The dogwood berries are redder than the whorl of leaves that surround the fruit clusters in early October. These waxy berries have taken the place of the central cluster of small flowers, which were surrounded in spring by the four large, white bracts.

It is the birds who first accept the invitation of these little trees. The migrating hosts turn southward in September, and in October the bird procession is in full swing. We hear them overhead, often so high in air that we cannot see them. Tired of the long flight, they descend for food and water, and if the neighbourhood has many fruiting dogwood trees, the joy of the winged voyagers is correspondingly great. In a surprisingly short time the hungry birds have taken the last one.

Far in the winter we shall find red berries glowing in clusters on the mountain ash trees, among the evergreen holly leaves, and in conical spikes on the sumachs. The winter birds ignore these dry, insipid seeds, until everything else is gone. Frequently, when winter snows cover up all other foods, the berries of these two trees stand between the birds and actual starvation. So it happens that many a mountain ash is stripped of its fruit during the early days of March, and the holly berries which have glowed red all winter disappear for the same reason. The sumachs are rarely stripped as closely as the other two.

In September the hackberry hangs full of its sugary fruits. It is surprising to find a tree which looks like an elm, yet bearing soft, purple berries. But this, we shall learn, is the hackberry’s way. Under each leaf a long thread grows, on the end of which is a single, oblong berry, the size of a pea, but not the same shape. The fruit hangs on late into the winter, if the birds will permit such a thing, and it is a grateful supply of food to birds that winter in the North. If there were no other reason for planting hackberry trees, they are worth having as fruit trees for the refreshment of birds.

The autumn colour of hackberry leaves is yellow. The purple fruits make little show, until the leaves fall. The bark of the tree is its chief peculiarity. On the trunk it is deeply checked into small, thick, warty plates. The branches are often ridged and broken into warty excrescences that stand close together.

The leaves are peculiar. There is no other tree that has not a main vein, or a rib, which prolongs the leaf stem straight to the tip. The hackberry leaf stem divides into three equal branches at the base. The two side branches are shorter than the middle one, but their size is unusual.

It is in autumn, of course, that the hackberry earns its name, sugarberry. The bark will guide us to the tree at any season. The leaves fix in mind another important family trait. The berries we may safely taste to find out if they are as sugary as we are led to expect.

Nettle tree is the common name of the European hackberry. You may have read of the lotus-eaters, who, tasting the sweet fruit of this little tree, straightway forgot their native land, and could not be persuaded to return. The wood is tough and peculiarly adapted to make the handles of hayforks, and similar agricultural implements. Young trees are grown for these uses. The roots remain alive and send up suckers, slender but tall. These are cut for walking sticks, whipstocks, and ramrods for guns. Older trees furnish wood, as hard as box or holly, and beautiful as satinwood when polished. This is a material which the wood-carvers delight to use. The tree is widely planted for shade, and its leaves are used as fodder for cattle.

Bad as its reputation is, according to the tradition that its fruit had power to rob men of their patriotism, yet this is one of the most useful little trees. It grows easily, and is contented on land that is worthless for other purposes.

Besides the hackberry, another big tree in our woods bears a crop of purple berries in September. That is the wild black cherry. The bark of this tree is dark brown and shining, and satiny smooth on the branches. It breaks on the trunk into rough, squarish plates, which curl horizontally at the edges. The plates still retain the silky outer bark, whose fibres run crosswise, and whose surface has many slit-like, horizontal breathing holes.

We are strongly reminded of the birches, especially the cherry birch, which has dark-coloured bark, and has its name from its resemblance to this tree. The thin young bark of the black cherry curls in a very birch-like fashion. One difference is very marked. The bark of the cherry is bitter, with the flavour of the pit of a peach or cherry. Birch bark is pleasantly aromatic in flavour.

The fruit of the black cherry is more plentiful than that of the hackberry. The close-set side shoots on the new twigs end in fruit clusters two or three inches long, and often containing a dozen berries each. The sweet pulp is flavoured with the bitter taste of cherry pits, a flavour found in the sap of this tree. Nibble the bark, or a bit of cherry wood, a leaf, or the tip of the root, and you get the same Prussic acid taste.

I do not like wild black cherries, but many people do. Children and birds seem not to notice the bitter with the sweet. They eat the berries as soon as they change colour, with evident enjoyment.

Cherry brandies and cordials are made from the fruit by people who rely upon old-fashioned home remedies. These are the people who chew the bitter opening buds of the wild cherry in spring, as they drink sassafras tea, believing that spring is the time to clear the blood, and that Nature offers free remedies far better than they can buy in bottles.

We cannot wonder that wild cherry trees spring up in the woods, in fence corners, and along roadsides. The birds are feasting in the trees each autumn, and until the last berry is taken. They are the sowers of the seed.

Our greatest objection to the wild cherry is the fact that its shining young leaves are regarded by the apple tree tent caterpillars as particularly good. When the white blossom clusters deck this tree in May, we often see a web of white silk wrapping together some of the upper branches. Day by day the web is extended, and the twigs are stripped of their leaves by the host of caterpillars which return at night to the tent, and range more widely in the day time. When the tent is as large as a peach basket, it is found empty, for the caterpillars have descended to the ground, spun their cocoons, and will soon emerge as winged moths, to lay their eggs, from which later broods of caterpillars come. The winged females are very likely to seek the nearest orchard, and lay their eggs in bands around apple twigs. Many an otherwise harmless roadside wild cherry is a deadly menace to an orchard because it breeds the insects, which, in a second generation, become a serious pest among the apple trees.

In the forest the lumberman is glad to find wild black cherry trees of large size. The lumber is very valuable for interior finish of houses, and for furniture. It is hard, and close-grained, and dark reddish-brown in colour, with a lustre, when polished, that puts it in the class with mahogany and rosewood. It is more often used nowadays as a veneer on cheaper woods. Parlour cars and steamships, and fine houses are very often finished in cherry. The small limbs and other bits of the lumber are utilised for tool handles and for inlay work. The wood is too valuable to waste.

The largest berry that grows on a tree in the woods of the United States is the persimmon. We should mistake this berry for an apple, perhaps, when we see it for the first time—a little, orange-brown apple, one to two inches in diameter. But there is no core such as apples have, though there are from one to a dozen seeds in each fruit.

The persimmon tree is tall, with a handsome round head, and zig-zag, twisted branches. It grows from Rhode Island west to Kansas and south to Florida and Texas. It is found scattered in mixed woods, and comes up in fence rows and in abandoned fields wherever the seeds have been dropped. Light, sandy soil is this tree’s preference. Although it is a relative of the ebony of Ceylon, our persimmon is not an important lumber tree. Its wood is hard, dark-brown in colour, and is used for shoe lasts, tool handles, and various other small articles.

In the South the persimmon ranks among the choicest of fruit trees. The negro and the possum await the ripening of the ’simmons with eager eyes, and the Southerner, born and bred, confesses an equal interest in this native fruit. There is a long waiting period between the time when the persimmons change colour from green to reddish-yellow and the time when the frost mellows and sweetens the pulp, and takes away the harsh, puckery taste which draws the lips and chokes the throat as if the fruit were a lump of alum. The Northerner who judges by its appearance only, dares to taste this fruit before it is ripe. He cannot be persuaded to try it again. And he cannot understand the enthusiasm for persimmons that all people in the South feel.

A ’simmon tree, when the fruit is ripe, belongs to the first comer. The negro and the opossum come into direct competition for the fruit of this tree. You might think the negro would kill the opossum, and be rid of his rival. He knows too much for that. “’Possum an’ ’simmons come together, and bofe is good fruit.” Better divide the ’simmons with the ’possum and his family. Then get the fat ’possum for the Christmas dinner. There is no ’possum like the one that is fattened on persimmons, so it pays to be patient and leave the beast his share of the fruit.

In a hollow tree, or a woodpile, the opossums sleep by day, and trail out in companies to climb the persimmon trees at night to feast. They hang by their tails on the branches, or prop themselves in crotches of the limbs within easy reach of the soft, sugary berries. The fatter they get, the lazier they are; and as the season advances, and the fruit falls, the opossums are likely to satisfy their appetites with the persimmons they can pick up under the trees. Along about Thanksgiving day, or Christmas, the day of reckoning arrives, when the negro hunter comes home with the opossums which have stolen his persimmons. The whole score is wiped out by the opossum feast, which suitably closes the season.

Persimmons improve, the longer they hang upon the trees. As late as January or February, little trees scarcely a dozen feet high, which have been overlooked in the ’simmon harvest, are found to be still hung with fruits exceptionally large and fine. To the hungry and thirsty hunter, prowling for quail in the underbrush, these unexpected fruits are a delightful surprise. They are delicious, sugary lumps, rich in flavour, and juicy, taking away both hunger and thirst, and leaving no after-taste that is bitter or puckery, suggesting their unripe stage.

Japanese persimmon trees, whose fruit is larger and better in every respect than our native species, have been successfully introduced into California and the Southern states. These persimmons look like great ripe tomatoes as we see them on the fruit stands, but these, too, must wait until they are thoroughly ripe before they are fit to eat.

THE CHANGING COLOUR OF THE AUTUMN WOODS

All through the autumn, when the wonderful colours come in the forest leaves, we shall see the green of these leaves creeping back along the veins. The horse chestnut leaves tell a very interesting story. They turn brown first upon the edges. If we watch a single leaf for a whole week in September, we may see the green gradually draw in towards the central stem, and the brown papery borders widen, just as if something were squeezing and crowding the pulp of the leaf, inch by inch, back through the leaf stem into the twig. The last traces of green linger along the sides of the veins, and before it falls, even these leaf channels will be drained dry.

When the leaves of a sugar maple give up their pulp there are wonderful changes inside each leaf. A yellow liquid fills the cells where the green pulp used to be. Chemical changes in the mineral substances deposited in the leaf cells produce wonderful shades of red and yellow, which glow where once the leaf was solid green. Iron is one of the minerals brought up in the soil water, left in the leaf, and changed to produce the bright red when the leaf mask of green is taken away.

The scarlet maple remembers its name in the autumn days. It puts on a cloak more brilliant perhaps than the sugar maple, which has a good deal of orange as well as red in its autumn foliage. The scarlet oak is amazingly brilliant; so is the sassafras and the sweet gum. The tupelo, or sour gum, also called the pepperidge, has foliage that is splashed and streaked with various shades of red and yellow. Each little leaf is so brilliantly polished that the tree’s beauty and colour seem to be doubled by reflection. The sumachs of the roadside thickets wear foliage of scarlet, each leaf drooping away from the fruit pyramid which rises, a deeper crimson, on the end of each upright shoot. The foliage and the fruit together make a colour harmony that is dazzling, indeed.

In contrast with its umbrellas of red leaves are the scarlet berry clusters of the flowering dogwood. This tree has the habit of snuggling up against the trunk of large forest trees and reaching its white flowery arms out to us in spring. How wonderful they are, on the edge of the woods, with the green leaves of the larger trees making a background for their flowers! In the autumn the same surprise awaits us, when under a towering tree with yellow or russet foliage, the dogwood leaps up like a scarlet flame, against its dark background, holding straight out its platformed branches of red leaves, tipped with berries, like rubies, set on the upturned twigs.

Often the trees are stripped by birds before the berries are ripe. It is in woods where the trees are numerous that we shall find the fruit reaching its perfection of ripeness and colour.

Among the trees that turn to purple in the autumn we may name the white oak and the ashes. Many oaks turn from green to russet, without showing any red or yellow. The lindens and the tulip trees and the beeches turn yellow; so do the poplars and willows, the hickories, and walnuts. Up and down the street you may see the yellow crowns of the silver and the Norway maples, and on the lawns the white birches have also turned to gold. The deepest red is on the black and red oaks. The brightest red is on the scarlet oak.

It is not fair to charge Jack Frost with all the gay colours of the autumn woods. Perhaps I should say, rather, that he does not deserve all the credit people give him for painting the landscape with the sunset glories of the dying leaves. The cause is the ripening of the leaves themselves, as I have already explained. Frost may hasten the process, but if a heavy freeze comes in September, before the leaves have coloured, we lose our chance for autumn colouring that year. The leaves drop as if scalded, and the trees lose their leaf pulp, which they had expected to withdraw and save for future use. A long dry autumn of warm days and mildly frosty nights produces the finest succession of colours.

Countries that have a more moist, warm climate than ours, do not have the vivid autumn colours that we enjoy. England, and the countries of Western Europe, are like our West coast in lacking the colour changes that make October for us the most glorious month of the year. Our New England woodlands and the forests of Canada are matched in brilliancy by the wooded slopes of the Swiss Alps, and the forests along the Rhine and the Danube. In our Southern states there is little or no change that comes to the foliage towards the end of the year. The leaves on the trees of Florida are lazy in falling. They wait until pushed off by the swelling buds in early spring. Many trees that shed their leaves promptly each autumn in the Northern states, gradually become evergreen in the Southern parts of their range. The longer a tree carries its leaves, the more battered and worn they become. A tree with fresh, new leaves mingling with old ones is not a pleasant object, at least to Northern eyes. This is the way most trees in the South look in spring.

If we should travel the world over, and see the trees of many lands, in spring, in summer, in autumn, and in winter, I believe we should all come back to the clean, beautiful mixed woods of our north temperate zone, and declare that these woods are the most beautiful in the world. In the dead of winter, they are budded full of promise. We learn to love them as well in this period of rest as we do in the beauty of their spring flowers, or in the glory of their autumn colouring, or in the steady growth of summer.

Each leaf is nurse to a bud that is growing between its base and the twig. Find these little buds on any tree with broad leaves. A part of all the food that passes that way stops to feed this growing bud; and in the late summer the twig provides for the future welfare of all its buds. The thrifty tree withdraws the green pulp from its leaves, before it lets them fall. A store of starch is put away in the twig, close to each bud. This is the food supply which will be used in the spring to enable the bud to open and spread its young leaves, or its flowers, in a surprisingly short time.

When the worn-out leaf has been drained of all of its pulp, the tree lets it go. It has done its work, and given up its pulp to be stored in the twig for future use. It seems as if the tree knows that, with the coming of cooler weather, growth must stop; that the tender leaves must die when frost overtakes them. So it is a frugal habit to save all of the good green leaf pulp, and to cast off only the dry leaf skin.

TREE STUDIES IN THE WINTER

TREES WE KNOW BY THEIR BARK

Hunters and foresters who spend much of their time in the woods learn to know trees by name through long acquaintance. In the dead of winter, the framework of a tree may be enough to recognise it by. Where trees are crowded, this sign is not to be depended upon. The bark is often a guide to the tree’s name. The forester will tell you that the bud is the surest sign of all. The bark is one of the best signs.

It is not the easiest thing in the world to learn to know trees by the bark alone. To the beginner, so many trees with dark, furrowed bark look strangely alike, although the trees are not even related to each other. The foresters began with trees that have peculiar and easily recognised bark. So we shall begin here, and hope that the hard cases will gradually become easier.

Every tree wears a garment of bark from the ground up to the utmost twigs. The thinnest bark is on the youngest branches. The thickest is on the trunk.

Begin with the white birch upon the lawn. The bark of this tree is made of thin layers; the outer one shining like white satin. It breaks and tatters, and peels off around the trunk. Three-cornered patches of black are found under each branch, and others on the trunk show where branches once came out, but were broken or cut off.

Do you notice narrow, horizontal slits of different lengths on the birch bark? These are breathing holes that let the air in to the layer under the bark. Spongy, porous substance fills these slits, but allows the air to pass through. At the lower part of the trunk the satiny outer bark is shed, leaving dark under layers, rough and checked into irregular blocks. As the tree grows older, the trunk becomes rougher and darker, but the branches always show the kind of bark that the little tree wore.

In the Northern woods the white bark of the canoe birch is stripped from the trees in layers as thick as sole leather. Out of these the Indians once made their bark canoes. Now the same material is used for making all manner of trifling souvenirs to sell to tourists. A square of this thick bark, cut on the smooth side of a trunk, may be split into a great number of thin sheets. This the camper uses to write letters upon, and it is a beautiful and fitting substitute for note paper, when one is camping out.

It is a great pity that so many beautiful trees are girdled and killed to supply the needs of camping parties. If the bark were stripped but part way around it would not kill the tree.

The yellow birch has a silvery yellow tint in the outer bark, which curls back in ragged ribbons until the tree gets old. The red birch writes its name in the rusty red colour of its papery bark, which splits into tatters in true birch fashion, and flutters the ragged ends from each branch throughout the year. The black birch has no tattered ribbons flying, but wears a close, smooth, black bark, with the narrow slits that all birches show. As the trunks grow larger the surface checks into irregular plates, separated by furrows. It is called the cherry birch, for the bark is like that of cherry trees.

The sycamore has bark which is different from that of every other tree. Indeed, it is by the bark that we recognise this tree. The tall trunk looks as if it were blotched and streaked and spattered with whitewash, from the trunk to the topmost limb. The bark is continually dropping off in thin, irregular plates, leaving smooth whitish patches of an under layer exposed. After sycamore trees grow older, the bark of the lower portion of the trunk stops shedding. Fine-checked plates of rusty brown cover this oldest portion. But even on the oldest and largest trees, the pale blotches are seen in the branches and we shall never mistake the name of the tree.

The shagbark is one of the rugged and shaggy trees that boys find hard to climb without tearing their clothes into tatters. The bark gives the tree its name. Thin, narrow plates, close-woven and tough as sole leather, seem to be attached very loosely to the body of the tree, but if you try to pull off these narrow strips, you find their hold is very firm. Often they are attached at the middle, and spring out at both ends.

An old shagbark tree is a picturesque figure, as it lifts its bare arms up toward the wintry sky. The trunk is straight, but the branches are full of angles. Yet, with all their rigidity, these limbs have an expression of strength, if not of grace, and the tree’s head is usually symmetrical, and always full of character.

A young hickory has smooth, close-knit bark like that on the branches of the older trees. Gradually the growing trunk becomes furrowed, and the peculiar splintering and splitting of the bark is seen only in trees six inches or more in diameter. By the time the tree is old enough to bear nuts, it has built itself a formidable fence that boys must climb over with much hard work and many a scratch, to get up among the branches and shake down the nuts.

Left: Warty bark of hackberry
Center: Silky bark of black birch
Right: Close, sinewy bark of hornbeam

The tasteless pignuts grow on a smooth-barked hickory tree, very easy to climb, but the bark of the little shellbark hickory is the guide-post that leads to the trees where the sweet-flavoured hickory nuts grow.

The close-knit, grey bark of beech trees hardly needs to be described. The temptation to cut initials on beech trunks is more than folks with pocket-knives can resist. No matter how many fine trees there are in a beech grove near town, they are scarred all over with letters and hieroglyphics as far as hand can reach. The tree never covers these wounds. Though they do not cripple it, they mar its beauty painfully.

A little further from the haunts of picnic parties, we shall come upon beech woods that have not thus been abused by thoughtless jack-knives. From the ground, far up into the high tops, a close, beautiful garment of ashy grey bark clothes the tree. Saplings of all ages grow up among the big trees, for beeches grow in colonies. A soft radiance from these many pale tree trunks seems to lighten the woods paths, overshadowed by the dense foliage of the tree tops.

It is said that beech trees die when they come into contact with civilisation. Fine beech woods are included in additions to towns; you will see the great trees die when lawns and gardens are made about their roots. In the outskirts of Indianapolis there are noble beech trees, but they are dying, as the city grows around them.

The copper beeches and the cut-leaved and weeping beeches have the same close-knit bark as our native tree, but it is not grey, but dark brown. These fancy forms are varieties of the European beech, one of the principal lumber trees of the Old World.

The bark of this tree played an interesting part in the early history of the human race. Long before the European tribes had written languages, they sent messages from one to another. These messages between tribes, friendly or warlike, were written in hieroglyphics, cut into the smooth surface of beech bark, and messengers carried them back and forth.

Sheets of beech bark, as well as birch, made the walls and roofs of the huts in which people lived. Their boats and various household utensils were made out of beech wood, which is so close-grained that vessels made of it hold water without leaking.

Another American tree with bark like the beech, but darker grey, grows always, by preference, with its roots in wet soil. It is a little tree, with rigid, horizontal twigs, that form a flat tree top. This is called the blue beech, and its trunk does often have a bluish cast. It is also called hornbeam, for its wood is so hard that it was used in the early days to make the beams which went across the horns of the oxen. This is the part of the ox yoke which is the most subject to wear. Ironwood is another name that describes the hard wood.

We shall notice that this tree has not a regular cylindrical trunk like that of a beech. Strong swellings, that look like muscles, are seen, especially where the trunk branches into the main limbs. Have you ever noticed the arms of a blacksmith, or of an athlete? How the veins and muscles stand out when the arm is in use! Just like them are the irregular swellings that course up the trunk of the hornbeam, and out into the limbs.

The hackberry is a handsome shade tree, which might, at first glance, be mistaken for an elm. The bark is different from that of any other tree. Once we see a hackberry, and learn its name, we will never mistake it again. The bark is light brown or grey, and finely checked by deep furrows. The ridges between bear strange, warty outgrowths. Look for these warts among the small branches. The twigs are smooth, but back a little way the warty eruptions begin, and become more prominent as the limbs thicken and approach the trunk. Sometimes the limbs have these warts so close together as to form continuous ridges.

Another tree with warty bark is the sweet gum. The negroes of the South call the tree “alligator wood,” because the lower part of the trunk is broken by furrows and cross-furrows into horny plates like the skin of an alligator. From the red-brown trunk up into the grey branches, there is a change in the character of the bark. The fissures usually run lengthwise, and the bark rises in thin ridges on each side of the fissure. These ridges become thin as knife blades on the smaller twigs, which also have a sprinkling of small warts.

A sweet gum is very rugged looking in the dead of winter, with its warts and ridges breaking out on each limb. We know it by this sign alone, but are doubly sure when we see the seed balls dangling from the twigs. The sycamore, blotched with white on trunk and limb, also carries a load of dangling seed balls throughout the winter. There is no danger of confusing these two trees, for the bark of each is so distinct.

A little tree with alligator skin bark grows North and South, and chiefly in the eastern half of the country. This is the flowering dogwood, whose grey bark breaks into small squarish plates. There is no such ruggedness in its trunk as there is in the sweet gum’s, for it is always a little tree, and the bark corresponds in its checking to the tree’s size. When we see this peculiar type of bark in the winter woods we may look also for little flattened, box-like flower buds, each enclosed in four scales. We shall also find the twigs set opposite, and with these three signs be sure we know the tree.

A little tree, no larger in girth than the dogwood, but often taller, has bark that strips and loosens somewhat as the bark of the shagbark hickory does. This is the hop hornbeam, one of the ironwoods. Its bark strips are always thin and narrow, no matter how old the tree becomes. It is never as loose upon the trunk as the shagbark’s. The great buds and stout twigs of the hickory are entirely different from the slender spray and the very small buds this ironwood wears in winter. We may find on these twigs some remnant of the hop-like seed clusters which give this little tree its name, hop hornbeam. Inside its shaggy bark the lumbermen find wood so hard that it is very difficult to work, and when made into tools it lasts almost forever.

When we have learned to know at sight a dozen trees by their bark alone, we are ready to go further. A great many trees with furrowed bark like chestnuts and elms and maples, are not so distinct as those already learned, and we must study the tree’s form, its winter buds, the arrangement of these buds, and the shape of the leaf scars in connection with the bark, in order to be sure we know the tree’s name. The chestnut from which we gathered so many nuts last fall, and whose furrowed trunk we saw at every visit, we come to know through this familiarity. The trunks of other chestnut trees look like this one, and though we may not know just how we do it, we have added the chestnut to the list of trees we recognise by their bark alone. The sugar maples which we tap in spring for their sugary sap, have dark, furrowed bark, not very distinctive. And yet, by going from tree to tree, emptying the sap pails, we gradually learn to recognise the bark of the sugar maple, and add it to our growing list.

Trees do not change their clothes, and they do not move away. Day after day, if we use our eyes and notice what is going on in the tree tops, as the seasons follow each other, we come to know our trees by name; we recognise them in winter by their bark, and by the framework of their tops, in summer by leaves and flowers, in autumn by their changing colour and by their fruits. It is not hard work for those who love trees. It is like getting acquainted with other neighbours whom we are glad to count among our friends.

TREES WE KNOW BY THEIR SHAPES

The life of every tree depends upon its success in holding its leaves out into the sunlight. The tree which exposes the greatest amount of leaf surface to the sun makes the greatest growth. The shape of their tops is a character in which trees differ widely. We shall come to know many of them in winter time better than in summer, by the distinct shapes revealed when the foliage is gone. In any bare tree, the purpose of all of the branching and branching again, is plainly seen. Each twig and branch reaches out toward the outer surface of the dome, or pyramid. Here the buds in winter are waiting to open, when spring comes, into leafy shoots. These will cover the tree top with a dome of green greater than the one of the previous summer. Their work through the growing season will lengthen every branch and every root, and add a layer of wood under the bark of trunks and branches and roots.

The most remarkable tree shape is that of the Lombardy poplar. The tall trunk is clothed with many short, close-branched limbs, which do not spread, as in ordinary tree forms, but grow upright, so as to lie almost against the main trunk. The upper branches are overlapped and crowded by those below them, and so on down the trunk. The result is a tree shaped like a capital I. In summer time, the heart-shaped leaves cover the twigs on the outside of this spire, but the beauty of the tree top is marred by the dead branches which have been smothered by the crowding.

A young Lombardy poplar is handsome as it stands covered with its twinkling leaves. It grows rapidly, and is especially striking and effective in clumps of round-headed trees. It is like an exclamation point. Architects always like to have a few of these trees dotted about the grounds to keep company with tall chimneys and distant church spires. There is no shade under trees of this form, though miles of them are planted along roadsides where they stand like tin soldiers, all alike. The older trees look very ragged, for they are unable to shed their dead limbs, and as old age comes on they send up suckers from the roots that form a little forest around the parent tree.

Scattered over fallow fields of worthless ground, the red cedars are allowed to grow. They are the evergreen counterparts of the slim Lombardy poplars. Sometimes the red cedar broadens into a pyramid, wide at the base, but we are all familiar with the green exclamation points, dotted over the hillsides, wherever birds have dropped the blue berries full of seeds.

The pointed firs with their horizontal branches becoming longer and longer towards the ground, are good examples of the pyramid form so common among evergreens. This is the shape of the spruces, and the pines, and the hemlocks, until storms have broken their branches, and taken away the symmetry of the top. The pin oak and the honey locust send out horizontal branches of graduated lengths from the central shaft, imitating the evergreens in shape.

The evergreen magnolia of the South has a dome like an old-fashioned beehive, pyramidal, and regular when it grows in sheltered places. Such a dome is the hard maple’s in the North.

Some trees branch low, and their short trunks break into great limbs whose ample spread forms a dome much broader than its height. The white oak in the North and its evergreen counterpart, the live oak of the South, illustrate this noble form. Somewhat like them, but with its dome elevated upon a tall trunk, is the American elm with the fan top. The lines of the elm branches are all curves from the arching limbs that rise out of the trunk to the flexible twigs which droop at the extremities of the branches. The dome of a white oak is made of angular limbs. Even the twigs are likely to be crooked. No one would confuse the elm with an oak.

Round-headed trees are many. Go from the apple tree in the orchard to the red and Norway maples along our streets. A great many trees find this form best adapted to spreading their leaves out towards the sun. Many oaks and ash trees, the hickories and birches, and the beeches have widely spreading limbs forming tops that are oblong in shape. There are trees so irregular in habits of growth that we shall never know them by their forms alone.

The winter is the best time to study tree shapes, for then the framework is revealed. The trees to study are those which stand apart from others, so that they have been able to take their natural shapes. These we shall find growing on the streets, and in yards, and parks, and in open spaces in the woods. Where trees crowd each other in growing, their branches chafe and clash in storms, destroying the buds and leaves, and bruising the tender bark. Such limbs die of these injuries, and the whole shape of the tree top is changed by its losses.

Left: Clustered thorns on trunk of honey locust tree.
Right: Flowers and foliage of the black locust

It is hopeless for lower limbs to live in a dense pine forest. The top branches form so thick a wall of shade that lower branches die from lack of sun. It is the same with broad-leaved trees. In any dense woods, the trees stand bare as telegraph poles, lifting small heads of foliage at the top, and competing there with their neighbour trees for sun and air. It is only when set apart from other trees that a trunk can keep its lower branches hale and strong as those at the top.

The weeping habit gives us some strange tree forms. The Camperdown elm forms a shady summer-house on many a lawn by arching limbs which droop to the ground on all sides of the main trunk. The weeping mulberry has the same habit. Weeping birches and willows have such light foliage, and such fine, flexible twigs, that they look like fountains of green as they stand among the other trees.

All weeping trees are made by grafting in the nursery rows. They are not grown from seeds, and it is not true that they “weep” because of being planted up-side-down! This preposterous notion is not uncommon.

TREES WE KNOW BY THEIR THORNS

In winter time, the bare limbs of trees reveal many strange secrets, which the leaves cover up in summer. Some trees we may know by the thorns they wear.

The honey locust scarcely conceals in summer the three-branched thorns, for which it is famous. These thorns are twigs, but they rarely bear leaves. Each is sharpened to a needle point, and highly polished. Sometimes it is single, oftener with a main thorn and two side branches; sometimes short, but often reaching over a foot in length, and growing stronger and more wicked-looking with age. Sometimes a honey locust has a crowded group of these thorns growing out of the trunk and large limbs. Once in a great while a honey locust is thornless, growing wild. From such trees a thornless variety has been developed. It is, therefore, possible to obtain from nurserymen trees of this variety.

The unbranched spines of the osage orange trees make it a formidable hedge plant, and no fences are needed where green barriers of these trees grow. Each shining leaf has a spike at its base, stout and sharp as a needle, and strong as steel.

Two spines stand guard at the base of each leaf of the yellow or black locust, and each leaflet has two little spines of the same type. The basal spines remain after the leaves fall, so that in winter we shall find these pairs of sentinels guarding the leaf scars up and down the ridged twigs. On the thicker stems the thorns are larger, and the tree is thus well-armed and able to do duty as a hedge plant, when thickly planted.

These thorns come off with the bark, hence they are more properly called prickles. They are not rooted in the wood of the branch as the thorns of the honey locust are, but they belong in the class with rose and raspberry prickles, which are mere outgrowths of the bark.

The hawthorn trees have single spines, some long and curved, some short, some branched. All are rooted in the pith of the twig that bears them; therefore, they are not prickles, but true thorns.

The wild plum trees have a strange habit of ending their shoots with thorny tips, as if the branches needed such defence against browsing cattle. Certainly these stunted, sharp-pointed twigs are useful as weapons of defence to the little trees that grow slowly in poor soil, and are sufferers from poverty and abuse. Perhaps it is their hard luck that makes them crabbed and thorny. Wild apple trees show the same tendency to have thorny twigs. The same little trees, transplanted to mellow soil, grow soft and leafy twigs, and abandon the carrying of weapons.

Hercules’ club is a tree which beats the ailanthus at its own game. Stems ten feet high and two inches in diameter at the base sometimes shoot up in a single season. These clubs of Hercules are covered with spines as thickly set as on a gooseberry bush, formidable and vicious, though only skin deep.

On account of its tropical growth, this tree is planted for ornament in gardens where there is room. Its leaves are wonderful. They come out with a rich, silky, bronze sheen in spring, and when they reach full size are often four feet long, and more than half as wide. Each one is branched and branched again, and ends in a multitude of small oval leaflets. These giant leaves sway in the summer winds, giving the tree the grace of a tree fern. In late summer a great pyramid of bloom rises above the foliage. Purplish berries, which succeed the flowers, make a fine showing in fall and winter, when the leaves have turned to red and gold.

We dare not touch this spiny tree, but we may come close and admire its wonderful crown of umbrella leaves, the biggest by far borne on any tree outside of the Tropics.

THE NEEDLE-LEAVED EVERGREENS

In our town and in our neighbourhood most of the trees drop their leaves before winter comes, and stand with bare limbs for several months. Here and there, however, a single tree stands, wearing the same green leaves it wore all summer. Everybody knows this tree as an evergreen. It belongs to a group of trees strangely different from those around it which have shed their leaves. Let us see how it differs from them.

Take the one that is nearest to you, and pull down one of its leafy, green branches. The leaves are like green needles, stiff, sharp-pointed, with waxy resin on the brown twigs, that makes your fingers sticky. Up in the tree tops strange oval, brown cones are hanging. Underfoot, a carpet of dead needles lies thick upon the grass, and cones, with their overlapping scales spread much wider than those upon the tree, lie about. Squirrels have gnawed some of these scales away, leaving a central spike like a cob from which the corn has been shelled. Little green cones, fat and waxy, no larger than your thumb, are seen near the tips of some branches. You can see the scales overlapping each other in these, even though they seem to be grown solidly together.

If we walk through the village or the city in which we live, and stop under each evergreen tree we come to, we shall find nearly all alike in these two points: they have needle-like leaves, and they have cones. The evergreens with needle-like leaves, and cones on and under them, belong to four evergreen tree families, whose names every one would like to know. These four evergreen families are named pine, spruce, fir, and hemlock, and they are planted everywhere. But few people are very sure they know one from another. It is perfectly right to call them all evergreens, or conifers, which means cone-bearers. These names include all the four families. But it is common for people to call a spruce, a pine, or a hemlock, a spruce, when the truth is that one may very easily know these trees apart.

Let us begin with the first needle-leaved cone-bearing evergreen we meet. To find out whether this tree is a pine, a spruce, a fir, or a hemlock, we must ask the tree some questions. It will answer them. First: “Are your needles set one in a place on the twig, or are they in groups, or bundles, of more than one at a place?” Pull down a twig and look sharply for the answer. Suppose there are the leaves in pairs, or in threes, or in fives, each bundle or group growing out of a single point on the twig. The answer is: “Not single, but in bundles, more than one at a place.” Towards the end of the shoot you will find a brownish or silvery sheath binding the leaves into bundles. Further back, this sheath may be missing, but the number of leaves in the bundle remains the same for some distance back from the end of the shoot. The leaves begin to fall from the bundles farthest from the tips, and therefore old. If two leaves is the number in a bundle, there are never more than two, young and old. If three is the number, you will find only threes. If five is the number, then you will rarely find fewer than this in any bundle.

All the trees with more than one leaf in a bundle are pines. All of the rest of the needle-leaved evergreens have a single leaf at a place upon the twig. They are the spruces, firs, and hemlocks. Let us go and look for them.

The very next evergreen we come to we must put the same question to: “Are your leaves single, or are there more than one in a bundle?” Suppose “three in a bundle” is the answer; we recognise the tree as a pine, and pass it by.

Across the street is a tree of different shape, though an evergreen and a conifer. We see the long cones hanging from its drooping branches, especially near the top of the tree. Cross over and examine a twig; the needles are short and sharp-pointed, and they are set singly in spiral lines on the twigs. Every leaf sits on a little shelf, or bracket, that stands out from the twig. Pick up a dead twig under the tree. The leaves are gone, but these little brackets in spiral rows wind around the twig. They are horny and sharp, and would tear your fingers if you drew the twig quickly between them.

Notice that the little brackets are angled at the top. Pick up a dead leaf and notice the shape of its base. The leaf itself has angled sides. Roll it between your thumb and finger. It has three or four sides, and at least three sharp angles.

This is a spruce, and the signs by which we know it are the brackets on the twig, the thick, sharp, three- or four-angled leaf, and the stout twigs, to match the stout leaves.

The next needle-leaved evergreen with cones we meet we may hope will turn out to be a fir or hemlock, but the chances are that its twigs will show two, three, or five needles in a bundle. What shall we call the tree? A pine, of course, and pass it by. We need ask no further question.