WILD APPLE TREES
Coming back to my pastures after long absence I am always
surprised and often otherwise moved at the changes which I can
then clearly see have taken place in them. Had I frequented them
day by day these would never have appeared to me. Just as in the
countenances of one's best friends, seen often, there seem to be
no mutations and we need to think definitely of some past period
and then to compare the impression with the present one to see
that the child is growing up or the old man growing older, so it
is with the face of the earth in familiar spots. Young growth
comes little by little, shoulders bow day by day in the aged, yet
we do not see it when we dwell constantly with them. It is only
after long absence that these things suddenly presented shock us
with grief in the one case or touch us with pleasure in the other.
After a summer's absence, you find baby shrubs grown to youth and
youthful trees putting on a greater air of maturity than they had
before. Coming back in spring you are apt to sorrow over the
wrecks which the winter has wrought. Last winter's gales and deep
snows, and more than all the ice storms, have left havoc behind
them whereby you may trace their durance and their intensity. Tall
birches whose resiliency never before failed them were so bowed
beneath these storm burdens that they still remain with upper
branches sweeping the ground, like white slaves sculptured in
graceful but profound obeisance before a storm king that has long
since swept on with all his retinue. It is strange to see cedars
that have always seemed unbendable models of primness and
rectitude bowed and distorted in groups by the same resistless
force. Very heavy and long continuing must have been the ice on
these to thus permanently crook their red heartwood. The heavy
brand of the Northern winter yet marks them for his own.
Yet the pastures are so glad with May that it is easy to forget
sorrow for the passing old in joy over the surgent beauty of new
life. It is easy now to believe what the botanists tell us--that
flower and leaf are but slightly differentiated forms of the same
impulse of growth, grading almost imperceptibly one into the
other. With new leaves half-grown, with blossoms bursting, it is
hard to tell without close inspection which is which, so tender
and rich are the colors which unfold from all buds. The yellow of
the dandelion, the blue of wood violets, and the purple of the
wild cranesbill are not more delicate, nor are they so rich as the
red of the young leaves of the white oaks, now as large as a
mouse's ear, which is the Indian sign for the time to plant corn.
The blossoms of the berry bushes are no more flower-like than the
young leaves among which they grow. The green-yellow of barberry
blooms is not more fervent than the yellow-green of the tender
foliage, and the two colors blend into one burning bush of cool
flame. I do not wonder the summer yellow-bird loves to build his
nest in the barberry bush. Its colors at this season are his own.
Other surprises meet men in the pasture this spring. There is a
particularly beautiful corner which many city people have come to
share with me. On holidays and Sundays they troop to their
bungalow on the pond shore by the hundred. Yet they must love
barberry bushes and sweetfern, red cedar and white pine, as I do,
for they have not intruded upon them, but have let their own
presence slip quietly into the vacant places, leaving the original
proprietors of the spot unvexed. In this I see a new variety of
city man and woman growing up. A score of years ago the advent of
such a horde would have meant more disaster than the winter's ice
storms could have wrought. Between these more kindly adventurers
and the pasture folk have grown up a friendly intimacy which is
beginning to teach city ways to the pasture denizens. Therein lies
the cause of my surprise. Under the soft mists of a cool May day I
brushed the dew from the wood grasses and unrolling croziers of
cinnamon fern to pause in admiration at shrubs and trees bearing
calling cards. Here is a red cedar announcing on a Dennison tag,
"I am Juniperus virginiana, known to my intimates as savin." Out
of its nimbus of pale yellow flame "Berberis vulgaris" hands me a
bit of pasteboard, and dangling from a resinous bough is the
statement that it is "Pinus strobus" that welcomes me to fragrant
shade. Like many city manners which are new to country folk these
seem to be a bit obtrusive at first. Yet on second thought I find
it an excellent custom which ought to be enlarged upon in various
ways. I can fancy people coming to the bungalow for a day's
intercourse with the pasture shrubs that have never before met
them, and feeling awkward and disconcerted at not being able to
recall names after a wholesale introduction. I have felt that way
myself after undergoing a rapid-fire presentation to a room full
of people. If, like the pasture shrubs in this particular corner
of the pasture world, all these could have worn a name and address
on coat-lapel or corsage, I had come up to the second round able
to call each fearlessly by name and oftentimes save mutual
embarrassment.
But there are minor considerations, after all. I have an idea that
the pasture shrubs may never take kindly to thus carrying
conventional calling cards, and that shyer still and more
nimble-footed friends will finally relieve them of what wind and
rain have left. In a year or two I shall find the cards nameless and
built in as foundations of nests of jay birds and white-footed
mice, or worked up more skillfully yet by white-faced hornets into
the gray paper of their nests. This is a carefully adjusted world
and the instinctive movements of all creatures go to the keeping
of the perfect balance. The normal attacks the abnormal
immediately and all along the line. With shrub or bird or beast to
exceed the old-world conventions is to be firmly thrust back into
the adjustment or wiped out.
Yet, now and then the balance is not exactly disturbed, but rather
readjusted by some alien that seems to find a foothold through all
opposition and establishes a place through pure vigor and
sweetness of character. Of such is the apple tree that came out of
the East with other beginnings of civilization, reaching the
shores of Western Europe by way of Greece and Rome. Thence it
passed with the early Puritans to New England. A pampered denizen
of the orchard and garden for a century or two the tree, so far as
New England is concerned, seems to be steadily passing to the wild
state. Old orchards grow up to pasture and woodland and the trees
of a century ago hold on, if at all, in spite of the encroachments
of their surroundings. Thus the best of grafted trees pass to the
wild state through decay and regrowth, the strength and sweetness
of the wood seeming to bear up against all adversity. The old-time
trunk rots away, but sprouts from below the graft spring up and
the tree reverts to the primitive in habit as well as surroundings.
Or seeds, planted by bird or squirrel grow up in rich, modest
humus among rough rocks where never a plough could pass and
we have some new variety, a veritable wild apple with no
semblance of the original fruit about it but often a delectable,
wild tang, a flavor and perfume such as no cultivated variety ever
had. No tree gives more beauty to the wildest of New England woods
and pastures today than this. Innocent of pruning knife or
fertilizer its growth has a rugged picturesqueness about it that
makes the well trained tree look pusillanimously conventional
beside it. I think the perfume of its blossoms is richer and
carries farther and I know the pink of the petals is fairer. The
wild apple is the queen of all pasture trees today and does not
need to bear a tag for the most citified man, the most
boudoir-encysted woman to know it. To get beneath an apple tree,
even in the wildest and most unfrequented portion of the pasture or
woodland, is to all of us like finding one's roof-tree once more.
The race seems to have been brought up beneath it and I take it
for a sign of decadence in the New England character that we no
longer plant orchards. It is fortunate for us all that the wild
creatures are doing what man will not and it may be that their
planting will some day give us so beautiful and well flavored a
wild apple that we too shall be moved to plant and the country
blossom with orchards once more. All the best varieties were thus
seedlings originally and have been perpetuated by transferring
their buds to the limbs of less valued stock.
Just as in man bone and sinew count really for little and it is
only the subtle essence of being, the spirit behind and within,
that matters, so it is the sweet and kindly soul within the apple
tree that radiates love to all comers. In apple-blossom time the
bees will desert all other flowers for them, not because the honey
is sweeter or more plentiful within them but because the wooing
fragrance has more of a pull on their heart strings than any
other. Again in the late autumn they come to the ripe fruit for
final winter stores, drawn by the same subtle essence, distilled
from disintegrating, pulpy cells. I believe the first cider making
was a rude attempt to imprison and perpetuate this charm, rather
than to simply make a spirituous liquor. So richly does the apple
tree give forth this spirit of generous delight that to all of us
the trees seem to brood and radiate a feeling of parental
protection. Man often voices this, and in ancient times there were
ceremonies which recognized the tree as a kindly deity to whom
reverence was done and thanks given. To "wassail" the trees was
more than a jovial excuse for cider and song, it had roots in a
deeper feeling of reverence and gratitude. But those humbler than
men have the same feeling. In the pastures I often find the apple
trees literally brooding seedling cedars which seem to flock
beneath the outstretched and low-hanging boughs as chickens huddle
beneath the mother hen for protection and warmth. Where tender
nurslings of this sort are scattered wide in other portions of the
pastures to find them grouped here by the score means that some
selective thought has brought it all about. I cannot, of course,
say that the seedlings consciously choose. Nevertheless, somehow,
that spirit of protecting love of which I am, myself, definitely
conscious when I come near an apple tree has somehow drawn beneath
it these plants of other fibre that need its shelter.
To more sentient beings we may accord a more conscious purpose,
and that the wild apple tree is more beloved of bird and beast
than any other proves that they, too, feel the brooding charm
which radiates from it. Verily, a tree is known by its nests. It
seems as if the apple tree took loving thought and prepared
especially for certain varieties while welcoming all. The robin
loves a solid foundation for the mud bottom and sides of his
substantial home. On the level-growing apple tree limb he finds
this, and the kindly tree throws out little curved, finger-like
fruiting twigs from the sides of its big limbs that help anchor
the structure against all winds. Farther up on the limb and near
the slenderer tip these curved fruiting twigs multiply and suggest
the very shape of his nest to the chipping sparrow who loves to
twine tiny roots and grasses, and especially horsehair, among them
till his own light, wee structure is as securely placed as the
cement bungalow of the bigger bird. So, too, the tyrant flycatcher
loves to build his larger nest, often interwoven with waste string
till it looks as if he had tied it on. He seeks the very tip of
the level limb and the blunt, sturdy, spreading twigs invite his
confidence as they do that of the chipping sparrow. This bold
exposure of eggs and nestlings invites thieving jays and murderous
crows, hawks and owls, but the king-bird's dinner flies by while
he waits, and he does police duty while he watches for it. He is
rightly named and no marauder dares approach while he sits
dominant on the topmost bough. He is guardian thus of his less
belligerent neighbors.
The oriole, trained in tropic woodlands to avoid climbers,
instinctively finds the pendulous tips of slender elm boughs the
best place for his nest, yet often in apple-blossom time he
becomes so enamored of them that the white snow of their falling
petals leaves him building on the twigs from which they scatter.
In July the incessant, cry-baby twittering of the young orioles is
thus as common a sound of the orchard and pasture as it is of the
elm-shaded street. Other apple tree nest-hangers are the vireos,
yellow throated, red-eyed and white-eyed, all of whom love to
build on the low-swinging tips of the benedictory limbs. It seems
to me that no other tree attracts such a variety of beautiful
birds out of what one might think to be their usual environment.
Of these I may cite the scarlet tanager and the rose-breasted
grosbeak, both rather shy woodland dwellers, the tanager the
friend of the tall timber, the grosbeak partial to sprout land and
second growth, but both often found building their nests on the
inviting boughs of apple trees not far from their favorite haunts.
It seems, too, as if the tree made especial preparation for the
housing of other less shy folk. I know no other tree so nobly
hollow-hearted. At little excuse, if it be not good will toward
woodpeckers, bluebirds and their like, the mahogany-like dense
heart-wood rots, leaving hollow passages in the trunk and larger
limbs, and often in the smaller ones, too. Here are homes for all
who seek complete seclusion from storms and enemies. The little
screech owl loves these hollows more than those of any other tree,
and sings his little quavering night song from the dusky tops,
while his mate and her eggs are safely hidden in the blackness of
the hollow below. The downy woodpecker bores his nest hole in the
softened heart-wood of upright limbs and pays for his lodging by
devouring all grubs and borers that otherwise might make his house
fall too soon. The bluebird finds his dwelling ready made, lower
down, often in a horizontal limb, having neither strength nor
inclination to bore for himself. The flicker, too, loves the apple
tree and bores his own hole in upright limbs, as does the downy
woodpecker, often with much noise and obtrusion of vigorous chips.
Nor need the list stop here. The red squirrel and the gray, the
bat, the field mouse and the white-footed mouse all feel this
welcoming charm, this endearing hospitality of the wild apple
tree, whether born wild or grown wild through neglect, and go to
it for protection, for food, for a home, or just because, like
man, they love it and feel sweetened and heartened in its
presence.
Soon now the snow of falling petals will whiten the ground beneath
all wild apple trees, carrying an inexpressible purity and
fragrance to the rich wild earth beneath. Whither these melt it is
hard to say. They whiten the ground for a few brief hours and are
gone. I can fancy the wee sprites of earth in whatever form they
happen to dwell at the moment, beetle or bumblebee, eft or elve,
gathering these eagerly by scent and by sight, to store them away
below ground for slow transmutations of their own. If wrapped in
bed-clothing like this it is no miracle that rough grubs should
come forth gauzy winged and beautiful insects that flit by and
delight the eye of the naturalist. If fed upon these it is no
wonder that summer wild flowers of the deep woods can show us
delicate tints and woo us with dainty perfumes, the very memory of
which is happiness for long after. Thus the tree makes kindly
messengers of even the rough winds of March that sometimes charge
back upon us for a day, obliging them to carry the very essence of
the gentle good will and fondness of the spring farther than it
might otherwise reach and finally bidding them faint and die for
very love of the perfume and beauty they bear. Thus the wild apple
tree, still the brooding mother of all woodland things, sends
fragrant love and kindness questing far through the rougher
woodland till its gentle spirit seems to imbue all things. In all
the pastures there is none like it.