Trees Worth Knowing Part 16

THE SILVER BELL TREES

The silver bell tree (_Mohrodendron tetraptera_, Britt.) earns its name in May when among the green leaves the cl.u.s.tered bell flowers gradually pale from green to white, with rosy tints that seem to come from the ruddy flower-stems. A "snowdrop tree" may be eighty feet in height, in the mountains of east Tennessee and western North Carolina, but ordinarily we see it in gardens and parks as a delicate, slender-branched tree, that stands out from every other species in the border as the loveliest thing that blooms there.

Not a moment in spring lacks interest if one has a little mohrodendron tree to watch. For weeks the ruddy twigs grow ruddier by the opening of leaf and flower buds; then comes the slow fading of the flowers, when sun and rain seem to work together to bleach them into utter purity of color and texture. Gradually the white bells fade and a queer little green, tapering seed-case enlarges and ripens. Through the late summer these pale green fruits are exceedingly ornamental as the leaves turn to pale yellow.

In cultivation, the silver bell tree is hardy in the New England states, but in its native woods it grows north no farther than West Virginia and Illinois. It is easily transplanted and pruned to bush form, if one desires to keep the blossoming down where the perfection of the flowers can be enjoyed at close range.

=Snowdrop Tree=

_M. diptera_, Britt.

A second species called the snowdrop tree skirts the swamps along the South Atlantic and Gulf coast and follows the Mississippi bayous to southern Arkansas. It is smaller in stature than the silver bell tree, but has larger leaves and more showy flowers. The botanical names record the chief specific difference between the two species: this one has but two wings on its seed-cases, while the other has four. This species is hardy no farther north than Philadelphia. The flowers have their bells cleft almost to the base, whereas the bell of the other species is merely notched at the top.

THE SWEET LEAF

Two genera of trees in this country are temperate zone representatives of a tropical family which furnishes benzoine, torax, and other valuable balsams of commerce. It is easy to see that these trees are strangers from warm countries, for many of their traits are singularly unfamiliar.

=The Sweet Leaf=

_Symplocos tinctoria_, L'Her.

The sweet leaf is our sole representative of a large genus of trees native to the forests of Australia and the tropics in Asia and South America. They yield important drugs and dyestuffs, particularly in British India. But the sweet leaf is a small tree, rarely over twenty feet in height, with ashy gray bark, warty and narrowly fissured. In earliest spring its twigs are clothed with yellow or white blossoms that come in a procession and cover the tree from March until May, preceding the leaves, and breathing a wonderful fragrance into the air. The leaves are small, leathery, dark green, l.u.s.trous above, deciduous in the regions of colder winters, persistent from one to two years in the warmer part of its range. The flowers are succeeded by brown berries that ripen in summer, or early autumn. The flesh is dry about the single seed.

Horses and cattle greedily browse upon the foliage, which has a distinctly sweet taste. The bark and leaves both yield a yellow dye, and the roots a tonic from their bitter, aromatic sap.

"Horse sugar" is another local name for this little tree, which is found sparingly from Delaware to Florida, west to the Blue Ridge Mountains, and in the Gulf states to Louisiana and northward into Arkansas and to eastern Texas. It is a shade-loving tree, usually found under the forest cover of taller species, skirting the borders of cypress swamps, and climbing to elevations of nearly three thousand feet on the slopes of the Blue Ridge.

A wonderful new species of _symplocos_ has come into cultivation from j.a.pan and will enjoy a constantly increasing popularity. Its fragrant white blossoms, before the leaves, make the tree look like a hawthorn; but its unique distinction is that the racemed flowers give place to berries of a brilliant turquoise blue, which make this shrubby tree a most striking and beautiful object in the autumn when the leaves are turning yellow.

THE FRINGE TREE

Native to the middle and southern portions of the United States is a slender little tree (_Chionanthus Virginica_, Linn.), whose sister species inhabits northern and central China. Both of them cover their branches with delicate, fragrant white flowers, in loose drooping panicles, when the leaves are about one third grown. Each flower has four slender curving petals an inch long, but exceedingly narrow. In May and June the tree is decked with a bridal veil of white that makes it one of the most ethereal and the most elegant of lawn and park trees at this supreme moment of the year. Later the leaves broaden and reach six to eight inches in length, tapering narrowly to the short petioles. Thick and dark green, with plain margins, and conspicuously looped venation near the edges, these leaves suggest a young magnolia tree. Blue fruits the size of plums succeed the flowers in September, denying the magnolia theory and shading to black before they fall. The flesh is dry and seeds solitary under the thick skin of the drupe.

As in many other instances, European gardeners have led in the appreciation of this American ornamental tree. However, New England has planted it freely in parks and gardens, and popularity will follow wherever it becomes known. Its natural distribution is from southern Pennsylvania to Florida, and west to Arkansas and Texas. In cultivation it is hardy and flourishes far north of its natural range.

No garden that can have a fringe tree should be without it.

Fortunately its wood is negligible in quant.i.ty, and the temptation to chop down these trees does not come to the ignorant man with an axe.

Whoever goes to the woods in May is rewarded for many miles of tramping if he comes upon a "snow-flower tree" in the height of its blooming season, led perhaps by its delicate fragrance when the little tree is overshadowed by the deep green of the forest cover. It is an experience that will not be forgotten soon.

THE LAUREL FAMILY

The laurel family, a large group of aromatic trees and shrubs found chiefly in the tropics, includes with our sa.s.safras, laurels, and bays the cinnamon and camphor trees.

=California Laurel=

_Umbellaria Californica_, Nutt.

The California laurel climbs the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada from the forests of southwestern Oregon to the San Bernardino range near Los Angeles. "Up North" it is called pepperwood. It is a lover of wet soil, so it keeps near streams. With the broad-leaved maple it gives character to the deciduous growth near the northern boundaries of California, where it reaches eighty to ninety feet in height, and a trunk diameter of four to five feet. Sometimes it is tall, but usually it divides near the ground into several large diverging stems, forming a broad round head. In southern California, and at high elevations, it oftenest occurs as a low shrub.

The willow-like leaves, l.u.s.trous and evergreen, last often through the sixth season. Unfolding in winter or early spring, they continue to appear as the branches lengthen until late in the autumn, turning to beautiful yellow or orange and falling one by one. Beginning during the second season, they continue to drop, as new shoots loosen their hold. These leaves are rich in an aromatic oil which causes them to burn readily when piled green upon a campfire. Plum-like purple fruits succeed the small white fragrant flowers, borne in cl.u.s.ters in the axils of the leaves. The seeds germinate before the fruit begins to decay. Indeed the plantlet has attained considerable size before the acid flesh shows any signs of change.

This tree is a superb addition to the parks and gardens of the Pacific Coast. It is strikingly handsome in a land of handsome trees, native and exotic. Its wood is the most beautiful and valuable produced in the forests of Pacific North America for the interior finish of houses and for furniture. It is heavy, hard, strong, fine-grained, light brown, of a rich tone, with paler sap-wood, that includes the annual growth of thirty or forty seasons. The leaves yield by distillation a pungent, aromatic, volatile oil, and the fruit a fatty acid commercially valuable.

=The Red Bay=

_Persea Borbonia_, Streng.

Another laurel native to stream and swamp borders, from Virginia to Texas and north to Arkansas, is the red bay, whose bark, thick, red, and furrowed into scaly ridges on the trunk, becomes smooth and green on the branches. The evergreen leaves are narrowly oval, three to four inches long, bright green, polished, with pale linings. The white flowers are very minute bells borne in axillary cl.u.s.ters, succeeded in autumn by blue or black s.h.i.+ny berries, one half inch long, one-seeded, making a pretty contrast with the clear yellow of the year-old leaves and the bright green of the new ones.

This native laurel, lover of rich, moist soil, deserves the place in cultivation more commonly granted its European cousin, _Laurus n.o.bilis_, Linn., the familiar tub laurel of hotel verandas in the Northern states, and much grown out of doors in southern California and in milder climates east. The tree is occasionally sixty to seventy feet high, with trunk two to three feet in diameter. Such specimens furnish the cabinet-maker and carpenter with a beautiful, bright red, close-grained wood for fine interior finish and furniture. Formerly it was used in the construction of river boats, but the timber supply is now very limited.

=The Avocado=

_P. gratissima_, Gaertn.

In Florida and southern California the avocado or alligator pear is being extensively cultivated. This laurel grows wild in the West Indies, Brazil, Peru, and Mexico. Its berry attains the size of a large pear. It has been developed in several commercial varieties, all having smooth green or purple skin, and soft oily pulp like marrow surrounding a single gigantic seed. It is usually cut in two like a melon and eaten raw as a salad dressed with vinegar, salt, and pepper.

Once a stranger acquires the taste, he is extremely fond of this new salad fruit. The growing of the trees is easy and very profitable. At present the fruits are in great demand in city markets, and the prices are too high for any but the rich to enjoy this luxury.

Where a market is difficult to reach, the abundant oil is expressed from these fruits and used for illumination and the manufacture of soap. The seeds yield an indelible ink.

It is interesting to the student of trees to note how many tropical families have representation in North America, due to the fact that Florida extends into the tropics, and the West Indies seem to form a sort of bridge over which Central American and South American species have reached the Floridian Keys and the mainland.

=The Sa.s.safras=

_Sa.s.safras_, Karst.

The sole remnant of an ancient genus is the aromatic sa.s.safras familiar as a roadside tree that flames in autumn with the star gum and the swamp maples. In the deep woods it reaches a height of more than a hundred feet and is an important lumber tree. In the arctic regions and in the rocky strata of our western mountains, fossil leaves of sa.s.safras are preserved, and the same traces are found in Europe, giving to the geologist proofs that the genus once had a much wider range than now. But no living representative of the genus was known outside of eastern North America, until the report of a recently discovered sa.s.safras in China.

The Indians in Florida named the sa.s.safras to the inquiring colonists who came with Columbus. They explained its curative properties, and its reputation traveled up the Atlantic seaboard. The first cargo of home products s.h.i.+pped by the colonists back to England from Ma.s.sachusetts contained a large consignment of sa.s.safras roots. To-day we look for an exhibit of sa.s.safras bark in drug-store windows in spring. People buy it and make sa.s.safras tea which they drink "to clear the blood." "In the Southwestern states the dried leaves are much used as an ingredient in soups, for which they are well adapted by the abundance of mucilage they contain. For this purpose the mature green leaves are dried, powdered (the stringy portions being separated), sifted and preserved for use. This preparation mixed with soups gives them a ropy consistence and a peculiar flavor, much relished by those accustomed to it. To such soups are given the names _gombo file_ and _gombo zab_." (_Seton._)

Emerson says that in New England a decoction of sa.s.safras bark gave to the housewife's homespun woolen cloth a permanent orange dye. The name "Ague Tree" originated with the use of sa.s.safras bark tea as a stimulant that warmed and brought out the perspiration freely for victims of the malarial "ague," or "chills and fever."

Sa.s.safras wood is dull orange-yellow, soft, weak, light, brittle, and coa.r.s.e-grained, but it is amazingly durable in contact with the soil, as the pioneers learned when they used it to make posts and fence rails. It is largely used also in cooperage, and in the building of light boats. Oil of sa.s.safras distilled from the bark of the roots is used for perfuming soaps and flavoring medicines.

With all its practical uses listed above, we must all have learned to know the tree if it grows in our neighborhood, and if we observe it closely, month by month throughout the year, we shall all agree that its beauty justifies its selection for planting in our home grounds, and surpa.s.ses all its medicinal and other commercial offerings to the world.

In winter the sa.s.safras tree is most picturesque by reason of the short, stout, twisted branches that spread almost at right angles from the central shaft, and form a narrow, usually flat, often unsymmetrical head. The bark is rough, reddish brown, deeply and irregularly divided into broad scaly plates or ridges. The branches end in slim, pale yellow-green twigs that are set with pointed, bright green buds, giving the tree an appearance of being thoroughly alive while others, bare of leaves, look dead in winter.

What country boy or girl has not lingered on the way home from school to nibble the dainty green buds of the sa.s.safras, or to dig at the roots with his jack-knife for a sliver of aromatic bark?

As spring comes on the bare twigs are covered with a delicate green of the opening leaves, brightened by cl.u.s.ters of yellow flowers (_see ill.u.s.tration, page 150_) whose starry calyxes are alike on all of the trees; but only on the fertile trees are the flowers succeeded by the blue berries, softening on their scarlet pedicels, if only the birds can wait until they are ripe.