chance for palatable food has, just as with some of the best of the
so-called "fruit" trees--all trees bear fruit!--partially closed our
eyes to the interest and beauty of some of these nut-bearers.
My own tree acquaintance has proceeded none too rapidly, and I have
been--and am yet--as fond of the toothsome nuts as any one can be who is
not a devotee of the new fad that attempts to make human squirrels of us
all by a nearly exclusive nut diet. I think that my regard for a nut
tree as something else than a source of things to eat began when I came,
one hot summer day, under the shade of the great walnut at Paxtang. Huge
was its trunk and wide the spread of its branches, while the richness of
its foliage held at bay the strongest rays of the great luminary. How
could I help admiring the venerable yet lusty old tree, conferring a
present benefit, giving an instant and restful impression of strength,
solidity, and elegance, while promising as well, as its rounded green
clusters hung far above my head, a great crop of delicious nut-fruit
when the summer's sun it was so fully absorbing should have done its
perfect work!
Alas for the great black walnut of Paxtang! It went the way of many
another tree monarch whose beauty and living usefulness were no defense
against sordid vandalism. In the course of time a suburb was laid out,
including along its principal street, and certainly as its principal
natural ornament, this massive tree, around which the Indians who roamed
the "great vale of Pennsylvania" had probably gathered in council. The
sixty-foot "lot," the front of which the tree graced, fell to the
ownership of a man who, erecting a house under its beneficent
protection, soon complained of its shade. Then came a lumber prospector,
who saw only furniture in the still flourishing old black walnut. His
offer of forty dollars for the tree was eagerly accepted by the
Philistine who had the title to the land, and although there were not
wanting such remonstrances as almost came to a breaking of the peace,
the grand walnut ended its hundreds of years of life to become mere
lumber for its destroyers! The real estate man who sold the land greatly
admired the tree himself, realizing also its great value to the suburb,
and had never for one moment dreamed that the potential vandal who
bought the tree-graced parcel of ground would not respect the inherent
rights of all his neighbors. He told me of the loss with tears in his
eyes and rage in his language; and I have never looked since at the
fellow who did the deed without reprobation. More than that, he has
proven a theory I hold--that no really good man would do such a thing
after he had been shown the wrong of it--by showing himself as dishonest
in business as he was disregardful of the rights of the tree and of his
neighbors.
[Illustration: The wide-spreading black walnut]
The black walnut is a grand tree from any point of view, even though it
so fully absorbs all water and fertility as to check other growth under
its great reach of branches. The lines it presents to the winter sky are
as rugged as those of the oak, but there is a great difference. And this
ruggedness is held far into the spring, for the black walnut makes no
slightest apparent effort at growth until all the other trees are
greening the countryside. Then with a rush come the luxuriant and
tropical compound leaves, soon attaining their full dignity, and adding
to it also a smooth polish on the upper surface. The walnut's flowers I
have missed seeing, I am sorry to say, while registering a mental
promise not to permit another season to pass without having that
pleasure.
Late in the year the foliage has become scanty, and the nut-clusters
hang fascinatingly clear, far above one's head, to tempt the climb and
the club. The black walnut is a tree that needs our care; for furniture
fashion long used its close-grained, heavy, handsome wood as cruelly as
the milliners did the herons of Florida from which were torn the
"aigrets," now happily "out of style." Though walnut furniture is no
longer the most popular, the deadly work has been done, for the most
part, and but few of these wide-spread old forest monarchs yet remain.
Scientific forestry is now providing, in many plantings, and in many
places, another "crop" of walnut timber, grown to order, and using waste
land. It is to such really beneficent, though entirely commercial work,
that we must look for the future of many of our best trees.
The butternut, or white walnut, has never seemed so interesting to me,
nor its fruit so palatable, probably because I have seen less of it. The
so-called "English" walnut, which is really the Persian walnut, is not
hardy in the eastern part of the United States, and, while a tree of
vast commercial importance in the far West, does not come much into the
view of a lover of the purely American trees.
[Illustration: The American sweet chestnut]
Of the American sweet chestnut as a delightful nut-fruit I need say
nothing more than that it fully holds its place against "foreign
intervention" from the East; even though these European and Japanese
chestnuts with their California-bred progeny give us fruit that is much
larger, and borne on trees of very graceful habit. No one with
discrimination will for a moment hesitate, after eating a nut of both,
to cheerfully choose the American native as best worth his commendation,
though he may come to understand the food value, after cooking, of the
chestnuts used so freely in parts of Europe.
[Illustration: Sweet chestnut blossoms]
As a forest tree, however, our American sweet chestnut has a place of
its own. Naturally spreading in habit when growing where there is room
to expand, it easily accommodates itself to the more cramped conditions
of our great woodlands, and shoots upward to light and air, making
rapidly a clean and sturdy stem. What a beautiful and stately tree it
is! And when, late in the spring, or indeed right on the threshold of
summer, its blooming time comes, it stands out distinctly, having then
few rivals in the eye of the tree-lover. The locust and the tulip are
just about done with their floral offering upon the altar of the year
when the long creamy catkins of the sweet chestnut spring out from the
fully perfected dark green leaf-clusters. Peculiarly graceful are these
great bloom heads, high in the air, and standing nearly erect, instead
of hanging down as do the catkins of the poplars and the birches. The
odor of the chestnut flower is heavy, and is best appreciated far above
in the great tree, where it may mingle with the warm air of June,
already bearing a hundred sweet scents.
There stands bright in my remembrance one golden June day when I came
through a gateway into a wonderful American garden of purely native
plants maintained near Philadelphia, the rock-bound drive guarded by two
clumps of tall chestnuts, one on either side, and both in full glory of
bloom. There could not have been a more beautiful, natural, or dignified
entrance; and it was just as beautiful in the early fall, when the deep
green of the oblong-toothed leaves had changed to clear and glowing
yellow, while the flowers had left their perfect work in the swelling
and prickly green burs which hid nuts of a brown as rich as the flesh
was sweet.
Did you, gentle reader, ever saunter through a chestnut grove in the
later fall, when the yellow had been browned by the frosts which brought
to the ground alike leaves and remaining burs? There is something
especially pleasant in the warmth of color and the crackle of sound on
the forest floor, as one really shuffles through chestnut leaves in the
bracing November air, stooping now and then for a nut perchance
remaining in the warm and velvety corner of an opened bur.
Here in Pennsylvania, and south of Mason and Dixon's line, there grows a
delightful small tree, brother to the chestnut, bearing especially sweet
little nuts which we know as chinquapins. They are darker brown, and the
flesh is very white, and rich in flavor. I could wish that the
chinquapin, as well as the chestnut, was included among the trees that
enlightened Americans would plant along roadsides and lanes, with other
fruit trees; the specific secondary purpose, after the primary enjoyment
of form, foliage and flower, being to let the future passer-by eat
freely of that fruit provided by the Creator for food and pleasure, and
costing no more trouble or expense than the purely ornamental trees more
frequently planted.
Both chestnut and chinquapin are beautiful ornamental trees; and some of
the newer chestnut hybrids, of parentage between the American and the
European species, are as graceful as the most highly petted lawn trees
of the nurserymen. Indeed, the very same claim may be made for a score
or more of the standard fruit trees, alike beautiful in limb tracery, in
bloom, and in the seed-coverings that we are glad to eat; and some time
we shall be ashamed not to plant the fruit trees in public places, for
the pleasure and the refreshing of all who care.
[Illustration: The chinquapin]
One of the commonest nut trees, and certainly one of the most pleasing,
is the hickory. There are hickories and hickories, and some are
shellbarks, while others are bitternuts or pignuts. The form most
familiar to the Eastern States is the shagbark hickory, and its
characteristic upright trees, tall and finely shaped, never
wide-spreading as is the chestnut under the encouragement of plenty of
room and food, are admirable from any standpoint. There is a lusty old
shagbark in Wetzel's Swamp that has given me many a pleasant
quarter-hour, as I have stood at attention before its symmetrical stem,
hung with slabs of brown bark that seem always just ready to separate
from the trunk.
The aspect of this tree is reflected in its very useful timber, which is
pliant but tough, requiring less "heft" for a given strength, and
bending with a load easily, only to instantly snap back to its position
when the stress slackens. Good hickory is said to be stronger than
wrought iron, weight for weight; and I will answer for it that no
structure of iron can ever have half the grace, as well as strength,
freely displayed by this same old shagbark of the lowlands near my home.
Curious as I am to see the blooms of the trees I am getting acquainted
with, there are many disappointments to be endured--as when the favorite
tree under study is reached a day too late, and I must wait a year for
another opportunity. It was, therefore, with much joy that I found that
a trip carefully timed for another fine old hickory along the
Conodoguinet--an Indian-named stream of angles, curves, many trees and
much beauty--had brought me to the quickly passing bloom feast of this
noble American tree. The leaves were about half-grown and half-colored,
which means that they displayed an elegance of texture and hue most
pleasing to see. And the flowers--there they were, hanging under the
twigs in long clusters of what I might describe as ends of chenille, if
it were not irreverent to compare these delicate greenish catkins with
anything man-made!
[Illustration: A shagbark hickory in bloom]
This fine shagbark was kind to the cameraman, for some of its lower
branches drooped and hung down close enough to the "bars" of the rail
fence to permit the photographic eye to be turned on them. Then came the
tantalizing wait for stillness! I have frequently found that a wind,
absolutely unnoticeable before, became obtrusively strong just when the
critical moment arrived, and I have fancied that the lightly hung
leaflets I have waited upon fairly shook with merriment as they received
the gentle zephyr, imperceptible to my heated brow, but vigorous enough
to keep them moving. Often, too--indeed nearly always--I have found that
after exhausting my all too scanty stock of patience, and making an
"exposure" in despair, the errant blossoms and leaflets would settle
down into perfect immobility, as if to say, "There! don't be
cross--we'll behave," when it was too late.
But the shagbark at last was good to me, and I could leave with the
comfortable feeling that I was carrying away a little bit of nature's
special work, a memorandum of her rather private processes of
fruit-making, without injuring any part of the inspected trees. It has
been a sorrow to me that I have not seen that great hickory later in the
year, when the clusters of tassels have become bunches of husk-covered
nuts. To get really acquainted with any tree, it should be visited many
times in a year. Starting with the winter view, one observes the bark,
the trend and character of the limbs, the condition of the buds. The
spring opening of growth brings rapid changes, of both interest and
beauty, to be succeeded by the maturity of summer, when, with the
ripened foliage overhead, everything is different. Again, when the fruit
is on, and the touch of Jack Frost is baring the tree for the smoother
passing of the winds of winter, there is another aspect. I have great
respect for the tree-lover who knows unerringly his favorites at any
time of the year, for have I not myself made many mistakes, especially
when no leaves are at hand as pointers? The snow leaves nothing to be
seen but the cunning framework of the tree--tell me, then, is it ash, or
elm, or beech? Which is sugar-maple, and which red, or sycamore?
One summer walk in the deep forest, my friend the doctor, who knows many
things besides the human frame, was puzzled at a sturdy tree bole, whose
leaves far overhead mingled so closely with the neighboring greenery of
beech and birch that in the dim light they gave no help. First driving
the small blade of his pocket-knife deep into the rugged bark of the
tree in question, he withdrew it, and then smelled and tasted,
exclaiming, "Ah, I thought so; it _is_ the wild cherry!" And, truly, the
characteristic prussic-acid odor, the bitter taste, belonging to the
peach and cherry families, were readily noted; and another Sherlock
Holmes tree fact came to me!
Of other hickories I know little, for the false shagbark, the mockernut,
the pignut, and the rest of the family have not been disclosed to me
often enough to put me at ease with them. There are to be more tree
friends, both human and arborescent, and more walks with the doctor and
the camera, I hope!
We of the cold North, as we crack the toothsome pecan, hardly realize
its kinship with the hickory. It is full brother to our shellbark,
which is, according to botany, _Hicoria ovata_, while the Southern tree
is _Hicoria pecan_. A superb tree it is, too, reaching up amid its
vigorous associates of the forests of Georgia, Alabama and Texas to a
height exceeding one hundred and fifty feet. Its upright and elegant
form, of a grace that conceals its great height, its remarkable
usefulness, and its rather rapid growth, commend it highly. The
nut-clusters are striking, having not only an interesting outline, but
much richness of color, in greens and russets.
[Illustration: The American beech in winter]
It may seem odd to include the beech under the nut-bearing trees, to
those of us who know only the nursery-grown forms of the European beech,
"weeping" and twisted, with leaves of copper and blood, as seen in parks
and pleasure-grounds. But the squirrels would agree; they know well the
sweet little triangular nuts that ripen early in fall.
The pure American beech, uncontaminated and untwisted with the abnormal
forms just mentioned, is a tree that keeps itself well in the eye of the
woods rambler; and that eye is always pleasured by it, also. Late in
winter, the light gray branches of a beech thicket on a dry hillside on
the edge of my home city called attention to their clean elegance amid
sordid and forbidding surroundings, and it was with anger which I dare
call righteous that I saw a hideous bill-board erected along the
hillside, to shut out the always beautiful beeches from sight as I
frequently passed on a trolley car! I have carefully avoided buying
anything of the merchants who have thus set up their announcements where
they are an insult; and it might be noted that these and other offensive
bill-boards are to others of like mind a sort of reverse
advertising--they tell us what _not_ to purchase.
[Illustration: The true nut-eater]
Years ago I chanced to be present at a birth of beech leaves, up along
Paxton Creek. It was late in the afternoon, and our reluctant feet were
turning homeward, after the camera had seen the windings of the creek
against the softening light, when the beeches over-arching the little
stream showed us this spring marvel. The little but perfectly formed
leaves had just opened, in pairs, with a wonderful covering of silvery
green, as they hung downward toward the water, yet too weak to stand out
and up to the passing breeze. The exquisite delicacy of these trembling
little leaves, the arching elegance of the branches that had just opened
them to the light, made it seem almost sacrilegious to turn the lens
upon them.
Often since have I visited the same spot, in hope to see again this
awakening, but without avail. The leaves show me their silky
completeness, rustling above the stream in softest tree talk; the
curious staminate flower-clusters hang like bunches of inverted commas;
the neat little burs, with their inoffensive prickles, mature and
discharge the angular nuts--but I am not again, I fear, to be present at
the hour of the leaf-birth of the beech's year.
The beech, by the way, is tenacious of its handsome foliage. Long after
most trees have yielded their leaves to the frost, the beech keeps its
clothing, turning from the clear yellow of fall to lightest fawn, and
hanging out in the forest a sign of whiteness that is cheering in the
winter and earliest spring. These bleached-out leaves will often remain
until fairly pushed off by the opening buds of another year.
[Illustration: The witch-hazel]
Of the hazelnut or filbert, I know nothing from the tree side, but I
cannot avoid mentioning another botanically unrelated so-called
hazel--the witch-hazel. This small tree is known to most of us only as
giving name to a certain soothing extract. It is worthy of more
attention, for its curious and delicately sweet yellow flowers,
seemingly clusters of lemon-colored threads, are the very last to bloom,
opening bravely in the very teeth of Jack Frost. They are a delight to
find, on the late fall rambles; and the next season they are followed by
the still more curious fruits, which have a habit of suddenly opening
and fairly ejaculating their seeds. A plucked branch of these fruits,
kept in a warm place a few hours, will show this--another of nature's
efficient methods for spreading seeds, in full operation--if one watches
closely enough. The flowers and the fruits are on the tree at the same
time, just as with the orange of the tropics.
Speaking of a tropical fruit, I am reminded that the greatest nut of
all, though certainly not an American native, is nevertheless now grown
on American soil. Some years ago a grove of lofty cocoanut palms in
Yucatan fascinated me, and the opportunity to drink the clear and
refreshing milk (not milky at all, and utterly different from the
familiar contents of the ripened nut of commerce) was gladly taken. Now
the bearing trees are within the bounds of the United States proper, and
the grand trees in Southern Florida give plenty of fruit. The African
citizens of that neighborhood are well aware of the refreshing character
of the "juice" of the green cocoanut, and a friend who sees things for
me with a camera tells with glee how a "darky" at Palm Beach left him in
his wheel-chair to run with simian feet up a sloping trunk, there to
pull, break open, and absorb the contents of a nut, quite as a matter of
course. I have myself seen the Africans of the Bahamas in the West
Indies climbing the glorious cocoa palms of the coral keys, throwing
down the mature nuts, and then, with strong teeth, stripping the tough
outer covering to get at the refreshing interior.
All these nut trees are only members of the great family of trees given
by God for man's good, I firmly believe; for man first comes into
Biblical view in a garden of trees, and the city and the plain are but
penances for sin!
Some Other Trees
In preceding chapters of this series I have treated of trees in a
relationship of family, or according to some noted similarity. There
are, however, some trees of my acquaintance of which the family
connections are remote or unimportant, and there are some other trees of
individual merit with the families of which I am not sufficiently well
acquainted to speak familiarly as a whole. Yet many of these trees,
looked at by themselves, are as beautiful, interesting, and altogether
worthy as any of which I have written, and they are also among the
familiar trees of America. Therefore I present a few of them apart from
the class treatment.
* * * * *
One day in very early spring--or was it very late in winter?--I walked
along the old canal road, looking for some evidence in tree growth that
spring was really at hand. Buds were swelling, and here and there a
brave robin could be heard telling about it in song to his mate (I think
that settled the season as earliest spring!); but beyond the bud
evidences the trees seemed to be silent on the subject. Various herbs
showed lusty beginnings, and the skunk-cabbage, of course, had pushed up
its tropical richness in defiance of any late frost, pointing the way to
its peculiar red-purple flowers, long since fertilized and turning
toward maturity.
The search seemed vain, until a glint of yellow just ahead, too deep to
proceed from the spice-bush I was expecting to find, drew me to the very
edge of the water, there to see hanging over and reflected in the stream
a mass of golden catkins. Looking closely, and touching the little tree,
I disengaged a cloud of pollen and a score of courageous bees, evidently
much more pleased with the sweet birch than with the near-by
skunk-cabbage flowers. Sweet birch it was; the stiff catkins, that had
all winter held themselves in readiness, had just burst into bloom with
the sun's first warmth, introducing a glint of bright color into the
landscape, and starting the active double work of the bees, in
fertilizing flowers while gathering honey, that was not to be
intermitted for a single sunshine hour all through the season.
A little later, along the great Susquehanna, I found in full bloom other
trees of this same birch, beloved of boys--and of girls--for its
aromatic bark. Certainly picturesque and bright, the little trees were a
delight to the winter-wearied eye, the mahogany twigs and the golden
catkins, held at poise over the water, being full of spring suggestion.
All of the birches--I wish I knew them better!--are good to look at, and
I think the bees, the woodpeckers, the humming-birds and other wood folk
must find some of them good otherwise. At Eagles Mere there was a yellow
birch in the bark of which scores of holes had been drilled by the
woodpeckers or the bees, at regularly spaced intervals, to let the
forest life drink at will of the sweet sap. I remember also that my
attempt to photograph a score of bees, two large brown butterflies and
one humming-bird, all in attendance upon this birch feast, was a
surprising failure. I secured a picture of the holes in the bark, to be
sure, but the rapidly moving insect and bird life was too quick for an
exposure of even a fraction of a second, and my negative was lifeless.
These same yellow birches, picturesque in form, ragged in light-colored
bark, give a brightness all their own to the deep forest, mostly of
trees with rather somber bark.
A woodsman told me one summer of the use of old birch bark for starting
a fire in the wet woods, and I have since enjoyed collecting the bark
from fallen trees in the forest. It strips easily, in large pieces, from
decayed stems, and when thrown on an open fire, produces a cheery and
beautiful blaze, as well as much heat; while, if cunningly handled, by
its aid a fire can be kindled even in a heavy rain.
[Illustration: Sweet birch in early spring]