Wayside and Woodland Trees Part 1

Wayside and Woodland Trees.

by Edward Step.

PREFACE.

The purpose of this volume is not the addition of one more to the numerous treatises upon sylviculture or forestry, but to afford a straightforward means for the identification of our native trees and larger shrubs for the convenience of the rural rambler and Nature-lover.

The list of British arborescent plants is a somewhat meagre one, but all that could be done in a pocket volume by way of supplementing it has been done--by adding some account of those exotics that have long been naturalized in our woods, and a few of more recent introduction that have already become conspicuous ornaments in many public and private parks.

In this edition forty-eight extra plates have been added, of which twenty-four are in colours. The latter are in part reproductions of water-colour studies of flowers and fruits, and partly from photographs by a new method. For the black and white plates, the photographs, it should be explained, have been taken upon a novel plan in most cases.

This consists in photographing a deciduous tree in its summer glory, and returning to the same spot in winter and photographing the same individual, so that a striking comparison may be made between the summer and winter aspects of the princ.i.p.al species. Supplementary photographs are given, in many cases, of the bole, which exhibit the character of the bark, and should prove a valuable aid in the identification of species. Others show in larger detail the flowers or fruit, and the characteristic leaf-buds in spring.

The figures in the text have all been expressly drawn for the work with a view to showing at a glance the general character of the foliage, and in most cases the flower and fruit.

The work is divided into two sections. Part I. including those species that are generally considered to be indigenous to the British Islands, with briefer notices of the introduced species that are closely related to them. Part II. being devoted to those of foreign origin, some of them introduced so long ago that they are commonly regarded as native by those who are not botanists.

INTRODUCTORY.

There are two points of view from which to regard trees--the mercantile and the aesthetic. The former is well exemplified in Dumbied.y.k.e's advice to Jock: "Jock, when ye hae naething else to do, ye may be aye sticking in a tree; it will be growing, Jock, when ye're sleeping." The canny Scot was thinking of the "unearned increment" another generation might gather in, due to the almost unceasing activity of the vegetable cells in the manufacture of timber. The other view was expressed by "the Autocrat of the Breakfast-table" in a letter to a friend: "Whenever we plant a tree we are doing what we can to make our planet a more wholesome and happier dwelling-place for those who come after us, if not for ourselves." But, after all, it is the trees that have been planted by Nature that give the greatest pleasure apart from commercial considerations--the lonely Pine, that grows in rugged grandeur on the edge of the escarpment where its seed was planted in the crevice by the wind; the Oak that grows outside the forest, where a squirrel or a jay dropped the acorn, and where the young tree had room all its life to throw out its arms as it would; the little cl.u.s.ter of Birches that springs from the ferns and moss of the hillside. All trees so grown develop an individuality that is not apparent in their fellows of the timber forest; and however we may delight in the peace and quiet of the forest, with its softened light and cool fragrant air, we can there only regard the trees in a ma.s.s. We might, indeed, reverse the old saying, and declare that we cannot see the trees on account of the wood.

Nature and the timber-producer have different aims and pursue different methods in the making of forests, though the latter is not above taking a hint from the former occasionally. Nature mixes her seeds and sows them broadcast over the land she intends to turn into forest, that the more vigorous kinds may act as nurses, sheltering and protecting the less robust. Then comes the struggle for existence, with its final ending in the survival of the fittest. In the mean time the mixed forest has given shelter to an enormous population of smaller fry--plants, mammals, birds, and insects--and has been a delightful recreation ground for man. The timber-producer aims at so controlling the struggle for existence that the survival of the fit is maintained from start to finish. He plants his young trees in regular order, putting in nurses at intervals and along the borders, intending to cut them down when his purpose has been served. The timber trees are allowed no elbow-room, the putting forth of lateral branches is discouraged, but steady upward growth and the production of "canopy" is abetted. His aim is to get these timber-sticks as near alike as possible, free from individuality, and with the minimum of difference in girth at top and bottom of each pole. This means a thicker and longer balk of clean timber when the tree is felled and squared. The continuous canopy induces growth in the upward direction only, and discourages the weeds and undergrowth that add to the charm of the forest, but which unprofitably use up the wood-producing elements in the soil. This plan contrasts strongly with the views on planting formerly prevalent in this country, John Evelyn, for example, making a special point of giving the Oak room to stretch out its arms, "free from all inc.u.mbrances." But, then, unlike the timber-producers, Evelyn had an eye for landscape beauty, and giving an opportunity for the display of such beauty. He says: "And if thus his Majesty's forests and chases were stored, viz. with this spreading tree at handsome intervals, by which grazing might be improved for the feeding of deer and cattle under them (for such was the old Saltus), being only visited with the gleams of the sun, and adorned with the distant landscapes appearing through the glades and frequent valleys, nothing could be more ravis.h.i.+ng."

The greater the success of the forester, the more profound is the solemn stillness of the forest--and the more monotonous. In place of the natural forest, with its varied and teeming life, we have what Wordsworth called a timber factory. In the natural forest, with its mixture of many kinds of trees, the undergrowth of shrubs, and carpet of gra.s.s and weeds, the stronger trees spread out their arms in all directions, and fritter away (as the scientific forester would say) their wood-producing powers in making much firewood and little valuable timber. But the result is very beautiful, and the nature-lover can wander among it without tiring, and can study without exhausting its treasures. Emerson says: "In the woods is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of G.o.d a decorum and sanct.i.ty reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years." To the scientific forester this is all waste land, and he pleads for the "higher culture" being applied to it. With every desire that the natural resources of our country should be properly developed, we do hope that he will not be entirely successful in his efforts, and that a few of the woods and wastes of Nature's own planting may be left for the recreation of the simple folk who have not yet taken to appraising the value of everything by the price it will fetch in the market.

The trees described in this volume are the really wild growths that have lived a natural life; and though many of the photographs are from planted trees, they are such as have been allowed to grow as they would, and show the characteristic branching of the species.

A few words on the life of a tree may be welcomed here by those readers who have not made a study of botany. Although the nurseryman makes use of suckers and cuttings for the quicker multiplication of certain species, every tree in its natural habitat produces seeds and is reproduced by them. The flowering of our forest trees is a phenomenon that does not as a rule attract attention, but their fruiting or seed-bearing becomes patent to all who visit the woods in autumn. A tree has lived many years before it is capable of producing seed. The seed-bearing age is different in each species; thus the Oak begins to bear when it is between sixty and seventy years old, the Ash between forty and fifty, the Birch and Sweet Chestnut at twenty-five years. Some produce seed every year after that period is reached, others every second, third, or fifth year; others, again, bear fitfully except at intervals of from six to nine years, when they produce an enormous crop.

Most tree-seeds germinate in the spring following their maturity, but they are not all distributed when ripe. The Birch, the Elm, and the Aspen, for examples, retain their seeds until spring, and these germinate soon after they have been dispersed.

The seeds contain sufficient nutriment to feed the seedling whilst it is developing it roots and first real leaves. We can, of course, go further back in starting our observations of the life progress of the monarch of the forest. We can dissect the insignificant greenish flower of the Oak when the future seed (acorn) is but a single cell, a tiny bag filled with protoplasm. From that early stage to the period when the tree is first ripe for conversion into timber we span a century and a half, equal to two good human lives, and the Oak is but at the point where a man attains his majority. The Oak is built up after the fas.h.i.+on by which man attains to his full stature. It is a process of multiplication of weak, minute cells, which become specialized for distinct offices in the economy of the vegetable community we call a tree. Some go to renew and enlarge the roots, others to the perfecting of that system of vessels through which the crude fluids from the roots are carried up to the topmost leaf, whence, after undergoing chemical transformation in the leaf laboratory, it is circulated to all parts of the organism to make possible the production of more cells. Each of these has a special task, and it becomes invested with cork or wood to enable it to become part of the bark or the timber; or it remains soft and develops the green colouring matter, which enables it, when exposed to sunlight, to manufacture starch from carbon and water.

This is very similar to what takes place in the human organism, where the nutriment taken in is used up in the production of new cells, which are differentiated into muscle-cells, bone-cells, epidermal-cells, and so forth, building up or renewing muscles or nerves, bones or arteries; but the mechanism of distribution is different, the heart-pump doing the work of capillary attraction and gravitation. The ancients believed in the Dryads, spirits that were imprisoned in trees, and whose life was coterminous with that of the tree; and it will be seen that they had stronger physical justification for their belief than they knew.

Shakespeare relates how Sycorax, the witch-mother of Caliban, imprisoned Ariel in a tree; and Huxley finely tells us that "The plant is an animal confined in a wooden case; and Nature, like Sycorax, holds thousands of 'delicate Ariels' imprisoned in every oak. She is jealous of letting us know this; and among the higher and more conspicuous forms of plants reveals it only by such obscure manifestations as the shrinking of the Sensitive Plant, the sudden clasp of the Dionaea, or, still more slightly, by the phenomena of the cyclosis."

The tree, as we have indicated, gets its food from the air and the soil.

The rootlets have the power of dissolving the mineral salts in the soil in which they ramify; some authorities believing that they are materially helped in this respect--so far as organic matter is concerned--by a fungus that invests them with a mantle of delicate threads. However that may be, the fluid that is taken up by the roots is not merely water, but water plus dissolved mineral matter and nitrogen.

At the same time as the roots are thus absorbing liquid nutriment, the leaves, pierced with thousands of little _stomata_, or mouths, take in atmospheric air, which is compounded chiefly of the gases oxygen and carbon. The leaf-cells containing the green colouring matter (_chlorophyll_) seize hold of the carbon and release the oxygen. The carbon is then combined with the fluid from the roots by the vital chemistry of the leaves, and is circulated all over the system for the sustenance of all the organs and tissues.

The flowering of the trees varies so greatly that it can only be dealt with satisfactorily as each species is described. It may be stated, however, that all the true forest trees are wind-fertilized, and therefore have inconspicuous greenish blossoms. By true forest trees we mean those that alone or slightly mixed are capable of forming high forest. The smaller trees, such as Crab, Rowan, Cherry, Blackthorn, Hawthorn, Buckthorn, etc., belong more to the open woodland, to the common and the hedgerow. These, from their habitat, can be seen singly, and therefore can make use of the conspicuous flowers that are fertilized by insects.

WAYSIDE AND WOODLAND TREES.

PART I.

NATIVE TREES AND SHRUBS.

The Oak (_Quercus robur_).

When good John Evelyn wrote his "Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees,"

he was greatly concerned lest our "wooden walls" should diminish in strength for want of a succession of stout Oaks in our woodlands, and therefore he put the Oak in the forefront of his discourse. To-day steel and teak have largely supplanted oak in the building of our navy, and our walls of defence are no longer of wood. Yet in spite of these changes, and the consequent reduction of the Oak's importance, we must still look upon it as the typical British tree, and, regardless of its place in botanical cla.s.sifications, we shall follow the lead of our master and place it first on our list.

There is no necessity for entering upon a minute description of the botanical characters of so well known a tree. The st.u.r.dy, ma.s.sive trunk, firm as a rock; the broad, rounded outline of its head, caused by the downward sweeping extremities of the wide-spreading lower limbs; the wavy outline of the lobed leaves, and the equally distinct egg-and-cup-shaped fruit--these are characters that cannot be confused with those of any other tree, and are the most familiar objects in the landscape in most parts of our islands. To my mind, no wood is so awe-inspiring as one filled with old oaks, all so much alike, yet each with a distinct individuality. We regard with reverence a human centenarian, who may have nothing beyond his great age to commend him to us; but we think of the long period of history of which he has been a spectator, possibly an active maker of history. The huge Oak has probably lived through ten or twenty such periods. Compared with the Oak, man is but of mushroom growth. It does not produce an acorn until sixty or seventy years old, and even then it is not mature. Not till a century and a half have pa.s.sed over its head is its timber fit for use, and as a rule it is not felled under the age of two hundred years. Many trees are left to a much greater age, or we should not have still with us so many venerable specimens, and where they have not been left until partially decayed, the timber is found to be still very valuable when finally cut down. Of one of these patriarchs of the forest, cut down in the year 1810, we have figures of quant.i.ty and value from a contemporary record. It was known as the Gelenos Oak, and stood about four miles from Newport, Monmouths.h.i.+re. When felled, it yielded 2426 cubic feet of sound timber, and six tons of bark. It was bought just as it stood for 405, and the purchaser had to pay 82 for labour for stripping, felling, and converting into timber. Five men were employed for twenty days in stripping the bark and felling the tree, and after that a pair of sawyers, working six days a week, were five months cutting it up. But the bark realized 200, and the timber about 400. The timber and bark from this one tree were about equal to the average produce of three acres of oak coppice after fifteen years growth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 2._ Oak--summer.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 3._ Oak--winter.]

Full-grown oaks vary in height from sixty to one hundred and thirty feet, the difference depending upon situation; the tallest, of course, being those that have been drawn up in forests, at the expense of their branches. Trees growing freely in the open are of less height, and are made to appear comparative dwarfs by the huge proportions of the bole. In the forest this may be no more than ten feet in girth, but in isolated specimens may be as much as fifty-four feet (Cowthorpe Oak), with a much broader base. The thick rough bark is deeply furrowed in a large network pattern, which affords temporary hiding-places for insects. The branches are much given to turn and zig-zag from side to side--a character that makes them very useful in boat-building, as "knees" of various angles may be cut from them without having recourse to bending. The best knees are to be obtained from Oaks grown in the hedgerow.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Oak. A, female flower; B, male flowers.]

The Oak flowers in April or May, and the blossoms are of two distinct forms--male and female. The males are in little cl.u.s.ters, which are borne at intervals along a hanging stalk, two or three inches in length.

They are green, and therefore inconspicuous; but examined separately, they will be found to have a definite calyx, whose margin is cut into an uncertain number (4-7) of lobes. There are no petals, but attached to the sides of the calyx there are ten stamens. The female flowers are fewer, and will be found on short erect stalks above the male catkins.

Each female flower consists of a calyx, invested by a number of overlapping scales, and enclosing an ovary with three styles. The ovary is divided into three cells, each containing two seed-eggs. An acorn should therefore contain six kernels, but, as a rule, only one of the seed-eggs develops, though occasionally an acorn contains two kernels.

The overlapping scales at the base of the female flower become the rough cup that holds the acorn.

The Oak is subject to a considerable amount of variation, probably due to differences of situation, soil, etc., and some authors have sought to elevate certain of the varieties into species by giving them distinctive names. It does not appear to be certain, however, that these forms are at all constant, and they are connected by intermediate forms that make the identification of many individuals a matter of difficulty. In one of these forms (_sessiliflora_) the stalk of the acorns connecting them with the branch is very short, but the leaves have a distinct footstalk, from half an inch to an inch long. This form is more plentiful in the north and west, and is conspicuous in the Forest of Dean. A second form, known as _pedunculata_, has the leaf-stalk short or absent, the base of the leaf broad and somewhat heart-shaped, and the stalk upon which the acorns are borne very long. A third form (_intermedia_), commonly known as Durmast, has short leaf-stalks, short stalks to the acorns, and the under side of the leaf downy. _Pedunculata_ is found more on the lower hills and the sides of valleys, whilst _sessiliflora_ prefers higher ground, with a southern or western aspect.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 4._ Bole of Oak.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 5._ Flowers of Oak.]

The Oak is most abundant on clay soils, but is at its best when growing in deep sandy loam, where there is also plenty of humus. Its roots in such soil strike down to a depth of five feet, and therefore it thrives in a.s.sociation with Beech, whose roots are much nearer the surface, and whose fallen leaves supply it with humus.

The Oak is more persistently attacked by insects than any other tree.

One authority (Leunis) has tabulated the species that get their living mainly or entirely from their attacks on the foliage, timber, or bark, and they number about five hundred. With some species this warfare is waged on so extensive a scale, that in some years by early summer the Oaks are almost divested of their foliage, and a new crop of leaves becomes a necessity. But the reserve forces of the Oak are quite equal to this drain, and the tree does not appear to suffer, though a much less thorough attack would be serious to a Conifer. One of the worst of these Oak-spoilers--though it by no means restricts its energies to attacks on this tree--is the Mottled Umber Moth (_Hibernia defoliaria_), whose pretty caterpillars may be seen hanging by silken threads from the leafless twigs.

A striking Oak insect is the Stag Beetle (_Luca.n.u.s cervus_), which, in warm evenings in the south of England, may be seen flying round the Oaks, the size and antler-like jaws of the male arousing feelings of respect in the minds of those who are not acquainted with its habits.

The formidable looking "horns" are usually harmless. The beetle spends its larval stage in the wood of unhealthy Oaks, and, when mature, seeks his hornless mate among its foliage.

Perhaps the most interesting of the Oak's pensioners to the woodland rambler will be the varied forms of gall on different parts of the tree.

There is the so-called Oak-apple, of uneven surface and spongy to the touch, which certain people still wear on May 29th, in honour of Charles II.; the well-rounded hard Bullet-gall of _Cynips kollari_, the Artichoke-gall of _Cynips gemmae_, the Spangle-galls of _Neuroterus lenticularis_, so plentiful on the back of the leaf, and the Root-gall of _Biorhiza aptera_. All these galls are abnormal growths, due to the irritation set up by the Gall-wasps named, when they pierced the young tissues in order to lay their eggs in them. Where any of these galls are perforated it may be known that the Gall-wasp whose grub fed within has flown, but where there is no such perforation the grub is still within, feeding upon the flesh of the gall, or in the chrysalis stage, awaiting translation to the winged condition.

Several Oaks of foreign origin are also grown in our parks and open s.p.a.ces; among them the Holm Oak (_Quercus ilex_) whose evergreen leathery leaves have toothed or plain edges, and occasionally the lower ones develop marginal spines, whence its name of Holm or Holly Oak. It is notable for retaining its lower branches, so that its appearance, as Loudon remarks, "even when fully grown, is that of an immense bush, rather than that of a timber tree." It is a native of Southern Europe and North Africa, and appears to have been introduced about the middle of the sixteenth century. It usually attains a height of from twenty to thirty feet, but occasionally specimens are seen up to sixty feet. It has a much thinner, more even bark than that of our native Oak, and of a black colour. The long brown acorns do not ripen until the second year.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 6._ Holm Oak.]