a ——> —_ —=- i ——— —— S>—" =o —_. —— +4 ————r) ——s ——_ =>——z —- =——— 5 ——— w ~I ao oOo ol w NO -~) > Among Green Trees by Julia Ellen Rogers vi it i LIBRARY <= FACULTY OF FORESTRY UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO 7 has i ee a ene eee ‘a a —_ on “a Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from University of Toronto http://www.archive.org/details/amonggreentreesOOroge AMONG GREEN TREES =r © SLLASOMTOVSS VIN COTA a MOVTITITA UGNVIDNY MUN V NI SWTH NVOTUUINV AMONG GREEN TREES A GUIDE TO PLEASANT AND PROFITABLE ACQUAINTANCE WITH FAMILIAR TREES BY JULIA ELLEN ROGERS ILLUSTRATED CHICAGO A. W. MUMFORD, PUBLISHER 1902 IK ¥- a7 By JULIA ELLEN ROGERS The Lakeside Press R, R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY CHICAGO TO MY FATHER AND MOTHER DANIEL FARRAND ROGERS anp RUTH LLEWELLYN ROGERS PIONEERS OF THE TREELESS PRAIRIE WHO PLANTED SEED AND SAPLING WHO TOILED AND HOPED AND WAITED TO MAKE FOR THEIR CHILDREN A HOME AMONG GREEN TREES “Aye keep plantin’ a tree, Ti while youre sleepin’.” CONTENTS PART I OUTDOOR STUDIES WITH TREES THE NATURE-STUDY SIDE PAGE THe Lirt History or A MAPLE TREE - - - - 3 How To TELL THE AGE OF A TREE = - - - . uf THE FLIGHT OF SEEDS - . = = . = 10 THE BATTLE AMONG THE TWIGS = = - - - lt STOVEWOOD STUDIES - - - - - - 18 I. Kwyots anp Knot-HoLes = : = - = 18 If. A PINE SHAVING AND AN OAK SPLINTER - - 22 THORNS AND PRICKLES - - - - - - 24 WINTER Bups - - - - - - - 27 I. THe MEANING oF THEM - - - - - 27 IJ. A Fascinatine Stupy - - - - - 28 AN INTERESTING TREE IMMIGRANT - - = = = 33 APPLES ON WILLOW TREES . - - - = 35 PINE CoNnES ON WILLOW TREES - - - - - ail Tue Witch oF THE Woops - = = = = 40 PART Ot THE LIFE OF TREES THE PHYSIOLOGICAL SIDE THE SLEEP OF THE TREES : - - - - - 45 How Trees Repropuce THeEirk Kinp - - - - 49 Wuy Trees Grow Erect - - - - . - 51 Wuy Trees Dir - - - - - - - 5D How Trees BREATHE - - - - - - - 57 How Trees Freep - = = = - - = 60 How TREES Grow “ : = - - - - 62 xi PART III THE CULTIVATION OF TREES THE PRACTICAL SIDE THE PLANTING OF HOME GROUNDS - = = THE PLANTING OF A TREE - - - - THE RIGHT AND THE Wrona Way to Cur Orr A LIMB THE Sprrir OF FORESTRY - - - - THE FARMER’s Woop Lor - - - - Fruit Trees at Home - - - - Lear Bups anp Fruit Bups : - - THE MAKING OF NurSERY TREES - - - THE MAKING-OVER OF FRUIT TREES = E THE PRUNING OF TREES - - - - InsEctS, DISEASES, AND SPRAYING PART Ty THE KINDS OF TREES THE SYSTEMATIC SIDE THE OAKS - = - = - = THE MAPLES - - = = = Tue Basswoops or LINDENS — - - - - WILLOWS AND POPLARS - = = : WALNUTS AND HICKORIES = = = = Tuer ASHES - = + = = THE Brrcoues, HoRNBEAM, AND TRONWOOI Tur Exims - = : : : = Tuk Brecu = = - = = = Locusts AND OrHreR Pop-BEARERS - - - 1 1 THE PINES AND OTHER CONIFERS - - - THe Horst CHEstnut - - - - xii LIST OF FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS Exims InN A NEw ENGLAND VILLAGE - BLAcKk OAK, Quercus velutina + - WHItE PINE, Pinus Strobus - = = AMERICAN EutmM, Ulmus Americana - LoMBARDY POPLAR, Populus dilatata fe TAMARACK, Larix Americana = 3 Rep Mapue, Acer rubrum ~ = = Waite Wriiiow, Salix alba - - AmeRICAN WHITE Bircu, Betula populifolia Rep OAK, Quercus rubra - = = WHITE PopLaR, Populus alba = = SHAGBARK Hickory, Hicoria ovata = SuGAR MApuE, Acer saccharwm = = BALSAM Fir, Abies balsamea - = WuitE AsH, Fraxinus Americana = = SouTHERN WHITE CEDAR, Cupressus thyoides AMERICAN BEECH, Fagus Americana - = WHITE OAK, Quercus alba - - Biack WALNUT, Juglans nigra - - Horse CHestnut, sculus Hippocastanum Basswoop, Tilia Americana - = = Biack Asn, Frazinus nigra - : BuTTERNUT, Juglans cinerea - : = Locust, Robinia Pseudacacia - - BirrerNut Hickory, Hicoria minima = xiii Frontispiece PAGE ALPHABETICAL LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS HALF-TONES AND LINE ENGRAVINGS AILANTHUS, FLATTENED TWIG AILANTHUS, LEAF SCARS AILANTHUS, WINGED SEEDS - AILANTHUS, WINTER TWIG AsH, BLAcK, FRUITS - AsH, BuAck, Kry - AsH, BuAcK, LEAF - = AsH, BLACK, TRUNK - As, BuAck, WINTER TWIG AsH, WHITE, LEAF - AsH, WHITE, TRUNK = APPLE TREE, WINTER TWIG AppLeE Trees, TRIMMED = ASPEN (POPLAR), SWELLING Bu Basswoop (LINDEN), BRANCH 3Asswoop (LINDEN), FLOWERS BAsswoop (LINDEN), LEAVES BAsswoop (LINDEN), OPENING BAsswoop (LINDEN), SEEDS BAsswoop (LINDEN), TRUNK Bee, Lear-Currer, Work - BrecH, BuuE, FRvuItT - BEECH, FRUIT-BEARING TWIG BreecH, Leary Twia = BEECH, STAMINATE FLOWERS BrEcH, TRUNK - - BegecH, WATER, FRUIT - BrecH, WINTER BupDs~ - BrerLeE, ENGRAVER, BuRROWS Brrew, CANOE, LEAVES - BircH, CANOE, TRUNKS - 31RCH, Conr-LikE FRvuIT Brrcu, SCALE OF CONE - 3rrcH, Winter Bups = Biron, WINGED SEED - Box Enprr, Krys - Bubp, Cur - - - Bubp, SET - - - Bubp, Trep - - - BuDDING PROCESS - 3uDs, APPLE - - Bups, PEACH - - Bups, SLIPPERY ELM - 1 SHOOT XIV BurrerNvet (Or Nut), CHAMBERED PITH Burrernut (Oi Nut), Fruit ~ BurreRNuT (O1L Nut), LEAF - - BurtrerRNut (Oi Nut), Lear Scars BurTrernut (Om Nur), PistiLLATE FLOWERS - ButrrernuT (Om Nut), SHELLS - - BurteERNUT (Om Nut), TRUNK - Butternut (Om Nut), Winter Bups BuTTroNwooD (SYCAMORE), SEEDS - Burronwoop (SycaAMoreE), Winter Bups CATALPA, NATURAL GRAFT - . CATALPA, SEEDS ~ - - CATALPA, TWIG - = CATALPA, WINTER Bubs =: 2 = CEDAR, WHITE, LEAFY TWIG - = CepAR, WHITE, TRUNK - = CHERRY, WILD, Twig EATEN BY C CHERRY, WILD, WINTER Bubs - CHESTNUTS, HorsE, IN JUNE - - CuHEstNut, Horse, LEAr-SCARS = CuHEstTNuT, Horst, LEAVES - - CHESTNUT, Horse, TRUNK - = CuHEstNuT, Horst, WINTER TwiG < CoTronwoob, CRIPPLED BRANCH Cup Funeus on DEAD TwIG = = Exper, Box, Fruits - - Eu_mM, AMERICAN, FRUIT-BEARING SHOOT Eu_M, AMERICAN, LEAFY TWIGs - ELM, AMERICAN, TRUNK - - ELM, SLIPPERY, WINTER Bups - ELM, SLIPPERY, OPENING SHOOT = ELM, SLIPPERY, WINTER TWIG = Fir, BAtsaAmM, LEAry SHOOT - = Fir, BaALsAM, TRUNK - - Funer, Cur - - - = GALL, APPLE, ON WILLow - = GALL, PINE Cone WILLOW = = GALL, Pins Conre WiLtow, Cur Oren GALL-GNAT, LARVA - - = GALL-INSECT, LARVA - - GINGKO LEAF - - - - GRAFT, NATURAL = = = GRAFTING, CLEFT = = = GRAFTING, VARIOUS STEPS - = GrowTtH, DIAGRAM - - - Hemuock, Fruitinc Spray = Hickory, Birrernut, Lear Hickory, Birrernut, Trunk = Hickory, Borers’ Work - = Hickory, LEAF SCARS = = Hickory, SHAGBARK, LENGTHENING Bubp S« Hickory, SHAGBARK, Nut IN Husk Hickory, SHAGBARK, OPENING BuD Z xv ATERPILL sARS SALES Hickory, SHAGBARK, OPENING LEAVES - - - - 159 Hickory, SHAGBARK, LEAF - - - - - 156 Hickory, SHAGBARK, TRUNK - - - - = bp Hickory, STAMINATE FLOWERS - - - = 156 Hickory, Winter Bups = - - - - ~ 32 Hickory, Nut SHELLS - - - . . - 14 HoRNBEAM, FRUIT - - . - - - - 167 HorNBEAM, Hop, Fruit - - - - - 12 IRONWOOD, FRuUIT - - - - - - - 12. AGG KENTUCKY COFFEE TREE, Pop - - = - - 180 Kry FRvuIT- - - - - - - - . 3 KNotT, GROWTH - - - - - - - 19 KNoT, STRUCTURE - - - . - - . 21 LAWN, SIDE PLANTING - - - - - - 70 LEAF, Cut BY BEE - - - - - - ale LENTICELS ON BircH BARK - - - - - 166 Limp, IMPROPER CUTTING - - - - - . 76 Limp, PROPER CUTTING 2 - - - - 76 Locust, Honry, Pops - - - - - - 13 Locust, Honry, THORNS - - - . - 24 Locust, LEAF - - - - - - - 181 Locust, Pops . - - - . - - 179 Locust, TruNK = - - - - - = SiS MANDRAKES IN APRIL Woops - - - - - 48 MAPLE, JAPANESE, LEAF - - - - - - 1386 Marie, Norway, Keys - - - - - - 136 Marie, Norway, RINGS - - - - - = 9 Marie, Norway, Twic - - - - - 8 MaApiE, Rep, LEAVES - - - - - - 133 Marie, Rep, Key Fruits - - - - - 3 Mapp, Rep, OPENING LEAVES - - - = - 3 Mapp, Rep, PistinLATE FLOWERS - . - - + Marie, Rep, Wrnter Bups = - - - . 4 Mapie, RED, SEEDLINGS = = - - - 5 Mapir, Rep, STAMINATE FLOWERS - - - - . 4 Mapie, Rep, TRUNK = = = - - - 132 Mapie, Rep, Two-yEAR-OLD TREE - - - - - 6 MAPLE, SILVER, LEAF - - - - . - 133 MaApP.LbE, Sort, Krys - - - - . - 13 MAPLE, SuGAR, Krys - - - - - = 135 MAPLE, SUGAR, LEAVES - - - - - - 135 MAPLE, SUGAR, TRUNK - - - - - - 134 Oak APPLE, CuT OPEN - = - - - = Si OAK, BLACK, LEAF - - - . . - 129 Oak, Buack, TRUNK = = - - - =. 12s OaxK, Bur, LEAF - - - - - - 126 OAK, CHESTNUT, ACORN - - - . - - 127 OAK, CHESTNUT, LEAF - - . - - - 127 Oak, HALF-GROWN ACORNS - - - - - = 323 Oak, Rep, ACORN - - - - - - 131 Oak, Rep, LEAF - - - - - - 130-131 OaK, RED, TRUNK = = = = = = 130 Oak, WHITE, BRANCHING HABIT - . - - - 15 XVI Oak, WHITE, LEAF - Oak, WHITE, TRUNK Oak, WHITE, TWIG = OAK, SCARLET, ACORNS OAK, SCARLET, FLOWERING SHOOT OAK, SCARLET, LEAF PracH, Bups - - PEAR, FRUITING SPURS Pear, WINTER Bups PENNYROYAL - PINE ‘*CoBs”’ - = Ping, WHITE, LEAFY SHOOT PINE, WHITE, TRUNK - PLANTING, MEANINGLESS PLANTING, SIDE - - PLANTING, SCHOOL GROUNDS PopLarR, Bubs” - - PopLtAr, LomMBARDY, LEAFY SHOOT PorpLar, LomBparpy, TRUNK PopLaR, WHITE, LEAVES PortaAr, Waite, TRUNK «¢PussIEs,’? POPLAR - «*Pussigs,’? WILLOW = Scion, Cur - = Scrons, SET - - Sctons, WAXED - > ScHooL GROUNDS, SUGGESTION FOR Spruce, LEAFY SHOOT Sprucr, Norway, Cone Spruce, Norway, WINGED SEEDS Sumac, WINTER Bups- - SYCAMORE, PETIOLE - SYCAMORE, SEEDS 2 SYCAMORE, WINTER Bubs TAMARACK, LEAFY SHOOTS TAMARACK, TRUNK - TENT-CATERPILLARS ON WILD CHER THORN, FULL Grown THORN, YOUNG AND LEAFY ry. = ry TREES, APPLE, TRIMMED Waunut, BLAcK, LEAF WALNUT, BuAack, Nut aAnp Husk WALNUT, BuAack, TRUNK WILLow, FRvItT - Wittow, NARROW-LEAVED SHOOT WILLow, ‘*PUSSIES’’ WILLOW, STAMINATE FLOWERS WrLtow, Twia - WiLtLow, WHITE, LEAVES WiLttow, Waite, TRUNKS WILLow, WINTER Bubs PLANTING RY WitcH Hazet, EXxpLostve SEED Pops Wircu HazpeL, FLOWERS Xxvil ' And what a glorious object is a TREE! How magnificent a Jorest of them on the boundless plain or on the mighty hill-side! And the solitary tree — there is scarcely its match for beauty among unintelligent objects on the face of the earth. They are surpassed only by him who walks among them in living and thinking grace and beauty. ‘In form,” though not in “moving,” like him, * how express and admirable!” The thick-topped maple, with its wholesome- looking foliage, in whose close und dark recesses the hang-bird sings her **wood-note wild” in the hot summer noon. The lofty, clear- limbed, open-boughed button-wood, with its dainty leaf, its scarred trunk, and excoriated branches. And the elm, the patriarch of the family of shade— the majestic, the umbrageous, the antlered elm! We remember one at this moment —in sight from our old home on the banks of the Pemigewassett. It stood just across that cold stream, by the roadside, on the margin of the wide intervale. It stood upon the ground as lightly as though ‘it rose in dance,” its full top bending over toward the ground on every side with the dignity of the forest tree, and all the grace of the weeping willow. You could gaze upon it Jor hours. It was the beautiful handy-work and architecture of God, on which the eye of man never tires, but always looks with refreshing and delight. The planting of a sapling is a trifle in expense. There it grows. and costs nothing but time. Every tree is a feather in the earth’s cap —a plume in her bonnet —a tress upon her forehead. It is a comfort, an ornament, a refreshing to the people. It is a virtue to set out trees. It is loving our neighbor as we love ourselves. Set out but for him to look at and walk under, and to beautify Gods earth, which he clothed with trees. trecs —not to make your home outshine your neighbor's NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. (“Herald of Freedom,” Concord, N. H., August 6, 1841.) XViil PREFACE We now have a half-dozen recent popular books devoted to the trees of the northeastern United States and Canada. These books are well written, well illustrated, and sold at a reasonable price. The aim of each is to describe all the trees, or approximately all, and to show the general reader how he may learn to know them apart. All this is as it should be, and I doubt if any other country is so well provided. But the book that describes all the trees has this obvious limitation: it can have little or no room left for other interesting and practical matter about trees. In short, the ‘ identification book”? which deals only with the kinds and names of trees is necessarily one-sided, and there is a great need and a clear call to-day for an “ all-round tree book.” Moreover, all the trees are too many for most readers. The greater the number to consider, the harder it is to distinguish and to remember them. Few of us care to know about all the oaks: it is the ten or a dozen common oaks that we want to /now—to recognize wherever we see them growing. This book aims in Part IV to describe the common and important trees that grow in the states north of Virginia and Arkansas, and east of the Rocky Mountains. Among the native species are included many forms introduced from other countries, and commonly planted in the United States. About 125 different kinds of trees are described. The limits set to the identification part of this book give room for the consideration of much besides that is of interest and importance to any one who loves trees and longs for a closer and more intelligent acquaintance with them. In Part II the author has nothing new nor startling to reveal on the subject of the life that a tree lives from day to day. The facts stated are set down in books already. But these books are written for the special, not for the general reader. They are learned books, which abound in technical terms. They satisfy the scientific mind which has this particular botanical bent. xix Because “general readers’? do not throng the public libraries asking for works on Physiological Botany, Dendrology, and Horticulture, some would conclude that they have no interest in the underlying principles upon which the life of a tree depends. And yet you have but to speak of one of these principles in simple, every-day language to discover that people are keenly interested. Recognizing this truth, the author has attempted to state clearly, accurately, and in small compass the essentials of tree physiology, to interpret the language of the specialist, and to present scientific truths m a form that will attract and satisfy the general reader. Thousands of dollars are expended each year upon the services of quack “ tree doctors,” “tree scrapers,’ “expert pruners,” and their ilk, who prey upon the good intentions of a credulous public. The idea that a plug of lard and sulphur pushed mto an auger-hole in the heart of a tree will cure all its diseases seems reasonable to people who have given no special thought to the subject of how trees are made, and how they feed, grow, breathe, sleep, and why they die. The voluble “doctor” confuses them by his comprehensive grasp of the subject, and easily beguiles the owner into having his neglected trees treated—at $1.00 each! Time and again have such preposterous notions been exploded in the newspapers. Yet the tree doctor flourishes, and his deeds follow him but slowly and afar off. Part III, therefore, deals with horticultural phases of the subject. It is devoted to practical every-day problems. How to plant a tree, how to prune and shape it, how to keep it free from insect enemies and fungous diseases, how to renew the youth of old and neglected trees—these are some of the problems discussed. A chapter gives the reader an idea of what forestry is; another suggests means of applying its principles to the farmer’s wood lot and similar small areas. The application of the simple but fundamental principles of Landscape Gardening to the plant- ing of home grounds is one of the live problems to which attention is called, especially as it bears upon the improving of small yards in cities and villages. Another subject is the making of nursery trees, including the various means by which ornamental trees and shrubs, the variegated and cut-leaved and weeping forms, are multiplied for the market. The interest in planting the home grounds and the enlightened public XX interest in the beautifyimg of parks, school grounds, and cemeteries is one of the most hopeful signs of the age. Last in this survey of the scope of the book, but first in the volume and in the heart of the writer, is the Nature-study side of the subject, Part I,— Outdoor Studies with Trees. In its broadest sense, Nature-study is a keen, appreciative interest in the common things about us. It means accurate seeing and clear thinking. Nature- study is the most vital idea to-day in education. It is the getting of God’s truth at first hand. It is studying things instead of study- ing about things. Do not call it Elementary Science. The true spirit of Nature-study is opposed to cold, formal study of lifeless things. It is the informal study, for short periods, of things that interest. It opens a new world of delight. Under it, the commonplace becomes transfigured. It shows us how we may get the very best out of life no matter where we are, how to realize the possibilities of happiness that exist even in the most unpleasant environment. This book, then, has at least four pomts of view: —The nature- study side, which embraces outdoor studies with trees, quite inde- pendent of books; the physiological side, which is fundamental to all intelligent tree culture; the practical side, with directions for the care and cultivation of trees; lastly, the systematic side, which distinguishes the kinds of trees, and explains their family ties. Such is the writer’s conception of an “all-round tree book” for the general reader. The field covered is a wide one. The author disclaims any pretensions of having given it an ideal treatment. If any credit is due it is merely for the recognition of a distinct field,—the appre- ciation of a great and well defined need of the people. The present volume is, let us hope, but a beginning. The life of the trees is a fascinating study. It grows upon one. To any one, young or old, who loves trees and longs to know them better, this book aspires to be a friendly helper and guide. JULIA ELLEN ROGERS. IrHaca, NEw York, October 1, 1902. xxi ILLUSTRATIONS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The photogravures of entire trees and the halftones of trunks and leaves are from negatives made for the exclusive use of the publisher, and are identical with those used in the portfolio known as Series I, IJ, and III of Typical Forest Trees. The line engravings are from drawings made under the direct supervision of the author. The most of them were drawn by Mrs. Marie Robertson Duggar and Mr. W.C. Baker. A few were done by Mrs. Agnes Rogers Kerr and Mr. A. M. Garretson. The frontispiece was made from the original nega- tive by Miss Mary Allen, of Deerfield, Mass. The botanical nomenclature in this book conforms with that of Sar- gent’s Silva of North America, except in the case of the sugar maple, in which the specific name, barbatum, used by Sargent, is replaced by saccharum, the name agreed upon by the leading botanists of the country since the publication of the Silva. The chapter on “The Sleep of the Trees” was published first in “Primary Education,” and is reprinted here by permission. The author is under obligation to Mr. George W. Cavanaugh for his critical read- ing of Part I; to Professor L. H. Bailey, at whose suggestion the preparation of the book was undertaken; and to Mr. Wilham K. Higley for kind assistance in many ways. Xxil PART I OUTDOOR STUDIES WITH TREES THE NATURE-STUDY SIDE ~ THE LIFE HISTORY OF A MAPLE To an intelligent and sympathetic questioner an aged tree speaks freely of its later life, but of its youth it tells little. We must begin at the beginning if we would read the story of a tree’s life. Where is the beginning? Is it the sprouting of a seed? No, for what is a seed but a little plant which lies within the inclosing seed coats waiting for release? The next question is, When was the seed formed ? Let us go with our last question into the woods in March, when the red maple begins to glow against the grim darkness of the leafless trees. It is the red buds set opposite upon the twigs that warm the gray old tree. They have felt the stir of the sap. All the tree can ever express of life and beauty and energy must come through these buds. A few of them lead the rest. The outer scales are shed, the inner ones lengthen as if they would be leaves, and then a rosy veil encom- passes the tree—the red maple is in bloom! The tree has two kinds of blossoms. Both have cups set round with crimson petals. One bears within on slender filaments a number of yellow anthers, which give the opening flowers a yellow cast. Out of these anthers shakes the pollen like golden dust. The other flowers are ruddy of hue. They bear no anthers at all, Gracefully swinging : : F ; key fruits of the but instead, thrust out of each cup a red stigma like red maple a forked tongue. The inner faces of this stigma are sticky. At the base of each half is a closed chamber in which lies a tiny soft body called an ovule. It may become a seed. But that depends upon chance. The air is full of pollen grains—of poplar, birch, and alder; of elm, willow, and maple. The grains are so small and so light they drift on the wind. Some are borne on the hairy bodies of insects that go from flower to flower. Pollen of all of them (or of none) may happen to lodge on the sticky surface of a red maple stigma. This is pollination. But all strange pollen lies there inert. A grain of maple pollen is the 3 only kind that makes any impression. It absorbs the sweet juices present in the stigma. A tube grows downward like a little root among the loose tissues. Still feeding and growing the tube reaches the ovule and enters it by a little doorway. An eve-cell is within, and a sperm-cell is in the end of the pollen tube. The two unite, and thus the fertilization of the ovule is accomplished. This is the beginning of the life of the tree. The fertilized ovule ripens into a seed. Look at the maple tree just after blossoming time. The staminate flowers strew the ground. Their work was done when they cast their pollen. But the pistillate flowers do not fall, although stigmas and petals have withered. In the place of stigmas pert little horns are rising. They are to be the wings of the maple seeds. The stems lengthen, and on each one of them two crimson winged samaras, or key fruits, swing gracefully in the breeze. Late in May the tree, now clothed in its unfolding leaves, Red buds ; 'S loosens its seeds and gives them to the winds. Each set opposite c little key must shift for itself. Where shall it alight ? I know a maple tree which stands in the edge of the woods where the ground is stony and broken. An oozy bank above it waters the thirsty roots of many plants. In front is the broad, hard highway in which no seed can grow. Behind is the deep leaf mould on the forest floor. All kinds of soil are spread under the tree. Which seeds will be the fortunate ones? They veer and sail and pitch to earth, driv- Yellow anthers borne on slen- ing their pomted bodies before the lighter wings. In most 4. gaments of these winged seeds there is a sleeping plantlet. Warmth and moisture are required to wake it into life. If these are not sup- plied, the plantlet waits. If it waits too long, it loses its own moisture and dies. In a favorable situation the seed will germinate without delay. There are two long seed leaves folded palms together and then coiled in the seed pocket of the key. There is a little stem that joins the two. This is all we see. The waking seed absorbs the water. The seed coat cracks along its edges. The two leaves uncoil and lift into the light. The stem elongates and turns toward the soil. There is a small bud between the seed leaves. It lifts — and opens out a pair of true leaves. The lengthening a ‘i : root takes hold of the soil by means of fine rootlets. The Stigmas thrust out like . : . 5 3 . forked tongues picture shows the little tree, relying for its growth upon 1 the food stored in the seed leaves; and yet the leaves and the roots promise that before long they will be able to gather food “from honest mould and vagabond air,” that the tree will come to be independent. In the next figure this promised time has come. A faint scar shows where the seed leaves were attached. Here they shriveled and were finally shed. The stem and root grew longer. Two new leaves unfolded at the top of the stem. But vicissitudes await each little tree. For every well grown specimen under the parent tree there are twenty cripples. The tender tip of our maple seedling is sacrificed to the appetite of some hungry insect, or it breaks off in a lashing wind. The little The last picture tells the interesting sequel to the accident tree depend- that broke off the central bud. Much time remained of that ent upon its ee first growing season. The energies of the plant, no longer able 5 Ss ‘S to express themselves in terminal growth, forced into shoots the buds that were growing in the axils of the two large leaves. By the end of the season they had extended to b, b, one obviously stronger than the other taking the lead. No better proof of vigor is needed, nor of good soil and plenty of sun, than this forcing out of buds intended for the following year. Spring comes again, and the second year extends the two forks. Two by two the leaves are unfolded, just as in the first year. The root goes deeper, the stem goes higher. Both add an outside layer of wood and an inner layer of bark to the parts that grew the year before, thus adding to their strength as well as to their substance. If both of the limbs persist, the tree will always be forked close to the ground. The chances are that the smaller one will soon be over- shadowed by the larger one,—that it will dwindle and die. Then the stem will straighten and grow on into a single trunk, giving no sign that it ever was a cripple. It will be worth while to set a stake beside this two-year-old seedling maple, or otherwise mark its place, so that year by year we may note its progress. It is one of many, and truly it lives the strenuous life. The rivalry of these little trees is no playful exercise, — it is a matter of life or death. Choose you a pair of lusty two-year-olds and watch them 5 The beginning of a life of grow. Try to find out why one outdoes the other. independence 7) How different and yet how much alike are the life histories of these maple trees. Each succeeding year repeats and multiplies the labors of the last. Each summer earns the rest of the long winter. The contest for light, for room, for foothold, and for food becomes more intense as the tree grows. j And when at last the wood-chopper, or ¥ the lightning stroke, or the less merci- ] ful agencies, insects and diseases, re- move the parent tree, its place will be taken by that one of its offspring which has overcome in the struggle with its | own kind and with other plants which coverthe ground it standson. The young \ red maple, casting its first seeds upon ) the ground, enters formally upon its Bee if career as a full grown tree. It is now an integral part of the forest, having attained its majority. Come, then, let us to the woods together to see what is happening DPhp Aateres ine eeune: among the trees. Let us inquire of the saplings that form the miniature forest below how it fares with them. Let us find out, if we can, what their past has been, and what are their prospects for the future. Trees speak a language, if only we have the patience to learn it. It is a sign language, and through it they tell us all manner of interesting things about how they make their living— about their hopes and their disappoimtments. Are you afraid? Do not the denizens of the woods treat you civilly? When have they scolded you, or bitten or stung or poisoned you? These are foolish fancies. Go into the woods without fear. Show yourself friendly, and the forest and all the creatures that dwell together there will delight you with their gentle friendliness. RED MAPLE Acer rubrum HOW TO THLE THE AGH OF A TREE It is not always necessary to cut down a tree in order to find out how old it is.. Each twig and branch bears a record of years, written in the scars of bud scales and leaves. In old trees the reading of these records is often a task, but with young ones it becomes a delightful amusement. It has the fascination of detective work. After your first successes, you find yourself questioning every tree you meet. Your friends get interested with you, as soon as they learn the key that unlocks the tree’s secret. With experience comes facility, and the undertaking of more difficult problems. The old apple tree by the roadside challenges you to make out the story of its eventful life. You can learn to read the record of last year’s crop. You can tell exactly how many fruits a particular branch has ever borne, and even whether they reached maturity or were picked green. The promise of next year’s crop is revealed to you, though you cannot foretell whether the flowers will be frosted. The veteran recites to you its past successes and failures, declares the year it came into full bearing, the time of the big wind or the ice storm that broke so many large limbs, and you can even give a shrewd guess as to whether the tree has been a profitable investment or not. It is as if the owner kept an account with each individual tree and opened up to you his book of record for this one. But come, let us try our skill. Young trees have all the naivetée of children. They shout their ages at us almost before we have time to ask for them. Let us go down where young maples are starting a “ sugar- bush,” or where young beeches cover the floor of the woods. Here are a graded series of reading lessons for us. We will leave the cripples for a later time, and consider only those which have had a fair chance, and have grown as nature intended them to. It is best to begin with kinds that are characterized by rapid growth—that have big buds and lusty stems. They speak a language that is clear and plain. Perhaps the first thing you notice is a ring of scars. What does this mean? Each branch finishes its year by forming buds. Every spring it begins to grow by casting off the scales that protected these buds over winter. The scales leave a little group of scars to mark the place of their attach- 7 ment. Now, on the main trunk of any little tree, let us count back from the tip to the ground. The length between each two of these groups of scale scars represents the growth of a year. Now we have the clue. The oldest side branches are a year younger than the main stem. Every branch, great or small, is normally a year younger than the stem that bears it. Hach tells its age by its groups of bud sears. The youngest wood is set with buds in winter, and in summer all the leaves are borne directly upon shoots that grew from these winter buds. Very commonly there is a difference in the bark of vari- < ous years’ growth. The newest shoots are greener, smoother and more herbaceous in texture than the older ones. All buds on older wood are dormant. They should have grown into leafy shoots the season after they were formed. When we have determined the age of a certain little tree, we may strengthen our faith by a further test. You think that a certain part of the stem is four years old. Cut it off and see if you can count around the pith the rmgs of wood inside the bark. If there are four, your judgment is vindicated. Let us challenge every little tree that we meet. Those that *have had a hard life will give us some problems. They are so small, and yet so old. But remember the fixed principle. Bud scales mean winter. Each group of their scars on a stem marks the end of another year’s growth. When we have learned to read these records in little trees, we may look up and read the same story among the branches of the older trees. The twig that gets the most light and air is lustiest in growth, and its story is the easiest to read. The picture shows us a twig of Norway maple. Let us count its groups of bud scars. Three full years of growth they record on a base which is four years old. It is now the spring of 1902. In April, 1899, a bud threw off its scales at a and grew to b, bearing three pairs of leaves and a terminal bud. In April, 1900, this bud opened, and erew from } to c, bearing three pairs of leaves and a terminal bud. In April, 1901, the bud at ¢ started, bore a pair of leaves, then died by some accident, and the two buds in the angles of the leaves carried the growth forward to d, and formed each a pair A four-year-old twig of Norway Maple of leaves and a bud, which is full of promise for 1902. This maple twig’s story is a tale of woe. I found it on a lower branch where it rarely got any sunlight. It has borne twenty leaves 8 whose sears are plainly seen. Each leaf showd have had a bud in its axil, and these buds showld have grown when a year old into side shoots. All these possibilities have failed except in the special emergency case at the top. A single bud below ¢ remains, but it has been dormant for a year, and is probably dead. All the others have died and fallen off. But the lusty end buds have better light and more air. The growth would probably have been better from this time forth if I had left the twig on the tree. The final test of age is made by a slanting cut through the wood of the different years. Each year of age reduces the size of the spongy pith and adds a thin belt of compact wood. Why is it so thin? The leaves are the nurses of their own buds, and the feeders of the twig that bears them. Grow- ing in shadow, they are small; they get but little food from the soil and The tinal test the air; they can make but little starch to send to needy, dependent parts. Hence, the short growth made by this twig each year, the weakness of its buds, its failure to increase in diameter. All these are but out- ward signs of the poverty that for years has been the portion of this unhappy little twig. But all over the treetop we may find to contrast with the ill-favored twig lusty ones that tell a story of free and independent life, where sun- shine and sap and good fresh air abound. Want and plenty, misery and happiness exist side by side in the world. We read all about them in the books and in the treetops! THE PLIGHDP OF SHEDS When we want a symbol of indepenaence we are wont to point to a great tree—a sturdy oak, perhaps. Yet how helpless trees are, after all! Like Prometheus chained to the rock, they cannot move, while creatures smaller than eagles but fully as ravenous, come to prey upon them. Their sacred mission in life is the propagation of their kind. Yet in performing it how dependent are they upon blind chance ! There are great epochs in the lives of trees, and great days in each year’s calendar. Critical indeed is the time when the flowers open and the pollen is given to the wind and to the insects. Upon these unconscious and irresponsible agents largely depends the setting of seed. The maturing of the seed may soon be accomplished, or it may be a long, slow process, which fills a whole summer, or even two. With its completion another critical epoch is at hand. The tree yields its precious seeds to the heedless wind or drops them upon the ground. The fate of each tree-child trembles in the balance while the parent tree Fruit of the Black Ash is powerless to take any further part in the great work of seed distribution. As a matter of fact this point of view is altogether human and somewhat sentimental. There is not so much chance, after all. The bee is wonderfully efficient in the pollination of flowers. She attends strictly to business, and for her the day is long. Between dawn and dusk she visits countless flowers. The wind may be a reckless fellow, but he often works while we sleep or play. Then, too, many species of trees will survive without cross-fertilization or wide dissemination. Trees have ways of propagating their kind that do not involve the seed at all. But, what subject is so interesting as the flight of seeds? No wonder it appeals to the imagination and holds the attention of us all! 10 The seed of ash trees is like a dart. - These are not tubes, but simply intercellular spaces without walls which enlarge as the resin accumulates. Resin is not the sap of pine trees, as many suppose. It is a substance made by the breaking down of cells. Its origin and use to the tree are not well understood. When a pine tree is wounded resin flows out and covers up the wound, thus preventing tue intrusion of disease germs. The gum of cherry trees serves a similar purpose. Whether protection is the purpose for which these substances exist is quite another question, and is at present unanswered. Our pine kindling stick is a type of the so-called non-porous woods, which simply means that the fibers are so small that their hollows are invisible to the eye except under a magnifier of high power. All cone- bearing trees have wood of this kind. No such regularity of shape and arrangement of fibers is to be seen among the woods of the broad-leaved trees. They are all classed as porous woods. The oak is a type of this class. We may take a stick of oak from the woodpile, or better, examine the surface of any piece of oak furniture. The varnish brings out more clearly the details of structure of the wood. Oak is coarse-grained wood, full of “holes,” but its fibers are tough as sinews and hard as bone. They are spindle-shaped and extremely various in size. They are crowded together, big and little, breaking joints by the overlapping of ends. Here is one secret of the toughness of oak wood. Many fibers end near together in pine, and they do not overlap, hence the brittleness of the wood. Oak fibers have many open doors in their sides and ends that permit the free circulation of the sap. These doors are as various in shape and size as are the fibers they belong to. They are not curtained as the bordered pits of tracheids are. The annual rings of oak wood are shaded from light to dark. But unlike the pine, the dark edge is the spring wood coarsely porous, and quite narrow in good Jumber compared with the band of yellow close- knit summer wood. Oak Jumber has broad and very prominent pith rays crossing the grain. ‘In specimens of good white oak it has been found that they form about 16 to 25 per cent of the wood.” (F. Roth, in Bulletin No. 10, U.S. Department of Agriculture.) They form the gleaming bands which are the “ mirrors” seen in “ quarter-sawed”’ oak. In other than radial sections of the wood they appear as brown, more or less long and narrow pencils crowded in between the bundles of wood fibers. Because these large pith rays interlace the other wood fibers, and because the regular longitudinal fibers are tough, and overlap their ends, the splitting of oak is a difficult matter compared with the splitting of pine. 23 THORNS AND PRICKLES In the midst of an old pasture stands a stunted apple tree. By all the signs, it is a close relative of the thrifty trees that grow in the neigh- boring orchard. They are large because they grow in fertile soil and are given careful tillage. But this ugly dwarf sends its roots into a hard crust Whose nourishment is largely stolen by the mat of grass roots. The twigs have had little encouragement to grow. Every ambitious shoot has paid dearly for its temerity. It has become a sweet morsel under the tongue of some hungry cow. Starved and browsed to the point of utter discourage- ment the tree stands twigs hardened and sharpened into ugly spurs that look like a most unlovely shape, with stubby thorns. Over in the orchard the twigs are long and lusty, with ample leaves and plump buds; and there are no thorns at all. The fat and lean kine of Pharaoh’s dream were not more like and more unlike than the fat and lean apple trees we are considering. Nevertheless the pasture tree does grow, if very slowly, and there comes a turning-point in its life. Its roots find better and deeper feeding ground. Among the young shoots there is one that is out of harm’s way. It is in the very middle of the top. The cows come by and are cheered by Wicked-looking the sight of it. They lean toward it, but the longest neck is thorns of Honey Locust not quite long enough. The thorny twigs make a stubborn defense. One last inch of distance cannot be compassed by any patient, yearning tongue. The shoot mounts up and out of danger. Its twigs grow soft and succulent. One can almost fancy that the parent tree is neglecting the lower branches in order to give this youngest one the best of everything. Plainly, apple twigs grow soft and leafy when well fed. Poverty and abuse make them crabbed and thorny. Stunted twigs are the products of “hard times.” The carrying of weapons is a habit to which the trees are driven by adversity, and which they abandon as soon as * good times” return. On the other hand, there are certain trees which habitually bear 24 thorns. One of them is the honey locust. Above the opening leaf a sharpened point comes out of the twig. At the end of the season the leaf falls, but above it is left standing the wicked-looking three-pronged thorn, sharp as a needle and hard and smooth as if enameled. It is not uncommon to see a honey locust tree with trunk and limbs fairly bristling with these thorns, the largest approaching a foot in length. What are these thorns? Are they branches, assigned _ \ to special duty, and properly uniformed for their work ? It is useful and interesting at this point to bring in for | comparison a branch of one of the hawthorns. Near _ | the end of the branch is a half-grown leaf in whose | axil arises a slender thorn. It is green and soft, and set thorn, still soft, with a half-dozen tiny leaves. Farther down are bigger seccwiacs ea thorns, set in the axils of full-grown leaves. These thorns have hardened. Below, on older wood, are thorns of larger size. Some of them have leafy shoots on their sides. Here we have a series of thorns, the youngest of which show the leaf-bearing habit of the twig, the oldest ones, the twig-bearing habit of the branch. The honey locust thorn shows the branching habit. Tear off any of these thorns, and you find them attached to the stem just as the twigs are. On evidences like these the botanist bases his belief that thorns are branches, hardened, pointed and destitute of leaves, gradually modified by the plant to serve its special needs. The beginning of such modifica- tion has been seen in the pasture apple tree. The process has progressed much farther in hawthorn and honey locust, where the branch has assumed a kind of disguise —the livery of its special office. The common locust bears at the base of its leaf two sharp points, and each leaflet repeats this peculiarity by having two tiny guardsmen of the same kind at its base. But these points, though they persist and some of them grow large and strong, do not rise from the wood of the branch as do thorns. They come off with the bark. Hence they are prickles such as grow on Miipeeriviom,hatdasenamel "OS8¢ bushes and raspberry canes. They are mere outgrowths of the bark. Certain spines are evidently modified leaf ribs. The holly that we see at Christmas has the edge of its leaf contracted between spmy poimts. The barberry shows all the gradations between leaf and spine on the same twig. 7 a In arid countries the vegetation tends to be leafless and spiny. Not cacti alone but other plants have their surfaces reduced and hardened or otherwise protected against loss of moisture in the hot, dry climate. In more humid regions the same species of plants have their spines dilated into leaves. Each modification of bark or leaf or branch into prickle or spine or thorn is an expression of the varying needs of plants, and is the final result of Nature’s attempt to adapt plants to their surroundings. We cannot say that thorns exist for defense against injury by animals, for we have no absolute proof of it. Yet it seems to us an obvious inference. We must avoid jumping at conclusions. Nothing is easier than for us to deceive ourselves by unconsciously projecting our experience into nature. Our point of view is not the same as the plant’s. It is easy to say that cacti have thorns to protect them from being browsed by cattle. Scien- tifie research, however, shows that the thorns of cacti are probably mere incidents to the contraction of the whole plant body, the main enemy being drought rather than browsing animals. The truth in these matters of adaptation and specialization of parts can be gotten at only by a thorough study of each plant’s actions under varying circumstances. The student must come to his work with his mind free from preconceived notions and theories on the subject. If, in many cases, he finds his researches unfruitful, there is always this question to ponder upon: “Is it reasonable to expect Nature to reveal to me in a few months or years the stages by which, through centuries, perhaps, she has been making perfect the adaptation of this plant to its present environment?” 26 LOCUST Robinia Pseudacacia ny +i { a : ; | = * ; “4 we 3 : 1 , ¢ WINTER ‘BUDS I. THE MEANING OF THEM It is a common thing for people to look into the tree tops in Feb- ruary and exclaim, ‘*See how the buds are swelling!”’ As a matter of fact, the buds are no bigger then than they were in October and December. But the air certainly has a feeling of spring in it, and we naturally look for the signs that give encouragement to our hope that the winter is waning. When were these buds formed? This is a very reasonable question. Away back in apple-blossoming time when the leaves are but half-grown and _ still covered with downy hairs the little buds may be discovered deep in the angles between leaf and twig. Examine the trees of door yards and of forest and you find the apple tree but exemplifies the general rule. Buds show their beginnings with the opening of the leaves, they grow all summer, and reach maturity by the time the leaves are shed. All winter they are dormant, but with the rise of sap in March and April they swell and burst and grow. What is a bud? It is a miniature branch. It may bear leaves or flowers or both. Suppose it is a leaf bud. This does not mean that it will bear but a single leaf. It means that the winter bud will east off its scales and lengthen into a twig which will unfold young leaves. This process will continue throughout the grow- ing season, the tip and the stem between the leaves gradually elongating. These leaf buds produce most of the foliage of trees. The long leafy shoots of quick growing trees sometimes attain wonderful length in a season. I have seen ailanthus shoots that grew ten feet ina summer. ower buds cast their scales, and blossoms are revealed, single or clustered. The full development of these may soon be accomplished, or it may require a whole season, rl’ . . . . . The elm blossoms, borne in side buds, ripen into seeds which are shed ’ » TI} late in May. This ends the career of the bud. A flower bud of peach produces a single flower, whose development into a ripe peach occupies many weeks, perhaps all summer. Mixed buds cast their scales in 27 Ailanthus twig spring and unfold shoots which bear leaves and flowers. Apple and pear blossoms are thus borne in leafy clusters. Buds are not alike in appearance, even on the same branch. They are large or small, strong or weak, according to their contents and the chances they had when they were forming. The leaf is the nurse of the bud in its axil. If that leaf had plenty of air and sunshine, and its share of sap, then will its bud be well formed. In most cases the terminal bud is largest, because it had the best advan- tages when growing. Leaf buds are likely to be slender in form, flower buds more plump and more hairy; mixed buds, as they contain leaves and flowers, are usually larger than buds containing flowers or leaves alone. The winter buds are the promises one year gives to the next. In them are packed away the leaves and the flowers, all perfectly formed but very small. In them is the only possibility of lengthening shoots and thicken- ing stems. In them lie all the tree’s hopes for the future. Il. A FASCINATING STUDY Most people consider themselves lucky to know the commonest trees during the growing season, recognizing them by their leaves, flowers, or fruit. But when winter comes they can hardly be sure of a maple, or even an elm. AN It is not easy to grasp distinctions of shape, habit of Tip of Sumac branching, or the characters of bark, and express these oO? twig : : . : things in words. If people only knew that each species of tree has a characteristic winter signature, which is imprinted hundreds of times on each individual tree, they could transform many a dull winter day into hours of delight. This tree signature is no fanciful thing, and it does not require a microscope. ‘He who runs may read,” if he will but break off a twig as he runs. The winter bud and the leaf scar below it,—these form the tree’s autograph, a sign that is never misleading,—a sign that is as easy to recognize as are leaves or flowers or fruits. Do you want a young tulip tree to transplant from the woods in early March? You saw a fine one in the summer time. Go out to dig it, and your eyes, and your memory, will tell you which one it is. The tulip tree has a characteristic bud. Once seen, it will never be con- fused with buds of other trees. The study of winter buds is a fascinating business. You may begin 28 at any time after midsummer, for then the buds are well grown and the leaves are loosening their hold. Learn one at a time. Tear off a leaf or two from a familiar tree and notice the bud and the leaf scar. You will not forget. In winter you will find those well-remembered characters in the woods, and thereby know the tree that bears them. A new interest in trees will be roused within you. They are not dead things. They are only sleeping. Unsuspected beauties of form and color are discovered by you in winter buds. The various modes of wrapping and packing and varnishing by which the precious young shoots are protected from injury by wind and weather—all these are things that challenge your attention, and lead you into pleasures heretofore undreamed of. Break off a willow twig. Its buds are pointed, and each is clothed for winter with a leathery hood, made all in one piece, and attached around the base of the bud. This leathery hood has a delicate lming membrane. There are willows and willows, but their buds all have these characteristics. The whole twig grew last summer from a single winter bud. What is the most noticeable thing about the upper and lower half of the twig? What is its signifi- cance? Willow leaves are slender and light. They leave small scars under the buds. Larger, broader leaves could not be so thickly set upon the twig without seriously interferimg with each other. The buttonwood, which we call sycamore, makes no show of winter buds until the leaves begin to fall. You might think it an utterly improvident tree, if the swollen bases of the leaves did not tempt you to investigate. The hollow tent-like bases of the Willow leaf stems fasten down all around the plump, conical tyi¢ buds. Like the willow, the sycamore bud wears a cap made of a single brown scale. Even after the leaves are fallen, one usually has no trouble in finding some buds that still wear these summer leaf caps, the petiole having broken off above them. The bases of locust leaves cover the buds while they are growing, and when the leaves fall only the very tip is uncovered, so deeply does the bud he buried in the stem. So with the honey locust and the Judas tree and others of the pod-bearers. Buttonwood twig The velvety antlers of the staghorn sumac often carry 29 over winter the bases of their youngest leaves. In spring these are loosened and pushed off by buds that are cov- ered by them in the fashion already seen in the sycamore. One can generally judge in winter of the size of the leaf a certain tree bears by the scar it leaves, and by the sturdiness of the twig itself. By these tokens we know that the horse chestnut has a large and heavy leaf. The dots that show so plainly on its broad triangular scar tell where fibrous bundles bound the leaf firmly to the stem. There is a dot for each leaflet. Through these vascular bundles came also the sap which fed the leaf, and back through them flowed the return currents by which each individual leaf contributed to the nourishment of the other parts of the tree. We shall be disappointed if we expect to find a bud above each leaf scar on a horse chestnut twig. Most of the tree’s energy is usually expended in forming \g the large terminal buds. These generally contain flowers and leaves. Side buds, one or two, are Horse Chestnut twig formed below to carry forward the growth of the that blossomed i 4 apeaenee twig which comes to an abrupt stop where flowers and fruit are borne. Then we shall find other nN weak side buds, formed as if to fall back upon in case of injury to the stronger ones. If no such emergency arises, these buds die. Very fully developed and easily made out are the parts locked up in the big terminal winter buds of the horse chestnut. Outside are the bud scales, set on in pairs as are the leaves. They shingle over each other, and are weather-proof, being sealed tight with a gummy substance. When the scales are all removed we come upon the miniature leaves, folded in pairs, palms together, over a central spike of flowers. If the flowers are lacking, the number of leaves will be greater. The twigs of the wild cherry are supple like the willow, and their buds are slender and pointed. Each is protected by over- lapping scales, and sits upon a little shelf that bears the small leaf scar on its outer edge. At the base of the twig is a cluster of lines. These are the scars of the scales of last winter's bud. The accompanying twig with its five leaves and its five buds grew this season from that winter bud. The gray-green downy twig of the butternut is full of char- acter in winter. Its buds are like no others. The terminal bud 30 is large, containing besides a tuft of leaves the cluster of pistil- late flowers. The lateral buds vary in number from one to three over each leaf scar. The lower one is usually too small to amount to anything. The two above may both be little pine-apple like bodies which are the unprotected catkins of the staminate flowers, or one may be a catkin and the other a sealy bud that has a leafy shoot wrapped up in it. The buds are borne on a shelf, under which is the leaf scar, three- lobed, with bundle scars well marked, and over it a beetling hairy ridge, like a pair of eyebrows. Very noticeable are the pungent odor, and the clammy feel of butternut twigs, and the chambered pith characteristic of all walnuts and butternuts. The black walnut buds and leaf scars somewhat resemble those of the butternut. But there is never a suggestion of hairiness or clamminess upon a black walnut twig. The slender winter buds of the beech are very & elegantly formed. The brown scales that wrap them are thin as tissue paper, and covered with \ soft silken hairs. Two years of growth are shown — Butternut twig in the picture, each of them beginning with the casting off of the bud scales whose scars form a band of considerable width on the stem. The little bud near the base of the twig is dead. While the terminal bud grew out, bearing three leaves and as many lusty buds last summer, the side bud, less favorably situated, grew a frac- tion of an inch, bore a leaf, and finished with a bud. The shagbark hickory expresses well the vigor and decision of its character in its winter buds. Note the strong thick coverimmgs that le under the outer pair of scales. The leaves are perfectly formed inside these scales—all’s ready for the spring start, and the steady growth next summer. The prominent scar below each bud is an index to the size of the leaf that grew there. If we examine a catalpa twig in winter we are almost sure to think that the tree is dead. The oval leaf scars stand out prominently, set at intervals in whorls of threes 4 or in pairs about the stem. But above each scar is a mere F dot. If this is a bud it must be a blighted one. What prophecy do we see of the almost tropical foliage and the Two-year-old : y © i twig of Beech great flower clusters that are the glory of these trees in 31 June? But the catalpa tree is not dead. About the middle of May it wakes from its winter sleep, and in an incredibly short time those tiny buds have clothed it in a luxuriance of leaf and flower that outdoes all the efforts of neighbor trees. Have you ever opened a winter bud and counted the tiny crumpled leaves? They were made last summer and tucked away “for future reference.’ These miniature leaves are arranged upon their miniature stems in a definite mathematical order. Upon the position of them how much depends? For are not buds to develop later in their axils? And are not the twigs that rise from these buds to be the great boughs of suc- ceeding years? Leaf-arrangement is intensely interesting, when we come to study it. The botanists try to scare the common folks away from it by calling it Phyllotazy. But they can't keep the fun all to themselves. Let us get into their pleasant —they all have their leaves opposite. This fact is Shagbark well worth remembering. A pair of leaves reaching Hickory . , twig orth and south are set above (and below) a pair reach- ing east and west. Twigs and branches have the same arrangement. We know why. Then there is the alternate plan. Beech, syeamore, elm and basswood have two-ranked leaves, one at each joimt, all lymg in a horizontal plane, but alternating along the sides of the twig. There are many ranking plans,—from twos to thirteens and up, to be found among trees. The five-ranked order is very common. The leaves are set, one at a joint, and a line joing them is a spiral that goes twice around the twig before the sixth leaf is reached directly above (or below) the one chosen as a starting point. All the common fruit trees have this order,—plum, cherry, peach, apple, pear. The flowers and often the fruits repeat the “Rule of Five;” for floral parts, the botanists say, are simply ‘“‘ modified leaves,” which are brought into the same plane by the shortness of the stem. An apple core and a_ peach blossom will have more to tell us hereafter, will they not? What does it all mean, this precision of arrangement of leaf and bud and branch? The fulfilling of the law means for each tree the best possible arrangement of its foliage, year after year. Be- cause of this law, each leaf in its appointed place has a chance to make the most of the blessings of air, sap and sunshine it receives. 32 game. Here are the maples and the ashes and the buckeyes Twig of Catalpa AN INTERESTING TREE IMMIGRANT The Ailanthus tree, which landed here from China about one hundred years ago, has called much attention to itself ever since. in a big city —a strange tree standing with all the stately dignity of an English elm at the head of the street. But, unlike the elm, it was clothed with foliage of tropical luxuriance, and agaist the fern-like leaves lay masses of half-ripe ‘seeds, flushng pink and green, strongly resembling, at a little distance, the great flower clusters of the hardy hydrangea. I saw Ailanthus trees next on a rough hillside — hundreds of lusty saplings. Unmindful of the protests of the lawful owner, they had seized the land, like the undaunted Tenth Legion of some mighty conqueror. On the sober conventional city tree, the average twig was no thicker than an ordinary lead pencil. But here, with the restraints of civilization removed, there was evidently going on a free-for-all race among these wild youngsters. I can easily imagine that many records were being broken, for I measured a single shoot that was eight feet long and “almost two inches in diameter at its base. It bore thirty- four leaves, the largest of which was three feet six inches long, and where it broke off, the scar was easily an inch in length. ‘Tree of Heaven,” indeed! I never before saw a tree so aspiring. But the name the farmer calls it by is ** Devil’s Bush.” Because he cannot contend success- fully with it, he stands back and calls down maledictions on its leafy head. A queer freak of certain of these Ailanthus shoots was the broadening and flattening of the tips and the irregular crowding of the side buds. In the branch from which the drawing was made later the tip had been severely injured, and instead of lengthening, the end curled around, and a multitude of undersized leaves rose in a very small space, forming a huge rosette. A similar crowding of 33 I saw it first “A queer freak” leaves produces on willow trees the familiar pine cone willow galls which are described a few pages farther on. By these tufted Ailanthus branches I am strongly reminded of an abnormal growth we often see among the branches of willow and hack- berry trees. Sometimes it is the egg of a gall imsect; sometimes it is the spore of a fungus that perverts the growth of the soft tissues of a terminal shoot. Whichever is the cause, the result is the checking of the upward growth. The stem throws out side shoots in profusion, and these crowd and stunt each other, producing the matted bunch of twigs which is called a “ Witches’ Broom.” It is no surprise to learn that the relatives of the Ailanthus tree live in the tropics. Its exuberance of growth proclaims its racial nativity. It isthe sole American representative of a family that contains twenty- seven genera and one hundred and forty-seven species. The bark of the Ailanthus is smooth and fibrous, light brown, showing paler beneath, where it breaks into furrows. In the towns, staminate trees should be cut down, as the odor of the flowers is unpleasant to all, and even distress- ing to people who have catarrh. Pistillate flowers have no such odor. The tree spreads freely by suckers, and the abundant seeds are winged for long flights through the air. A very popular use of the tree is to start afew and cut them back to the ground each year. Under this systematic abuse, they send up leafy shoots of great size, which form a beautiful screen of shrubbery —like a fern bed, but more lusty and so more tropical-looking. 34 APPLES ON WILLOW TREES When the heart-leaved willow buds cast their leathery poke bonnets in spring, and begin to undo their bundles of young leaves, a four-winged creature wriggles itself free from its pupa case in a dead leaf at the foot of the tree, and tries its powers of flight. In the warm sunshine others of its kind are flashing their iridescent wings, and enjoying the delicious smell of budding willows. They must all agree that there is nothing that quite equals it.‘ A short life and a merry”’— this is their motto. The days of their revelry are soon over. Just before she dies, the female lays her eggs. Selecting a specially promising leaf on a willow twig, the insect settles down upon it. To look at her in this attitude you would think she had merely stopped to rest. Not unless you knew her by name would you suspect her of another motive, least of all of carrying concealed weapons. If some one were there to tell you just in the nick of time that this is a saw-fly, you might see that a pair of slender saws were thrust back and forth out of a socket on the under side of the abdomen, and that a slit was being cut in the leaf. “Like a red cheeked ” Into the slit the insect deftly slips an egg, and away she apyle goes. Two or three hundred times does the saw-fly repeat this operation before her strength fails and death finally overtakes her. Her numerous progeny show many peculiarities, not the least of which is increase in the size of the egg before it hatches. The tender leaf swells and forms a gall around the young larva. By June the lump is as big as a cherry. It looks much like a red-cheeked apple. I was tempted to taste the first one I ever saw, and in so doing I found out two important things : first, that the soft white flesh of the “willow apple gall” tastes rather insipid; second, that it surrounds a central cavity which is almost filled by the body of the fat larva—white except for a pair of black eyes set in the pale brown head. In the late summer I found the ‘ apples” still fresh and rosy on willow leaves. Inside was the same little habitant, only older and larger grown. When his appetite is sated, and the faded leaf has fallen the saw-fly larva transforms into a pupa, and lies upon the ground all winter, 35 exposed in its helplessness to all manner of dangers. Oh, well! There were three hundred of them. If two survive there will be no shortage of saw-flies next year, will there? Fancy the result if each of the three hundred eggs hatched and the young ones all grew up! Nature seems most kindly disposed toward these little willow saw- flies. To live in a house whose walls yield abundant food and drink is the acme of luxury, truly. But life even in such a house is fraught with dangers. Birds mistake these galls for cherries, and many a robin, dis- appointed in the taste of the red berry, is pleasantly surprised and quite compensated by the juicy little grub that he finds inside of it. There is a little snout beetle that prospects in the late spring for a place to lay her eggs. Finding a small fleshy lump on the willow leat, she wants nothing better. She probes it with her beak, pokes in an egg, and goes her way well satisfied. Out of this egg hatches a grub that soon destroys the rightful occupant of the gall, usurps its privileges, and assumes control. The Sycophant Curculio is its name. Often, instead of a beetle, a saw-fly plays the same trick. A poor relation is this larva which stays and stays, and taking the best of everything, starves his host. This insect has been called the Beggar Saw-fly. Our sympathies are strongly enlisted in behalf of the helpless archi- tect and inmate of the Willow Apple Gall, who, by no fault of his own, falls into the hands of his enemies—and his relations. It is a relief to be told that all of his persecutors have enemies of their own that come into the gall after them. Nature seems to have no favorites among her creatures. The willow may prefer to have its leaves let alone by the saw-flies. The saw-fly mother knows not of the Sycophant Curculio, nor the Beggar Saw-fly. And perhaps neither of these two know until too late that there are insects whose larve thirst for their blood. But each kind keeps down the numbers of the others. It is one of Nature's ways of maintaining the insect equilibrium. It calls to mind the familiar quatrain, consoling alike to men and insects: “Bio fleas have little fleas Upon their backs to bite ’em, And these in turn have lesser fleas — And so ad infinitum.” 36 * bl i . RGN WHITE WILLOW Salix alba PINE CONES ON WILLOW TREES “Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?”’ I asked myself incredulously, —* or pine cones of willow hedges?” I was walking along a country road, on either side of which was a willow hedge. I was watch- ing the play of the sunlight among the dancing foliage, and wondering how the willow could ever have come to be the symbol of grief. These roadside trees invited me to be in love with life, and lifted up into the air long withes to show that with fine equanimity they could rise superior to the hedge trimmer’s hatchet and shears. It was among these lusty shoots that I found a shorter one that ended abruptly im a green scaly knob. I never had seen its like before. It was at seeing this that I paused and asked myself the ques- tion. The knob was made on the pattern of a pine cone, with regular, closely overlapping scales. Pine cones on willow trees? Pliny would have allowed it, —would have set it down to illustrate the wonders made possible through the art of graftmg. But I PERO ON Uses! i = ie of a pine cone” was not so easily satisfied as Pliny. I knew that the willow bore a long cluster of pods. Cutting off the twig that bore this unknown fruit, I made search for more, and got in all a dozen of them. The same cone-like knobs occurred on some heart-leaved willows that reached out to me as I crossed a bridge. They were smaller, but seemed identical in kind. Sitting down on the back porch, I selected a fair speci- men, and cut it open lengthwise. My knife dragged heavily toward the tip, for the scales were tufted with a thick cottony substance. At the base was a woody core, from which all the scales appeared to rise. In the core was a hollow, and above the hollow —enclosed in the innermost set of scales—lay something that excited my curiosity to the limit. It was long and tapering and white and felt soft when I poked it with the point of my knife blade. I lifted it out, cradle and all, and parting the silk blanket, saw within a little fat white grub “with a dimple in its chin.” It seemed unused to being wakened in this manner, and squirmed 37 a little, as a child will do in a troubled dream. But I was not consider- ing its discomfort at that moment. ‘ Whose baby are you? How did you get here?”’ I didn’t expect an answer direct, so set about looking for evidence. There was no door leading into the secret chamber. The scales were entire as I took them out one by one. I must have cut through the hole in opening the cone. Selecting a fresh specimen, I scanned the outside of twig and cone with care. One by one I removed and examined the scales. They were perfect, and in the very core lay another larva just like the first one. I couldn't wait till these creatures grew up to have the answers to my questions. They might die in infancy. And so I went to the books. There I promptly found the picture of my pine cone, and the complete story of its growth. It would seem that the willow sap, bitter as it is to us, suits the taste of a certain tiny midge - like fly, which belongs to a family of insects known as gall-onats. Before the young willow shoots are well started these airy winged flies are out among them. The female selects a thrifty and ambitious terminal bud, and piercing its tender tissues, lays an egg in its very center. Out of this egg hatches the maggot which begins at once to eat the walls The gall split lengthwise of the prison in which it is born. Knowing no other shows the plump white eee : life, it is happy, and utterly unconscious that it is grub in ne center - “ thwarting the plans of the tree in the carrying out of its own. But the twig ceases to lengthen. The leaves that were in embryo in the bud, and predestined to unfold and adorn the twig as summer comes on, are stunted and developed into broad curving scales that crowd each other until further growth is impossible. The soft silky covering of unfolding leaves is kept, a pathetic reminder of what they were and what they might have become. When autumn comes the willow leaves fall, but these scales remain. The full-grown larva lies within its little cradle, and knows only that it has had enough to eat,—that it wants to sleep. Thus the winter passes, and the early spring brings the quiet transformation to a pupa. Out of the chrysalis and out of the end of the dry and loosened cone emerges the winged adult in the spring, to join its fellows from other cones, and with them to dance away in the warm sunshine its brief span of life. Before they die the females lay their eggs, and the story of their life is repeated in their offspring. The cones often remain on the tree for some time after their scales 38 are dead and their inmates have escaped. But there are no gnats in last year’s nests. Wherewithal would they be fed? I found a strange colony life existing in some of these pine cone galls. Between the scales were many larve of a “ guest’ midge — close relative of the proper inmate. As the latter kept always to her place in the center, leaving ample and unused guest chambers between the scales should the intruders not occupy the space and feast on the soft, leafy and these full of a delectable and nutritious sap— why scales, praising Allah for both! So reasoned the mother of fifty or sixty little pinky orange creatures which I found sleeping, each in a silken web, and each lying in a socket eaten out by him while he was yet a hungry larva. I found in several cones the eggs, long, curved, and pencil -like, of some green grasshopper, or katydid. They lay im fours and sixes — parallel, tucked in between the scales, in no case interfering with the comfort of the “guest” larvee, which certainly had no right to rise up against the invaders even had there been a crowding. “Squatter sovereignty”? was plainly the policy of each, and neither could well complain. There seemed to be room for all, with no over- lapping claims and no trouble, in this model tenement house. THE. WITCH OF THE WOODS In the greenhouse of the Botanical Garden a wondering crowd sur- rounds the orange tree laden at the same time with flowers and ripening fruit. It is a startling phenomenon, setting aside the rules that govern the staid trees of orchards and gar- dens. Just once do I recall among familiar trees, a lapse that reminds me of the habit of the orange tree. A cluster of pale apple blossoms appeared one autumn on a slen- der shoot that “The Witch Hazel scattering its shiny seeds” came out of the thick trunk when the rest of the tree was burdened with ripening apples. It ‘was a nine days’ wonder in the neighborhood. Among forest trees, as conventional as orchard trees in their obsery- ance of calendar days, there is one little tree that is utterly erratic. It is the Witch Hazel’s practice to bloom in the fall while it is scattering its ripened seeds. We may lose our faith in the Witch Hazel twig as a divining rod. We may scorn to rub Pond’s Extract on our bruises. But we cannot deny that, stripped of all the virtues with which tradition has invested it, the tree still has an eerie way with it; and we can never quite get out from under the spell it casts upon us. In the late winter, the Witch Hazel stands leaning against the sturdy trunks of other trees, its limbs bare or shivering in a scant covering of faded yellow leaves. The empty capsules open their yawning mouths and one would scarcely notice the tiny cup and ball and its four shriveled ribbons with which the twigs are thickly set. One does not botanize in the woods in winter. It must be dull for the Witch Hazel in the spring. All about it the 40 trees hang out their blossoms, and it is not one of them. It stands aside while the great flower pageant passes, from the aspens which lead, their furry tassels flushing red against the sky of March, till the last white petals of the hawthorn shake down upon the ground. Only green leaves clothe the barrenness of the little Witch Hazel tree and its empty pods fall, one by one. But if it feels the least bit lonesome it gives no out- ward sign. Its broad leaves spread in the sun, and its shoots lengthen apace. Under the foliage is a secret that is not to be revealed to the careless nor to the indifferent. The tree has larger and dearer interests than the making of leaves. Green buds as round as marbles cluster on the bases of leafy side spurs. The cup and balls so small in winter now assert themselves as gray green buttons, among the tiny buds. On some fine autumn morning when the frost is in the air and leaves are fl uttering to “ Eltin blossoms of the Witch Hazel” their final rest, the red squirrel, hiding chestnuts at the root of a tree, is startled by a sharp twinge on the ear, and a skipping near him on the leafy forest carpet that is dangerously suggestive of squirrel shot. He need not hurry away so fast. It is only the Witch Hazel bombarding him with its shiny black seeds. The frost and the sun are behind the guns. They have at last sprung the trigger that long held captive the tiny projectiles. Snap! and the capsule flies wide open. By the parting of the lips the seeds are broken loose from their attachment and thrown out with surprising force. The lining of the cells is believed to shorten and contribute to the force that throws the seed out. A friend of mine interested herself in finding out how far these seeds went. She chose an isolated tree and spread white muslin under it for some yards in four directions. The most remote of the many seeds she caught were eighteen feet from the base of the tree! 41 If there were witches in these days I could be sure I saw them here in their own proper places in the Witch Hazel tree, laughing in glee at the squirrel’s discomfiture, tossing their yellow cap-strings, cackling and showing their toothless gums without reserve in a grin both wide and deep. Come back, Mr. Bushy-tail, and take up your task without fear. It is only the Witch Hazel’s little scheme to replenish the earth by colonizing new territory,—a mode of seed dispersal that ever widens the circle of the tree’s distribution. The most cheerful things in the late autumn woods are the elfin blossoms of the Witch Hazel. On those cold days when rains come down and wash the color out of the October landscape, when the leaves fall shivering from the trees, and Nature seems at last to have lost heart and given up the game,—then it is that we humans find it hardest to be cheerful. One look at the Witch Hazel works like a charm upon us. The rain seems only to brighten the yellow of its petals. Frost comes. They are turned into crepe, and curl up into ringlets that dance in the winds. They are satisfied with just any sort of weather. The pods are older. They seem to take life more seriously. They close their lips tightly when it rams. But let the sun come out and dry them, and they fly open one after another. It is as if they burst into laughter, in which the onlooker joins in spite of himself. A SUGGESTION Why don’t you bring in a Witch Hazel and plant it in your shrub- bery border? Look among the following facts and see if you can find a good reason why you neglect this little tree. |. It may easily be transplanted from the wilds to the garden. 2. It grows the second year from seed, or is propagated by layers. It does best in somewhat moist, peaty or sandy soil. 3. It has handsome foliage which turns yellow in the fall. 4. Its flowering is prolonged for weeks through the season when all other shrubs are out of bloom. 5. Its flowers and fruits are beautiful and exceptionally interesting. 6. At all seasons of the year the shrub is a delightful botanical study as well as an ornament to any shrubbery border. PART I THE LIFE OF TREES THE PHYSIOLOGICAL SIDE THE SLEEP OF THE TREES Trees are, after all, very much like folks! They sleep o’ nights, they feed and drink, and thereby grow. They breathe through a kind of lugs the same life-giving oxygen, and throw off carbon dioxid. They tear their clothes, and have to mend them. In a crowd, they jostle each other, like rude boys, and the big fellows usually conquer the weaker ones. They get cuts and bruises and broken limbs; and there is a long catalogue of tree diseases, most of them catching, like the measles and the whooping-cough. In winter, trees put on their warmest coats—a fashion set by the woodchuck and the bear—and just sleep and wait for sprmg! In warm weather a tree goes to sleep at sundown, and wakes up in the morning. If the sky is overcast, the tree is drowsy; if rain sets in, it goes right off to sleep. The only days that really count in a tree’s calendar are the clear ones. Have you ever seen a tree asleep? Near my house are a number of young locusts growing. Their fern-like leaves are held in sweeping, graceful clusters up into the sunshine. But on wet days, and all through the night, those leafy twigs droop down listlessly; the leaflets fold their palms together; the whole tree is the picture of limp helplessness. It is the locust’s way. The closing of the leaflets reduces evaporation (which is a cooling process), and enables the tree to save much of its bodily heat. For a similar reason a kitten tucks its feet snugly under its body, and curls its tail around, before it takes a nap. All young and tender foliage tends thus to * cuddle down” when it is sleepy. But older and stiffer leaves can sleep sitting erect, as grown-up folks will often do. Let me suggest that you select an elm or a maple near by, or any other tree, and watch it. Compare the night and day positions of the leaves when just opening. As they become full grown, continue your observations and comparisons. Better confine yourself to one special twig of each tree. Take up a thrifty young plant of white clover from the lawn. Get it well started in a pot. Then watch it as its leaves change at night and in the morning. It is one of the most interesting things you can have about you. Set it in a dark closet 45 for a while in the middle of the day. Let others enjoy these little experiments with you. Day and night, rain or shine, trees keep breathing as steadily as you do. Should you stop you would smother and die. Just as soon and just as truly would the trees. No creature lives but needs to breathe; that is the process that keeps the living tissues in working order. The constant tearmg down and building up of cells is the one condition upon which life exists. In Por order that there may always be nutri- tion at hand to rebuild the cells, and that the tree may grow in stature and strength from year to year, food must be taken in, elaborated, and stored away. It is to serve this end that the tree wakes from its winter sleep. It is for this that it rests by night and wakes so early in the morning. Every leaf that spreads its broad, green blade into the sunshine is a laboratory devoted to the manufacture of starch. The raw materials are obtamed from the air, and from the soil. The machinery is the soft green leaf-pulp. The sun furnishes the power. When the sun is gone, the starch factory shuts down. After dark there is clearmg up to be done, and putting of things away. It is not an eight-hour day: work stretches from sun to sun. But there is no “night shift in the starch works” of a tree or of any other plant. It is a surprise to many people to learn how short is the tree’s grow- “Poplar buds bursting with secrets they are soon to reveal” ing season. By midsummer the twigs are usually as long as they are going to be. The ring of new wood is formed around the trunk. The tree begins to get ready for winter. Now this long winter vaca- tion is not indicative of an inborn tendency toward idleness in any species of trees. It is rather a habit acquired by nearly all of them, a concession to the demands of our rigorous climate. The problem is more essentially one of water supply than of temperature. Before July is gone the amount of water taken up by the roots has perceptibly diminished. The food supply is proportionately lessened. 46 The whole leaf system must be re-adjusted to the cutting off of supplies. The leaves cautiously begin to close the doors through which water was wont freely to escape. As the sap-flow from the roots grows gradually weaker, the making of starch dwindles. Cooler weather warns the tree that the tender shoots need thickened bark, and that the buds must be sealed up warm and tight. To save the leaves is out of the question, for their walls are thin. So the tree makes preparations to abandon them. It is quite worth our while to pick up a leaf now and then as it flutters to our feet during the autumn. Each one tells a most interesting bit of personal history, to any one who will carefully examine and question it. No two are alike, but all tell the saine story of the withdrawal of the “leaf pulp” into the twig—a story of the thriftiness of the tree. The monotony of green gives place to patches of vivid, contrasting colors, or to dead russets. The last traces of leaf green are likely to be seen along the veins, which are the channels that drained the leaf dry of its soft living matter. We can well understand the browns of dead leaves. They are dead colors. But why should other leaves “die like the dolphin,” painting our autumn landscapes with the changeful splendor of sunset skies? Once we said, “It is the frost.” But now we know better. The dying leaf still holds some patches of leaf green. The waxy granules gradually change to a yellow liquid which shows through the transparent leaf walls as plainly as when its elements were still green. During the summer the leaves accumulated a considerable burden of mineral sub- stances that came up to them in the crude sap, and, being in the way, it was lodged in leaf cells, to their great disadvantage. As the leaf suffers the withdrawal of its livmg substance, these useless mineral deposits chemically decompose. The gradual breaking down of all the residual substances in the leaf is the true cause of the brilliant and wonderful variations of color we see in the foliage of our woods in autumn. Because these changes occur at the season when warm days and frosty nights are common, we have erroneously put the two phenom- ena together as cause and effect. As the leaf “ripens,” a layer of healing tissue forms between leaf and twig, and when they part, we have no reason to think that the separation is cause for regret on either side. Now the tree is ready to sleep. As the cold increases, much of the water which is within the cells of the living layer, filters through the cell walls and forms into ice crystals in the spaces outside. There is room here for the expansion due to freezing, and no danger of rupturing the delicate cell walls. The cold may for a season be severe enough to stiffen the mucilaginous 47 substance still left in the cells. Then the tree is in a death-like trance. But with the milder weather, the protoplasm thaws, and life stirs once more. With this explanation, one can understand how it is that trees freeze solid in winter without injury. There is an important difference between freezing and freezing to death. Look out at the trees in these warm, showery days of early April! The frost is out of the ground, and every little root is happy. The buds are shining and swelling and bursting with secrets they are soon to reveal. The twigs are green with the rising tide of sap. The very bark, rough and dead, seems to “feel in its barrenness some touch of spring.” Out-of-the-way cells give up stores of starchy, sugary substance that they have been saving all winter against this day. There is food enough and to spare for every hungry cell. Yesterday the great buds of the poplars were sound asleep. They roused themselves and threw off their shiny scales. To-day the little gray-green leaves are trembling on every twig. To-morrow the tree will be in full leaf, bold and self-sufficient, as if it had never been bare and shivering. The botanist dissects and analyzes and experiments. So does the chemist and the physicist. Nature has told them how some of her wonders are performed. But outside the laboratory, in the April sun- shine, the sum of human knowledge seems very small. The miracle of the creation is repeating itself on every hand. The unfathomable mystery of the coming of spring! BITTERNUT HICKORY Hicoria minima ine HOW TREES REPRODUCE THEIR KIND Trees seem to share with all other living things an apprehension that their race may perish from the earth. It is to prevent this calamity that they feed and breathe and grow. As soon as they are old enough they produce flowers, mature seeds, and fling them forth. Their seed-sowing is a prodigal business. Every year a thousand of their offspring die for every one that lives. But that one is quite enough.’ One tree is sufficient to save the race. The forms of these seeds are a constant marvel to the intelligent observer. The wonder grows when we study the uses they serve in dis- tributing the species. Berries and other fleshy fruits tempt birds in whose crops the seeds lodge and they are afterwards dropped in regions far remote from the parent trees. The wind transports the winged seeds. Water carries the light ones. Squirrels and other animals store nuts and acorns in pockets here. There along their runways in the fall. Many of these seeds are left to germinate wherever they chance to be dropped. The fur of animals may carry little burs like those of the beech nut. The spiny bur of the chestnut keeps animals from getting the seed. The husk and thick, rough shell protect walnuts and butternuts from being eaten. These are some of the methods; for details, read the account of “The Flight of Seeds.” But the tree that depends entirely upon seeds as a means of reproduc- tion is seriously handicapped in the race. It has long been known that willows and some other trees could be reproduced by putting into soil a fresh piece of a branch or twig. The power to throw out leafy shoots and roots seems to be especially active in the cambium of these trees. The discovery of this fact came by observing that twigs broken off and drifted down stream took root where they lodged. Willow stakes set into the ground grow, and hedges are soon produced. Green willow fence- posts soon grow into roadside trees. Another way of expressing the same exuberance of vitality is seen when willows are pollarded. A branch is cut off, and the cambium forms a number of buds below the wound from which strong watersprouts or suckers grow out. Bruising the stem has the same effect. The loss of 49 a twig often sets the branch to pushing out dormant buds. Thus the crack willow and certain poplars cast off their catkins and push out just below them leafy side shoots to take their places. It is a common practice to cut back to stubs the long weak limbs of soft maples. A thicket of lusty shoots springs up, which in a few years, with judicious thinning, forms a strong, close, symmetrical head. A twig drooping along the ground may strike root at a jomt and form an independent plant when its connection with the main plant is sev- ered. Raspberry canes bend over and root at the tips. So do viburnums. Roots of many trees may be cut mto pieces and each produce a plant. Normally, roots have no buds, but the cutting of them may produce buds from which spring leafy shoots above ground. Many plants grow from root cuttings. The horse radish plant is so propagated. The hickory is multiplied in this way. The roots of many trees produce buds, and send up shoots, apparently without provocation. The failing of the tree’s vitality seems to intensify this habit. It is a sort of life-insurance scheme. With many species of trees a fringe of suckers comes up at the junction between root and stem after the tree is cut down. A common sight is the rotting stump of a giant chestnut, around and out of which a half dozen sprouts have grown into good sized trees. In short, many plants increase their kind by devices not at all con- nected with flower or fruit. Man takes advantage of these suggestions of nature Theoretically, every plant or tree may be propagated by the nurseryman from a mere slip or cutting. It is necessary only to provide the conditions favorable for growth. Some practical suggestions con- cerning the propagation of trees will be found in the chapter, ‘* How Nursery Trees are Made.” WHY TREES GROW ERECT The most casual observer must have been struck by the constancy with which the trunks of trees aim toward the zenith, never minding the slope on which they may be growing. In tapering trees like the Lombardy poplar, this is most noticeable, and in all trees whose trunks continue to the top, as do the firs, spruces and tamaracks. Less notice- ably, but not less constantly, does this rule hold among the broad-crowned, diffuse trees, like the oaks and the maples. Only accident or the urgent necessity for light will cause a tree to lean in growing. Among the most interesting phenomena of tree growth are the mani- fest efforts made by crippled trees to get back to the erect position. Every branch seems to have inherent in it loyalty to old traditions, estab- lished perhaps when the progenitors of all tree families, growing on the margins of old Paleozoic seas, stood up, manwise, and formally assumed dominion over the forms of plant life that groveled at their feet or looked up at them from lower levels. A tree thrown down may die of its wounds, but if it does not die it seeks to assume an erect position. As long as there is life there is aspiration! One of these courageous trees which I know is a young one that was erippled by the fall of a neighbor. It was partially uprooted, and its top was pinned to the earth, and smothered under the shaggy crown of the larger tree. When the few roots still in the ground recovered from the shock, they took fresh hold upon the soil, and a vigorous young shoot grew out of the prostrate stem. The tree’s resources seem to have been withdrawn from the doomed top and thrown into this erect branch that forms a right angle with the old trunk. It is a most remarkable sight, this prone trunk with its roots in the air and its head in the dust, and out of its trunk growing this little tree as pretty and symmetrical and vigorous to all appearances as was the original tree before dire calamity overtook it. There is something almost sublime in the patience and the courage of plants! On a steep bank which has suffered many a land-slide grows a poplar. Once it had a station far up, but its foundations were shaken while yet its roots were shallow, and it fell headlong down the slope. Catching upon a snag, the tree stopped half-way down the wall of the gorge, and a 51 mass of earth accumulated upon its upturned roots. The tree was thus re-planted, head downward. Three years it has been growing. Its large branches still point down the bank, but the younger ones have turned and gone the other way. Through the framework of larger branches they have forced their way to liberty and light. Set a basswood or a willow branch in the ground upside down, and the tree which grows from it will be perfectly normal. The buds along the sides will open and the shoots bend upward as they lengthen. The terminal bud of a young larch has been killed. A lateral branch has bent up and become the leader. Gradually the “kink” is disappearing, and the stem will soon be as straight as ever. The picture shows a lower branch on a cottonwood tree. It is a record of struggles, disappoint- ments and final triumph. Can you read it? Some interesting observations have been recorded on the actions of crippled trees. A storm that some years ago swept the grounds of the Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station, partially uprooted several trees. A balsam fir which was bent over by the storm was later observed by Professor Bessey to be gradually bringing its tip to the vertical position. The tender new growth was first noticed to be curving up. By slow degrees the curve moved downward to wood that was two or three years old when the storm took place. The report of these observations set other scientists to experimenting. Thomas Meehan, a prominent nurseryman and horticulturist of Philadelphia, took up a straight-stemmed, well- grown arbor vite, and reset it with the stem at an angle of 45° with the horizon. Soon the tip began to bend toward the vertical. In three weeks the curve had extended down to the five-year-old wood, involving three feet of the top of the tree. The tip which first became erect was thrown past the vertical by the bending below it. Gradually this tendency was corrected, and the tip was brought back into line. At the end of the season the top of the tree, seven years’ growth, stood upright! An interesting phase of the erecting habit is seen im weeping trees. The young twigs are flexible and droop helplessly at first, but they stiffen and lift themselves when they grow older. Thus the youngest growth is constantly lifted higher and held farther out from the trunk, and the crown of the tree enlarged. The force that makes a tree grow erect must be strong enough to overcome the force of gravitation. Weare likely to forget that every moment the latter force is tryimg to pull trees to the ground. Careful observation will see the effects of the struggle between the two con- tending forces. An excellent illustration is seen in the gradual bend- ing of old branches away from the trunk. This is supposed to be 52 due to their weight, and to accompany the loss of vigor in the tree. Young oaks have acute angles between branch and stem. Observations show these same branches grown old to stand horizontal to the trunk and sometimes to droop. Horse chestnut trees have ascending branches when young. An old tree shows the branches curving first out, then down, then up, supporting the last few years of growth and the ter- minal leaves in an upright position. The upper limbs of spruce and pine trees are lifted up. Lower down the branches are horizontal. The oldest, heaviest ones, droop in decrepit attitudes, and often lie passive upon the ground. The only ones of our common trees that do not pass through these modifications of shape and position of limbs are the fastigiate trees, those of the Lombardy poplar type. | It will be observed that the branches | | | \ .—V~ ee of these trees never grow large nor long. There is another influence besides gravitation which acts against ' | the tree’s aspiring tendencies. It is | the wind. A careful observer has } only to look at the trees of a region to learn the direction and strength “A record of struggles, disappointments and final triumph.” of prevailing winds. It is a fascinat- ing study from car windows, relieving many a tedious journey. It is the solitary trees which are chiefly affected. Trees in groves or forests defend each other against the winds. The reader will do well to pause here and look at the full-page plates of White Pine, Tamarack, Silver-leaved Poplar, and American Beech. They tell some interesting stories about prevailmg winds. Compare the Horse Chestnut, and the White Oak, and others. These trees have grown in protected situations. In the northern woods the forester’s compass is the tree top— the soft tapering terminal shoot of hemlock and other conifers bent over by the winds. There are hundreds of them always in sight. In regions where he is acquainted he needs no better guide-posts than these. They are not all alike, and so they chart the forest for him, as familiar objects guide us on our way through the city. 53 Winds and the force of gravitation, however, but set off the stronger force. What is the nature of this force that makes the branch or the tree grow erect? In plain English, it is the craving for light. However, if you wish technical terms you may use “ heliotropism”’ for this ten- dency to seek the light, and “ geotropism” for the tendency of plants to obey the force of gravitation. It is the desire for light that makes trees grow tall in the forest. It is the struggle for light that makes branches lengthen, that gives the leaves farthest away from the trunk the best chance to live and make a living for the tree,— that makes the inner recesses of the tree dark and leafless. WHY TREES DIE “The days of our years are three score years and ten.” What a trifle seems the span of human life when we compare it with the age of trees! We have seen in the east remnants of our primeval forests —trees that measure one hundred feet and more in height, with a circumference to correspond. Several species of oak, the tulip tree and the sycamore reach a hundred and fifty feet. But when we have seen the “ Big Trees” of California towering to a height of three hundred feet and more, we get a larger conception of what trees may attain to in size and age. Stumps of these giant trees record from two to four thousand years of growth, and the estimated age of some living specimens is five thousand years. On the slopes of the Sierras the Douglas spruce and Lambert pine often reach a height of three hundred feet. The highest known tree is an Australian species of Euca- lyptus, which occasionally comes close to five hundred feet high. In the old world there stands to-day many a tree of gigantic stature whose age probably exceeds two thousand years—cedars of Lebanon, and giant plane trees, and oaks, and yews, and chestnuts. Imagine a tree whose trunk is thick enough to touch the curbstone on either side, if it were planted in an average city street. Then you will have some idea of the size which trees may attain to. The rings of growth, counted when one of these patriarchs dies, prove that its age has not been over estimated. Why, indeed, should a tree die at all? Each successive year renews the organs by which life is maintained. The division of each cambium cell renews the youth of that cell. Each year multiplies the number of new feeding roots and extends new shoots, which are clothed with fresh leaves. Why, then, should not a tree live forever? “A tree never dies of old age!” This declaration of Professor B. E. Fernow, formerly Chief of the Division of Forestry, U.S. Depart- ment of Agriculture, authoritatively answers our question. Theoretically, a tree may taste immortality. Practically, it accumulates infirmities with years, and death sooner or later overtakes it. A tree is a depend- ent creature. It may starve or die of thirst if the soil is hard or dry or impoverished under it. Caterpillars may eat its foliage. Plant a) lice and scale bugs may suck its juices. Beetles may tunnel under the bark and into the wood. Under these attacks the tree is helpless. Moreover, the air is laden with the germs of tree diseases. Their name is legion,—scab, rot, blight, rust, mildew,—these are some each part has a host of such enemies which lodge wherever the tree pre- of them. The leaves, fruit, branches, roots and wood itself sents a vulnerable pomt. These germs of fungous diseases grow, and their rapid development means the destruction of the tissues of the tree. The wind, too, is an enemy of the tree because every broken limb offers a lodging place for spores of fungi which may work down into the main stem and by slow degrees reduce it to a hollow shell. Many a large tree shattered by a storm and strewn a wreck upon the ground owes its death to the development of a wood-destroymg fungus whose germ entered by way of a broken branch. It behooves us, therefore, to keep the insects and fungi from getting mto our favorite trees. A few practical suggestions will be found in the chapter entitled, “Tnsects, Diseases and Spraying.” If one wishes to kill a large tree, the easiest way is to “ girdle” it. A belt of the bark a foot wide or more is usually stripped from the base of the trunk all around. This exposes the living layer, whose cells lose their moisture through evaporation, and very soon die. The ascending sap is not necessarily disturbed, as its course hes through the newest wood. But the returning current, which habitually descends through the inner bark and cambium, is unable to bridge the girdled place. The roots, which depend upon this food sent them by the leaves, soon die of starvation. The leaves die and fall, because the disabled roots cease to send up sap from below. Trees differ widely in tenacity of life. Some promptly die if the bark is but badly bruised. Others live, though girdled, if the imner bark adheres in places. I{ a tree by any such chance survives girdling, it thickens its trunk above the wound. This thickening is caused by the excess of food that accumulates from above while the wound is healing, and the means of conveying it below are yet inadequate. This fact is turned to practical account, especially im fancy fruit culture. The spurs of grapes, for instance, are girdled when fruit is well grown to hasten and to make perfect the ripening of the cluster. 56 TAMARACK Larix Americana j i eee vi HOW TREES BREATHE When we say a tree feels thus and so, or it thinks this or that, we are indulging in fancy. But when we say a tree breathes, we state an accepted scientific truth. There is no make-believe about it. ) Brown pennyroyal stems standing like sentinels knee deep in snow on the edge of the woods. 86 FRUIT TREES AT HOME PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS FOR CULTIVATING FRUIT TREES IN SMALL YARDS IN CITY OR VILLAGE There is a vision wondrous fair which fills the eye of the man who sets out fruit trees in his back yard. As he tends and watches them, the vision comes ever nearer, and at last it becomes a delight- ful reality, —there are ruddy apples ripening among the green leaves. Other trees bear fruit after their kind. The promises of earlier years are redeemed. But the harvest is not the only reward. There is pure enjoy- ment in the care of young trees. Each year reveals new phases of their life stories. Each year challenges us with new problems. As if they possessed intelligence the trees respond to every change of treat- ment. There is no dullness in the waiting years before they bear fruit. Have you ever planned and planted such a little garden orchard? If not, then try it. Now is a good time to begin. How much of your land is behind the house? Is there a plot fifty feet square to plant? Then you have room for a dozen fruit trees, with ample space for small fruits and vegetables among them. Choosing the trees. What fruits are you specially fond of? You will try to get those, of course. Make out your list from the cata- logue of the nearest reliable nurseryman. This is one of the best parts of the whole enterprise. There are fine flavored varieties that you particularly dote upon. Get these if they have been tried and found hardy in your locality. Let somebody with more ground test new varieties. First-class trees are a few cents higher in price than the second class. The latter are inferior, —crooked perhaps, or rough or undersized. They may outgrow these defects,—and they may not. To save the difference between the prices of first and second-class trees on a small order would be very poor economy. You cannot. aftord to do it. The nurseryman calls first-class all trees that are well- grown, free from blemishes, and bear the characteristics of their variety. For example, a Northern Spy should be tall and straight with a long tap root; but a Greening of the same age should be shorter, with shallow, spreading roots and angular limbs. 87 The proper age. People often make mistakes about the ages of the trees they plant. Peach trees should be one year old when set in their final places. Apples, pears, plums, and cherries should be two, or better, three years old. The age of a tree is reckoned from the time that the seedling stock is budded with the desired variety. The ages given above are standard ones for commercial orchards. A four- year-old apple tree is worth less than a three-year-old, and a three- year-old peach tree is not worth settmg out. Many people pay fancy prices for trees older than the standard ages, expecting them to come into bearing earlier, but much of their money is wasted. A sample order. The following list of trees was chosen and set out on a lot in central New York. The trees occupy a plot about fifty by sixty feet. In this garden there will be a good variety and a good succession of fruits from summer to winter when the trees come into bearing. Apple. 1 Yellow Transparent . . . Summer $0.25 fe ih (Gamage 5 6 s ¢ = < Jel 25 G: 1 Hubbardson Nonesuch . . Winter 7) « i Thy Cie) 6 5 5 5 5 leh 25 Pear. 1 Bartlet (Dwarf) . . . . Summer 25 & 1 Seckel a ace Caeereall 25 Peach. 1 Mountain Rose . = = =» summer 20 € iE bertasees Gant) 2 eeennnemeb rn yaelien 20 cs i! Crawtord’s Late << . = - Late Fall .20 Cherry. 1 Barly Richmond >> =. Summer =] = > Rod Black shacle eens Summer . so sat) Plum. i Burbanike 7s °.)) Gus aie te Goes alll eee we Cys ies 5 5 6 5 o Jel s9 5 5s Se 13 . $3.55 Dwarf trees. These have many advantages over standards. They occupy less room and are easier to care for in every way. If they receive good cultivation they produce larger and finer fruits, although not so many as trees of standard size. Dwarf apple and pear trees of some of the leading varieties can be procured in America from nurserymen. Dwarf trees are easy to spray, and the work of pruning and harvesting is greatly simplified because no ladder is necessary Planting the trees. You may have your trees sent to you in the fall or in the early spring. Peach trees are better set out in the spring, as they do not ripen their wood as early in the fall as many other fruit trees. Fall planting should be done early enough for the 88 roots to establish themselves before winter sets in. Trees thus planted get an early growing start m the spring. “ Heeling in.’ Trees may be heeled in at any time, 7.e., laid down with their roots in a trench and covered with earth. This should always be done if the trees arrive from the nursery before the soil is in good condition, or if the owner is pressed for time. Distances apart. Wow far apart shall the trees be set? Ordinary apple trees at least twenty-five feet in the home garden. Thirty-five or forty feet is the orchard rule. Peaches should stand sixteen feet apart each way. Dwarf apple or pears may be as close as eight feet. Often peaches are set between apples. They are shorter-lived and are gone before the apple trees begin to shade them. To get a dozen trees on a space fifty by sixty feet you will have to set some of them near the boundary lines. This is legitimate, for your neighbors will take enough of the fruit that hangs over the fences to ease your con- science as to the fertility your trees steal from their soil. Planting day. It is a critical time, —this day of the planting, when your stakes are set, the holes dug, and the little trees assigned to their places for better or for worse. The best way to plant a tree, with the why of each step is given in another chapter. It need not be repeated here. Every extra care bestowed on this planting is paid for by the extra vigor of the tree during its first growig season. Cutting back. You may not count the tree properly planted until you have cut back its top. This is really best done betore the plant- ing. It seems a pity to “sacrifice” any of the top,—it is so thrifty looking, but heavy top pruning is the price of success in this first year of the tree’s orchard life. The roots have been severely pruned in the digging. Unless the top is cut back correspondingly, the maimed roots will be overtaxed, and the life of the tree be endangered. Three or four short thick branches should be left at the top, above the single trunk. They are to be the large limbs. Feeding the trees. The soil contains much plant food which the rootlets can find if only the earth remains mellow and moist. They cannot work their way into dry, hard clods. Trees can take their food from the soil only when it is dissolved in water. What won- der that they languish when the soil is cracked and hardened! We cannot dig down and crumble those hard clods around the roots, but we can break up those at the surface. Then rains will soak down and soften the under soil. By keeping the surface soil fine and by raking it frequently, the evaporation of moisture from below may be checked, and the roots will then go on feeding without interruption. 89 But there imevitably comes a time when growth is checked because the food supply runs low. The soil may be rich, but its fertility is not inexhaustible. If the trees do not do well even when you keep the soil loose and fine under them, it is probable that they are in need of plant foods: nitrogen, phosphoric acid or potash. Commercial fertilizers. Here is a chance to test commercial fer- tilizers. Nitrogen will start a languishing tree into lusty growth. In the form of nitrate of soda it gives the quickest results. Phosphoric acid and potash restore the mineral elements to depleted soils. Cover crops. A second way is less expensive than buying chemical fertilizers, but. slower. It is to sow “cover crops” of rye, or clover, or beans, and to turn them under while yet green. ‘This returns to the soil much that the plants took from it while growing, and much that they gathered from the air. The pod-bearing plants, as peas, beans, clover, and vetch, have the power to gather nitrogen from the air and to store it away in little swellings called tubercles along their roots as well as in the parts above ground. When these plants are turned under and decay, they give their nitrogen to the soil, along with their other constituents. The cover crop not only enriches the soil but it also holds it from washing, and improves its physical condition. Vegetable fibre added to the sand and clay that constitute the soil enables it to hold moisture like a sponge. Cowpeas and crimson clover are much lauded as cover crops, especially in the south. They are not hardy in the northern tier of states,—there rye and other grains are sown instead. They contribute less of nitrogen but more of phosphoric acid and potash, the two important mineral plant foods. Rye is par- ticularly valuable on soddy lands where it is often at first impossible to get a stand of clover. Pruning. Each year the tree tries to support too many branches. Its energies are dissipated. Every winter the tree top should be shaped and thinned to suit the taste of the owner. black - - crippled - - downy - Lombardy - necklace-bearing silver-leaved - value of wood white = - Poplars - - Populus alba - balsamifera - balsamifera var. candicans deltoidea dilatata - - grandidentata heterophylla - monilifera - nigra - : tremuloides - Potash - = Preparation for winter - Prickles 2 - Propolis - Protoplasm, freezing Pruning, annual man’s - - nature’s - principles - universal rule Pruning-book, Bailey Quercitron - Quercus acuminata alba - - coccinea - - imbricaria macrocarpa - Marilandica minor - - palustris Phellos - platanoides - prinoides - Prinus pumila - - rubra velutina - Virginiana - Rays, pith = - - - Redbud - - - Reproduction by cuttings - Reserves, forest - - Resin - - - “Reversion to type” = - Ring, cambium - - Rings, yearly - - Robinia hispida — - - Pseudacacia - viscosa - - - Root and top, interaction Roots, annual growth = breathing - - choking - - - crowding - - drowning - - pruning - - smothering - - thirst - - Rosin - - - Rule, orchardist’s E Rust - > - - Rye - - - Salix alba - - - amygdaloides = Babylonica - - discolor - - fluviatilis - - fragilis - - glancophylla — - - lucida - - nigra - - - sericea - - viminalis - - vitellina - - Salisburia adiantifolia — - San José scale - = Sap, loss - - - Savin - - = Saw fly, beggar - = gall on willow - willow, life history - Seale insects - - School grounds - - Scions, collecting - cutting - - - packing - . Seedling - = = Seedlings, growth - Seed trees” - - - Seeds, distribution - flight - modes of distribution Selection, natural - - Shade trees, insects affecting 200 - 101 77 8-62-124-163 179 - 178 179 - 100 62 - 58 58 - 74 58 - 49 1l7 ee ae Shade trees, pruning spraying - Shaving, pine - Shelf fungi - Shoots, lengthening Sleep of the trees - Soap, solutions - Soil, depletion - earth worms in - regeneration ‘surface - - virgin - Specialization - Spines, origin - Splinter, oak = Spores” - - Spray, proper time - Spray pump, evolution - Spraying, development importance - information - literature - origin - - park trees) - principles - success in - Spring, mystery of Spruce, black - Norway - - red - - “skunk” - - white - Squirrels - - “Standards” = Starch, making = Stomates - Stovewood studies - “Strains” in varieties Struggle for existence Succession, fruit Suckers - : Sugarberry - Sugar bush - - Sumac, staghorn Surgery, corrective - Survival of fittest Symbiosis Sycamore = Tamarack - - Tar - - Taxodium distichum Tacus minor Thorns, origin - and prickles - Thuja occidentalis Tilia Americana - - 118 - 113 - - 113 - 111 - = hit - 119 - = dlital - 111 - - 18 - 111 - = “ahi - 48 - - 185 - 186 - - 185 - 186 - - 186 - 14 100 - 46-61 - - 57 - 18 - - 102 6-9-15-16-36-125-182 - 88 1 1 B “TN wake a9 ON oO . 16-17-36 - 61-177 - 11-12-14-29 = 188 - - 184 - 188 = - 190 - 25 - 24-180 - 189 - - 138 i 201 Tilia Europea heterophylla pubescens - Tillage - - Tissues, healing — - Top-working = - Tracheids Training, espalier Transpiration - Transplanting - expert - - from wild - rules - - Tree, planting - stored food thriftiness — - yearly growth Trees as “hosts” early-blooming habit age limit autograph - bacterial diseases bark-bound breathing — - choosing - - crippled - dependence - distance apart enemies - - erect habit - feeding - gigantic - growing season - heeling-in - hollow infirmities - late-blooming habit lengthening - love for - making over - planting - pruning seed showy signatures - sleep - - specimen - structure top-working - training trimming Ss waking weeping - Trunk, growth Tsuga Canadensis Caroliniana Tubercles of pod-bearers - 63-64 186 186 90 Turpentine Tussock-moths Twig, age Twigs, battle among double growth Ulmus alata Americana campestris Sulva - montana TACECMOSA Unsightly objects, screening Variety, changing Virgilia Walks - = Walnut, black - English - Japanese - - Persian - Walnuts and hickories chambered pith drawbacks hybrids propagation - Watersprouts Whip-graft Why trees die trees grow erect - Willow, black broad-leayed crack - glaucous - Kilmarnock - peach-leaved propagation - osier - purple - sandbar - - seeds - shining silky - white - - winter buds weeping - - Wisconsin weeping - Willows, adaptability and poplars - arctic hybrids little - pollarding - species - - Winds, effect on trees Winter buds, contents protection Witch hazel - charm - in home grounds seed distribution yearly round Witches’ brooms Wood, ash_ - average growth beech - - cross-grained formation - green - hickory - - hornbeam - ironwood - oak - - pine - - poplar - rings - - rotten sound spring summer - . Woodlands, our dependence upon Wood lot, care = cost - farmer's - products seeding Woods, porous non-porous special kinds Wounds, healing - Yellow-wood : Yew, American = European - Trailing 202 190 2 » , = el . => =) " ~ eS —_ < ; ~—__— cu ve LIBRARY = RY FACULTY OF FOREST UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QK Rogers, Julia Ellen 482 Among green trees R6 Forestry PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET oc. Se ee UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY ‘Metre er) oghee 1 sto SO 8b SO Ol 6€ 9 Wall SOd 4IHS AVE JONVY G