Read Ebook: Account of the Russian Discoveries between Asia and America To which are added the conquest of Siberia and the history of the transactions and commerce between Russia and China by Coxe William

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Dogwood Bark, Blossom, Fruit, and Buds 134

Mountain Ash Flowers and Leaves 135

Sassafras Flowers, Fruit, and Leaves 150

Foliage and Flowers of the Smooth Sumach 150-151

Buds, Leaves, and Fruit of the Wild Crabapple 150-151

Canada Plum--Flowers and Trunk 151

Wild Black Cherry--Flowers and Fruit 166

Fruiting Branch of Cockspur Thorn 167

Service-berry Tree in Blossom 182

Hackberry--Flowers, Fruit, and Leaves 183

Honey Locust's Trunk, and Black Locust's Flowers and Leaves 198

Sugar Maple 198-199

Red Maple Flowers 198-199

Seed Keys and New Leaves of Soft or Silver Maple 199

White Ash Buds and Flowers 214

A Group of White Pines 214-215

Shortleaf Pine Cones and Needles 214-215

The Sugar Pine 231

Leaves and Cones of Hemlock and of Norway Spruce 246

Black Spruce Cones and Needles 247

Spray of Arbor-vitae 262

American Larch Cones and Needles 263

INTRODUCTION

Occasionally I meet a person who says: "I know nothing at all about trees." This modest disclaimer is generally sincere, but it has always turned out to be untrue. "Oh, well, that old sugar maple, I've always known that tree. We used to tap all the sugar maples on the place every spring." Or again: "Everybody knows a white birch by its bark." "Of course, anybody who has ever been chestnutting knows a chestnut tree." Most people know Lombardy poplars, those green exclamation points so commonly planted in long soldierly rows on roadsides and boundary lines in many parts of the country. Willows, too, everybody knows are willows. The best nut trees, the shagbark, chestnut, and butternut, need no formal introduction. The honey locust has its striking three-pronged thorns, and its purple pods dangling in winter and skating off over the snow. The beech has its smooth, close bark of Quaker gray, and nobody needs to look for further evidence to determine this tree's name.

So it is easily proved that each person has a good nucleus of tree knowledge around which to accumulate more. If people have the love of nature in their hearts--if things out of doors call irresistibly, at any season--it will not really matter if their lives are pinched and circumscribed. Ways and means of studying trees are easily found, even if the scant ends of busy days spent indoors are all the time at command. If there is energy to begin the undertaking it will soon furnish its own motive power. Tree students, like bird students, become enthusiasts. To understand their enthusiasm one must follow their examples.

The beginner doesn't know exactly how and where to begin. There are great collections of trees here and there. The Arnold Arboretum in Boston is the great dendrological Noah's Ark in this country. It contains almost all the trees, American and foreign, which will grow in that region. The Shaw Botanical Garden at St. Louis is the largest midland assemblage of trees. Parks in various cities bring together as large a variety of trees as possible, and these are often labelled with their English and botanical names for the benefit of the public.

Yet the places for the beginner are his own dooryard, the streets he travels four times a day to his work, and woods for his holiday, though they need not be forests. Arboreta are for his delight when he has gained some acquaintance with the tree families. But not at first. The trees may all be set out in tribes and families and labelled with their scientific names. They will but confuse and discourage him. There is not time to make their acquaintance. They overwhelm with the mere number of kinds. Great arboreta and parks are very scarce. Trees are everywhere. The acquaintance of trees is within the reach of all.

The characters to note in studying trees are: leaves, flowers, fruits, bark, buds, bud arrangement, leaf scars, and tree form. The season of the year determines which features are most prominent. Buds and leaf scars are the most unvarying of tree characters. In winter these traits and the tree frame are most plainly revealed. Winter often exhibits tree fruits on or under the tree, and dead-leaf studies are very satisfactory. Leaf arrangement may be made out at any season, for leaf scars tell this story after the leaves fall.

Only three families of our large trees have opposite leaves. This fact helps the beginner. Look first at the twigs. If the leaves, or the buds and leaf scars, stand opposite, the tree belongs to the maple, ash, or horse-chestnut family. Our native horse-chestnuts are buckeyes. If the leaves are simple the tree is a maple; if pinnately compound, of several leaflets, it is an ash; if palmately compound, of five to seven leaflets, it is a horse-chestnut. In winter dead leaves under the trees furnish this evidence. The winter buds of the horse-chestnut are large and waxy, and the leaf scars look like prints of a horse's hoof. Maple buds are small, and the leaf scar is a small, narrow crescent. Ash buds are dull and blunt, with rough, leathery scales. Maple twigs are slender. Ash and buckeye twigs are stout and clumsy.

Bark is a distinguishing character of many trees--of others it is confusing. The sycamore, shedding bark in sheets from its limbs, exposes pale, smooth under bark. The tree is recognizable by its mottled appearance winter or summer. The corky ridges on limbs of sweet gum and bur oak are easily remembered traits. The peculiar horizontal peeling of bark on birches designates most of the genus. The prussic-acid taste of a twig sets the cherry tribe apart. The familiar aromatic taste of the green twigs of sassafras is its best winter character; the mitten-shaped leaves distinguish it in summer.

It is necessary to get some book on the subject to discover the names of trees one studies, and to act as teacher at times. A book makes a good staff, but a poor crutch. The eyes and the judgment are the dependable things. In spring the way in which the leaves open is significant; so are the flowers. Every tree when it reaches proper age bears flowers. Not all bear fruit, but blossoms come on every tree. In summer the leaves and fruits are there to be examined. In autumn the ripening fruits are the special features.

To know a tree's name is the beginning of acquaintance--not an end in itself. There is all the rest of one's life in which to follow it up. Tree friendships are very precious things. John Muir, writing among his beloved trees of the Yosemite Valley, adjures his world-weary fellow men to seek the companionship of trees.

"To learn how they live and behave in pure wildness, to see them in their varying aspects through the seasons and weather, rejoicing in the great storms, putting forth their new leaves and flowers, when all the streams are in flood, and the birds singing, and sending away their seeds in the thoughtful Indian summer, when all the landscape is glowing in deep, calm enthusiasm--for this you must love them and live with them, as free from schemes and care and time as the trees themselves."

Two Latin words, written in italics, with a cabalistic abbreviation set after them, are a stumbling block on the page to the reader unaccustomed to scientific lore. He resents botanical names, and demands to know the tree's name in "plain English." Trees have both common and scientific names, and each has its use. Common names were applied to important trees by people, the world over, before science was born. Many trees were never noticed by anybody until botanists discovered and named them. They may never get common names at all.

The abbreviation that follows a scientific name tells who first gave the name. "Linn." is frequently noticed, for Linnaeus is authority for thousands of plant names.

Two sources of confusion make common names of trees unreliable: the application of one name to several species, and the application of several names to one species. To illustrate the first: There are a dozen ironwoods in American forests. They belong, with two exceptions, to different genera and to at least five different botanical families. To illustrate the second: The familiar American elm is known by at least seven local popular names. The bur oak has seven. Many of these are applied to other species. Three of the five native elms are called water elm; three are called red elm; three are called rock elm. There are seven scrub oaks. Only by mentioning the scientific name can a writer indicate with exactness which species he is talking about. The unscientific reader can go to the botanical manual or cyclopedia and under this name find the species described.

With all their inaccuracies, common names have interesting histories, and the good ones are full of helpful suggestion to the learner. Many are literal translations of the Latin names. The first writers on botany wrote in Latin. Plants were described under the common name, if there was one; if not, the plant was named. The different species of each group were distinguished by the descriptions and the drawings that accompanied them. Linnaeus attempted to bring the work of botanical scholars together, and to publish descriptions and names of all known plants in a single volume. This he did, crediting each botanist with his work. The "Species Plantarum," Linnaeus's monumental work, became the foundation of the modern science of botany, for it included all the plants known and named up to the time of its publication. This was about the middle of the eighteenth century.

The vast body of information which the "Species Plantarum" contained was systematically arranged. All the different species in one genus were brought together. They were described, each under a number; and an adjective word, usually descriptive of some marked characteristic, was written in as a marginal index.

After Linnaeus's time botanists found that the genus name in combination with this marginal word made a convenient and exact means of designating the plant. Thus Linnaeus became the acknowledged originator of the binomial system of nomenclature now in use in all sciences. It is a delightful coincidence that while Linnaeus was engaged on his great work, North America, that vast new field of botanical exploration, was being traversed by another Swedish scientist. Peter Kalm sent his specimens and his descriptive notes to Linnaeus, who described and named the new plants in his book. The specimens swelled the great herbarium at the University of Upsala.

Among trees unknown to science before are the Magnolia, named in honor of the great French botanist, Magnol. Robinia, the locust, honors another French botanist, Robin, and his son. Kalmia, the beautiful mountain laurel, immortalizes the name of the devoted explorer who discovered it.

About one hundred thousand species of plants have been named by botanists. They believe that one half of the world's flora is covered. Trees are better known than less conspicuous plants. Fungi and bacteria are just coming into notice. Yet even among trees new species are constantly being described. Professor Sargent described 567 native species in his "Silva of North America," published 1892-1900. His Manual, 1905, contains 630. Both books exclude Mexico. The silva of the tropics contains many unknown trees, for there are still impenetrable tracts of forest.

Woodsmen have generally chosen descriptive names which are based on fact and are helpful to learners. Botanists have done this, too. Bark gives the names to shagbark hickory, striped maple, and naked wood. The color names white birch, black locust, blue beech. Wood names red oak, yellow-wood, and white-heart hickory. The texture names rock elm, punk oak, and soft pine. The uses name post oak, canoe birch, and lodge-pole pine.

The tree habit is described by dwarf juniper and weeping spruce. The habitat by swamp maple, desert willow, and seaside alder. The range by California white oak and Georgia pine. Sap is characterized in sugar maple, sweet gum, balsam fir, and sweet birch. Twigs are indicated in clammy locust, cotton gum, winged elm. Leaf linings are referred to in silver maple, white poplar, and white basswood. Color of foliage, in gray pine, blue oak, and golden fir. Shape of leaves, in heart-leaved cucumber tree and ear-leaved umbrella. Resemblance of leaves to other species, in willow oak and parsley haw. The flowers of trees give names to tulip tree, silver-bell tree, and fringe tree. The fruit is described in big-cone pine, butternut, mossy-cup oak, and mock orange.

Let us keep the most beautiful and fitting among common names, and work for their general adoption. There are no hard names once they become familiar ones. Nobody hesitates or stumbles over chrysanthemum and rhododendron, though these sonorous Greek derivatives have four syllables. Nobody asks what these names are "in plain English."

TREES WORTH KNOWING

TREES

PART I

THE LIFE OF THE TREES

The swift unfolding of the leaves in spring is always a miracle. One day the budded twigs are still wrapped in the deep sleep of winter. A trace of green appears about the edges of the bud scales--they loosen and fall, and the tender green shoot looks timidly out and begins to unfold its crumpled leaves. Soon the delicate blade broadens and takes on the texture and familiar appearance of the grown-up leaf. Behold! while we watched the single shoot the bare tree has clothed itself in the green canopy of summer.

How can this miracle take place? How does the tree come into full leaf, sometimes within a fraction of a week? It could never happen except for the store of concentrated food that the sap dissolves in spring and carries to the buds, and for the remarkable activity of the cambium cells within the buds.

What is a bud? It is a shoot in miniature--its leaves or flowers, or both, formed with wondrous completeness in the previous summer. About its base are crowded leaves so hardened and overlapped as to cover and protect the tender shoot. All the tree can ever express of beauty or of energy comes out of these precious little "growing points," wrapped up all winter, but impatient, as spring approaches, to accept the invitation of the south wind and sun.

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