Trees Worth Knowing Part 9

The young shoots are velvety and aromatic. The pistillate flowers, in groups of 3 to 5, are on terminal spikes]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _See page 37_

s.h.a.gBARK HICKORY IS KNOWN AND NAMED BY ITS LOOSE, STRIPPING BARK]

The flight of ba.s.swood seeds on their wing-like blades goes on throughout the winter. This alone would account for the fact that ba.s.swoods greatly outnumbered all other trees in the virgin forests of the Ohio Valley. The seeds are not the tree's sole dependence. Suckers grow up about the stump of a tree the lumberman has taken, or the lightning has stricken. Any twig is likely to strike root, and any cutting made from a root as well.

The finest specimen I know grew from a walking-stick cut in the woods and thrust into the ground, by a mere chance, when the rambler reached home. It is the roof tree of a mansion, tall enough to waft its fragrance into the third-story windows, and to reach high above the chimney pots.

The range of this tree extends from New Brunswick to Dakota and south to Virginia and Texas. Its wood is used for carriage bodies, furniture, cooperage, paper pulp, charcoal, and fuel.

=The Bee Tree, or White Ba.s.swood=

_T. heterophylla_, Vent.

The bee tree or white ba.s.swood of the South has narrower leaves than the species just described, and they vary in form and size; but always have linings of fine, silvery down, and the fruits are fuzzy. A wonderful, dazzling play of white, pale green, and deeper shades is seen when one of these trees flutters its leaf ma.s.s against a background, sombre with hemlocks and an undergrowth of rhododendron.

The favorite haunts of this species are the sides of mountain streams.

Wild bees store their h.o.a.rd of honey in the hollow trunks of old trees; and it is the favorite holiday of many country folk to locate these natural hives and despoil them. In order to do this the tree must come down, and the revenge of the outraged swarm is sometimes a high price to pay for the stolen sweets.

This linden is found from Ithaca, New York, southward along the Appalachian Mountains to northern Alabama, and westward into Illinois and Tennessee. It is best and most abundant in the mountains of eastern Tennessee and North Carolina, at a considerable alt.i.tude.

=The Downy Ba.s.swood=

_T. p.u.b.escens_, Ait.

The downy ba.s.swood has leaves that are green on both sides, but its young shoots and leaf-linings are coated with rusty hairs. It is a miniature throughout of the American ba.s.swood, except that the blade that bears the flower-cl.u.s.ter is rounded at its base, while the others taper narrowly to the short stem. This species occurs on Long Island, and is sparingly seen along the coast from the Carolinas to Texas.

=The Common Lime=

_T. vulgaris_

"Unter den Linden," the famous avenue in Berlin, is planted with the small-leaved common lime of Europe, beside which the American ba.s.swood is a coa.r.s.e-looking tree. Very disappointing docked trees they are, along this thoroughfare; for city streets are never places where a tree can reach its best estate. In the rural sections of France and Germany this tree reaches n.o.ble stature and great age.

Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist, had his name from a fine linden tree, when his peasant father rose to the dignity of a surname. "Linn" is the Swedish word for linden. "Carl Linne," meaning "Charles of the linden tree," it was at first when he played as a boy in the shadow of its great branches. "Carolus Linnaeus" he became when he was appointed professor of the university at Upsala, and through all time since.

Gerarde discourses quaintly upon the linden tree in his "Grete Herball" published in England in 1597. "The male tree," he says, "is to me unknown." We smile at his notion that there are male and female trees in this family, but we wonder at the accuracy of observation evinced by one who lived and wrote before the science of botany had any existence. Evidently Master Gerarde had a good pair of eyes, and he has well expressed the things he saw. I quote a paragraph:

"The female line, or linden tree waxeth very great and thicke, spreading forth its branches wide and fare abroad, being a tree which yieldeth a most pleasant shadow, under and within whose boughs may be made brave summer houses and banqueting arbors, because the more that it is surcharged with weight of timber and such like, the better it doth flourish. The bark is brownish, very smooth and plaine on the outside, but that which is next to the timber is white, moist and tough, serving very well for ropes, trases and halters. The timber is whitish, plaine, and without knots; yea, very soft and gentle in the cutting and handling. The leaves are smooth, greene, s.h.i.+ning and large, somewhat snipt or toothed about the edges: the floures are little, whitish, of a good savour, and very many in number; growing cl.u.s.tered together from out of the middle of the leaf: out of which proceedeth a small whitish long narrow leafe: after the floures succeed cornered sharp pointed nuts, of the bignesse of hasell nuts.

This tree seemeth to be a kinde of elme, and the people of Ess.e.x (whereas great plenty groweth by the waysides) do call it broad-leafed elme."

PART III

THE WATER-LOVING TREES

The Poplars--The Willows--The Hornbeams--The Birches--The Alders--The Sycamores, or b.u.t.tonwoods--The Gum Trees--The Osage Orange

THE POPLARS

The poplars are plebeian trees, but they have a place to fill and they fill it with credit. They are the hardy, rude pioneers that go before and prepare the way for n.o.bler trees. Let a fire sweep a path through the forest, and the poplar is likely to be the first tree to fill the breach. The trees produce abundant seed, very much like that of willows, and the wind sows it far and wide. The young trees love the sun, and serve as nurse trees to more valuable hardwoods and conifers, that must have shade until they become established. By the time the more valuable species are able to take care of themselves, the poplars have come to maturity and disappeared, for they are quick-growing, short-lived trees. The wind plays havoc with their brittle branches.

Seldom has a good-sized poplar tree any claim to beauty.

Tenacity of life, if not of fibre, belongs to the poplar tribe. Twigs strike root and the roots send up suckers from underground: cutting off these suckers only encourages them to fresh activity. The only way to get rid of the young growth that springs up about an old tree is to use the grubbing-hoe thoroughly and patiently.

Poplar blossoms, borne in catkins, show the close relations.h.i.+p between this genus and the willows. The leaves, however, are always broad and leathery, and set on long stems. Twenty-five species are known, twelve of which are American.

=The White Poplar=

_Populus alba_, Linn.

The white poplar is sometimes called the silver-leaved poplar because its dark, glossy leaves are lined with cottony nap. This sprightly contrast of light and shade in the foliage is most unusual, and very attractive in early spring; but the leaf-linings collect soot and dust, and this they carry to the end of the season--a fact which should not be forgotten by those considering the advisability of planting this tree in a city where much soft coal is burned.

The white bark of this European poplar reminds us of the birch family, though it has no silky fringe shedding from the surface. The leaves often imitate the maple in the divisions of their margins, justifying the name "maple-leaved poplar."

As a dooryard tree this species has a wider popularity than it deserves. The wind breaks the brittle branches, and when these accidents threaten its life, the tree sends up suckers which form a grove about the parent trunk, and defy all efforts to eradicate them, until the grubbing-hoe and axe have been resorted to.

=The Black Poplar=

_P. nigra_, Linn.

The Lombardy poplar, a variety of the black poplar of Europe, is a familiar tree figure along roadsides, and often marks boundary lines between farms. Each tree is an exclamation point, its branches short and numerous, rising toward the zenith. The roundish leaves that twinkle on these aspiring branches make the tree pretty and interesting when young--just the thing to accent a group of round-headed trees in a park. But not many years are attained before the top becomes choked with the mult.i.tude of its branches. The tree cannot shed this dead wood and the beauty of its youth is departed.

The trunk grows coa.r.s.e, warty, and b.u.t.tressed at the base. Suckers are thrown up from the roots. There is little left to challenge admiration. Since the tree gives practically no shade, we must believe that the first planters were attracted by its odd shape and its readiness to grow, rather than by any belief in its fitness for avenue and highway planting.

=The Cottonwood=

_P. deltoidea_, Marsh.

The cottonwood justifies its existence, if ever a tree did. On our Western plains, where the watercourses are sluggish and few and often run dry in midsummer, few trees grow; and the settler and traveler is grateful for the cottonwoods. The pioneer on the Western prairie planted it for shade and for wind-breaks about his first home. Many of these trees attain great age and in protected situations are magnificent though unsymmetrical trees, shaking out each spring a new head of bright green, glossy foliage, each leaf responsive to the lightest breeze.

"Necklace-bearing poplar," it has been called, from the fact that children find pleasure in stringing for beads the green, half-grown pods containing the minute seeds. They also delight in gathering the long, red caterpillar-like catkins of the staminate flowers, the pollen bearers, from the sterile trees. A fertile tree is sometimes counted a nuisance in a dooryard because its pods set free a great ma.s.s of cotton that collects in window screens, to the annoyance of housewives. But this seed time is soon over.

Just these merits of quick growth, prettiness, and tenacity of life, belong to the Carolina Poplar, a variety of native cottonwood that lines the streets of the typical suburban tract opened near any American city. The leaves are large and s.h.i.+ne with a varnish which protects them from dust and smoke. But the wind breaks the branches, destroys the symmetry of the tree's head, and in a few years the suburban community takes on a cheap and ugly look. The wise promoter will alternate slow-growing maples and elms with the poplars so that these permanent trees will be ready to take their places in a few years.

=The Aspen=

_P. tremuloides_, Michx.

The trembling aspen, or quaking asp, is the prettiest tree of all the poplar tribe. Its bark is gray and smooth, often greenish and nearly white. An aspen copse is one of the loveliest things in the spring landscape. In March the bare, angular limbs show green under their bark, one of the first prophecies of spring; then the buds cast their brown scales and fuzzy gray catkins are revealed. There are few shades of olive and rose, few textures of silk and velvet that are not duplicated as the catkins lengthen and dance like chenille fringe from every twig. With the flowers, the new leaves open; each blade limp, silky, as it unrolls, more like the finest white flannel than anything else. (_See ill.u.s.trations, pages 86-87._) Soon the leaves shed all of this hairy, protective coat, pa.s.sing through various tones of pink and silver on their way to their l.u.s.trous, bright green maturity. Their stems are flattened in a plane at right angles with the blade. Being long and pliant besides, they catch the breeze on blade or stem, and so the foliage is never still on the quietest of summer days. "Popple"