their color and beauty, unnoticed by the throng. As
they mature into the brown fruit-cones that hold the seeds, and these in
turn fall to the ground, to fulfil their purpose of reproduction, there
is no week in which the tree is not worthy of attention; and, when the
last golden leaf has been plucked by the fingers of the winter's frost,
there yet remain on the bare branches the curious and interesting
candlestick-like outer envelopes of the fruit-cones, to remind us in
form of the wonderful flower, unique in its color and attractiveness,
that gave its sweetness to the air of May and June.
These two trees--the elm and the liriodendron--stand out strongly as
individuals in the wealth of our American trees. Let all who read and
agree in my estimate, even in part, also agree to try, when opportunity
offers, to preserve these trees from vandalism or neglect, realizing
that the great forest trees of our country are impossible of
replacement, and that their strength, majesty and beauty are for the
good of all.
Nut-Bearing Trees
What memories of chestnutting parties, of fingers stained with the dye
of walnut hulls, and of joyous tramps afield in the very heart of the
year, come to many of us when we think of the nuts of familiar
knowledge! Hickory-nuts and butternuts, too, perhaps hazelnuts and even
beechnuts--all these American boys and girls of the real country know.
In the far South, and, indeed, reaching well up into the Middle West,
the pecan holds sway, and a majestic sway at that, for its size makes it
the fellow of the great trees of the forest, worthy to be compared with
the chestnut, the walnut, and the hickory.