Nature is greatly indebted to Art for many of her attractions, if it has
not been exercised for the purpose which is effected by it. We see this
not only in wood-paths, which all will agree are the most delightful
parts of a wood, but in many other operations of a rude agriculture,
more especially in the rustic lane. It is no matter whether the lane be
bordered by trees and shrubbery, or only by a plain wooden fence or
loose stone-wall, provided for several seasons it has been entirely
neglected. It must have been long enough under nature’s spontaneous
action to restore that condition of the turf that precedes cultivation,
to green the borders with ferns and mosses, and to gem their velvety
heaps with anemones and violets. The nice trimming and weeding which are
generally apparent in all the paths and avenues of a country-seat or a
model farm deprive them of the attractions of the rustic lane. No matter
how many flowers are cultivated in the borders of one of these trim
avenues, it is, after all, only an exhibition of splendor and luxury. It
delights the eye, but it cannot win the heart. It is only a conservatory
of elegance; it is not a paradise.
If we follow the course of any rustic lane which has not been improved,
bounded by a rude fence of any kind which will form a support for the
plants that come up beneath it, we see the climbing and creeping plants
in their unrestrained freedom and beauty. If in the course of our walk
we meet with a rude shed or any building old enough to be overgrown with
mosses and incrusted with lichens, its walls are sure to be covered
either with the climbing sumach or the Virginia creeper; for these
plants seem designed by nature as the native embroidery of all neglected
places and buildings. On many accounts, the most interesting plants are
the climbers and creepers. Whether it be that we associate them with the
idea of dependence on their part and of protection on the part of the
tree of other object that supports them, or whether their ascent may
suggest the idea of motion and progression, causing them to resemble a
living creature, they never fail to interest the spectator, and to fill
his mind with many poetic images.
The Virginia creeper possesses all the advantages of the English ivy,
save that it is not an evergreen. But its deciduous character is not to
be regarded as a defect, since if it were an evergreen it would want its
annual attractions of scarlet and crimson that distinguish it in autumn.
In this particular it is not surpassed by any production of the American
forest, except the red maple. These colors render it very conspicuous in
October, when it surrounds the trunks and branches of some of the
tallest trees with its garlands of crimson, hiding them under its own
splendid frondage. There is not a rustic lane where it is not seen
creeping over the fences and mixing its glowing tints with other wayside
plants. It is particularly luxuriant by the woodside; for though it is
common in the deep forest it grows feebly and is deficient in leaves
until it gains the summits of the trees. It needs the broad eye of day,
and prospers only upon trees that stand outside of a wood. No other
climbing plant is so generally used in New England as a drapery for
houses and fences, taking the place occupied in Europe by the ivy. Many
old houses are covered by it, and many an old stone-wall is completely
enveloped in its foliage.
The poison ivy, or climbing sumach, is the only rival of the Virginia
creeper in our woods. It is even more common in open fields, and though
less luxuriant, surpasses it in the beauty of its leaf. It is a very
pertinacious parasite, adhering very closely to the object that supports
it, with its innumerable rootlets, but sustaining life only by
communication with the soil. The growth of this plant is discouraged on
account of the liability of many persons to be injuriously affected by
its poisonous properties. Those who are not familiar with wild plants
are generally unable to distinguish the poison ivy from the Virginia
creeper. Their general appearance and habits are nearly the same, but
their leaves furnish a sure mark of distinction. They are compound in
each; but those of the Virginia creeper are in fives, those of the
poison ivy in threes, without exception.
As we pass along the rustic lane, where it is involved in deep shadow by
a dense growth of shrubbery and vines we see the woody nightshade
adorning the mass with its singular halberd-shaped leaves, its dark blue
flowers with a golden centre, and its pendent clusters of scarlet fruit.
I know but few plants of which so little has been said that possess a
greater share of beauty. There is a common prejudice against the woody
nightshade, from its supposed poisonous qualities, and from our habit of
identifying it with the deadly nightshade of Europe. If our plant has
some poisonous qualities, they are not of a dangerous character. All
parts of it may be bruised and handled with impunity, and its berries
are so nauseous to the taste and smell that they are not liable to be
eaten.
In the wild hedge-rows that skirt our fields and farms, made up of
viburnum, elder, cornel, hazel, and wild rose-bushes, the woody
nightshade, in company with the glycine, contributes greatly to the
interest attached to these flowering thickets. What excites my surprise
is that so few persons praise this modest little climber. How would its
varied foliage, interwoven with that of more luxuriant plants, the deep
but contrasted colors of its flowers and fruit, and its constant
presence in the borders of all wet fallows, attract the admiration of a
painter who, imbued with a love of nature equal to his love of art,
should attempt to paint a New England stone-wall with its many native
accompaniments!
A more conspicuous climber, and more common by the woodside than by the
rustic lane, is the bitter-sweet. It is seen climbing over trees, not
attaching itself by rootlets or tendrils, but twining round its
supporter, like the morning-glory. It is often fifteen or twenty feet in
height, covering some unfortunate tree with its own dense foliage, and
finally causing it to perish by excluding light and air from it. This
plant is well known to simplers, who have named it bitter-sweet, from
the mingled sweet and bitter of the scarlet and orange-colored berries
which they collect for medical use. I cannot learn that they contain any
medicinal virtue; but it is well understood, in these days, that the
possession of decided efficiency renders any medical substance
unpopular. All popular remedies are physic only to the faith; hence the
incomparable virtues of saffron and elder-flowers, whiteweed and
everlasting!
We are prone, when thinking of plants merely as ornaments of nature, to
forget that the fruit-bearing shrubs and vines have in general anything
to recommend them except their fruit. It will be admitted that very many
of these plants are deficient in beauty; yet I will confess that I have
often admired the different species of bramble, which are so common in
the rustic lane and woodside, trailing over fences and abrupt
elevations, or hanging down from projecting cliffs, and exposing their
clusters of red, black, and purple fruit. Our common species are not
remarkable for elegance or beauty, but the country waysides would look
bald and cheerless without the simple decoration afforded by these
plants.
Among the trailing species of bramble, one of the most important as a
natural ornament of lanes and field-borders, is the dewberry, or
evergreen blackberry. It is very abundant on the edges of woods, where
the trees are thin and scattered, and in pastures covered with low
shrubs, where it may be recognized by its small, elegant, and shining
leaves. These in protected situations remain green all winter, becoming
slightly impurpled as spring advances. The dewberry covers with its
close network of trailing branches the virgin turf which has been left
undisturbed in the borders of lanes and wood-paths. When the soil has
been repeatedly turned by the plough, this little inhabitant of the
primitive sods gives place to a larger species, that trails in a similar
manner upon the ground, and bears an excellent fruit.
The only native species of bramble which is admired for the beauty of
its flowers, but not so common in fields and lanes as in old gardens, is
the flowering raspberry. It is so called from the size of its large
crimson flowers with a yellow disk, resembling a dark red single rose.
The leaves of this species are not pinnate, like the leaves of other
species of bramble, but palmate, resembling the leaf of the striped
maple. We sometimes find it in a shady nook, concealing itself under a
stone-wall, and seldom in company with other shrubs. The delicacy of its
habit unfits it to contend with its more hardy congeners, and it is soon
driven away from its retreat by the ingress of other species.
I have not yet spoken of the grapevine, which, if not very ornamental in
gardens, where its beauty is marred by excessive pruning, cannot be
surpassed in a certain kind of suggestive or relative beauty. Hence the
pleasure it affords us when we see it on the borders of woods, hanging
its purple clusters of fruit over some placid stream from the summit of
an alder, or hiding the rudeness of a neglected building with its broad
foliage. There is hardly an old road or rustic byway in the interior of
the country which is not festooned by wild grapevines, and some of the
most delightful arbors on old country roadsides are formed by these
vines, trellised upon an ancient apple-tree or drooping birch.
When a green by-road passes over a wet meadow and crosses a brook under
a natural arch formed by overhanging alders fastened together by
creeping vines, the shade afforded by this arbor is greatly heightened
by a twining canopy of clematis, or virgin’s bower, climbing over the
trees and shrubs, always keeping on the outer surface, and supporting
itself by tendrils. We often pass through copses of shrubbery completely
overspread by this vine, rendered conspicuous when in fruit by
multitudes of little silken and feathery tufts, which are far more
beautiful than its flowers. There is not much beauty in this plant, and
I attribute the interest attached to it chiefly to its poetical name and
the romantic history of the European virgin’s bower.