J. Horace McFarland

“ The elm is fully clothed down to the drooping tips of the branchlets with foliage, which, though deepest green above, reflects, under its dense shade, a soft light from the paler green of the lower side. It is no wonder that New England claims fame for her elms, which, loved and cared for, arch over the long village streets that give character to the homes of the descendants of the Puritan fathers. The fully grown elm presents to the sun a darkly absorbent hue, and to the passer-by who rests beneath its shade the most grateful and restful color in all the rainbow's palette. ”

“ It has been a sorrow to me that I have not seen that great hickory later in the year, when the clusters of tassels have become bunches of husk-covered nuts. To get really acquainted with any tree, it should be visited many times in a year. Starting with the winter view, one observes the bark, the trend and character of the limbs, the condition of the buds. The spring opening of growth brings rapid changes, of both interest and beauty, to be succeeded by the maturity of summer, when, with the ripened foliage overhead, everything is different. ”

“ Before ever one has thought seriously of the coming of spring, the long branchlets of the weeping willow have quickened into a hint of lovely yellowish green, and those same branchlets will be holding their green leaves against a wintry blast when most other trees have given up their foliage under the frost's urgency. Often have the orange-yellow twigs of the golden osier illumined a somber countryside for me as I looked from the car window; and close by may be seen other willow bushes of brown, green, gray, and even purple, to add to the color compensation of the season. ”

“ The laden apple tree has a pure glory of the blossoms, and another warmer, riper glory of the burden of fruit, but we think most kindly of its flowering time. Some trees maintain such a continuous show of interest and beauty that it is difficult to say on any day, "Now is this tulip or this oak at its very finest!" Again, the spring redness of the swamp maple is hardly less vivid than its mature coloring of the fall. ”

“ A tree is never without interest to those whose eyes have been opened to some of the wonders and perfections of nature. Nevertheless, there is a time in the year's round when each tree makes its special appeal. It may be in the winter, when every twig is outlined sharply against the cold sky, and the snow reflects light into the innermost crevices of its structure, that the elm is most admirable. ”

“ Again, in fall, a glory of color comes to the leaves of the red maple; for they illumine the countryside with their scarlet hue, and, as they drop, form a brilliant thread in the most beautiful of all carpets—that of the autumn leaves. I think no walk in the really happy days of the fall maturity of growing things is quite so pleasant as that which leads one to shuffle through this deep forest floor covering of oriental richness of hue. ”

“ In any landscape it introduces an element of distinction and elegance not given by any other tree. Looking across a field at a cluster of trees, there may be a doubt as to the identity of an oak, a chestnut, a maple, an ash, but no mistake can be made in regard to an elm—it stands alone in the simple elegance of its vase-like form, while its feathery branchlets, waving in the lightest breeze, add to the refined and classic effect. ”

“ The apricot and the cherry are the first of the fruit trees to sing the spring song, and they cover themselves with white, in advance of any sign of green leaves on their twigs. The apple has an advantage; coming more deliberately, the little pink buds are set amidst the soft greens of the opening foliage, and the leaves and flowers expand together in their symphony of color and fragrance. The grass has grown lush by this time, the dandelions are punctuating it with gold, and everything is in the full riot of exuberant springtime. ”

“ Why do we not plant more fruit trees for beauty? Not one of our familiar fruits will fail us in this respect, if so considered. The apricot will often have its white flowers open to match the purity of the last snow, the cherry will follow with a burst of bloom, the apples and crab-apples will continue the show, aided by plum and pear and peach, and the quince—ah, there's a flower in a green enamel setting!—will close the blooming-time. ”

“ But I have not spoken enough of one notable feature of the every-day apple tree that we may see without a journey to the East. The fully set fruiting branch of an apple tree in health and vigor, properly nurtured and protected against fungous disease by modern "spraying," is a thing of beauty in its form and color. See those deep red Baldwins shine overhead in the frosty air of early fall; note the elegance of form and striping on the leathery-skinned Ben Davis; appreciate true apples of gold set in green enamel on a tree of the sunny Bellefleur! ”

“ A purely American species, and one of as much economic importance as any leaf-dropping tree, is the sugar maple, known also as rock maple—one designation because we can get sweetness from its sap, the other because of the hardness of its wood. The sugar maples of New England, to me, are more individual and almost more essentially beautiful than the famed elms. No saccharine life-blood is drawn from the elm; therefore its elegance is considered. I notice that we seldom think much of beauty when it attaches to something we can eat! ”

“ Late in the year the foliage has become scanty, and the nut-clusters hang fascinatingly clear, far above one's head, to tempt the climb and the club. The black walnut is a tree that needs our care; for furniture fashion long used its close-grained, heavy, handsome wood as cruelly as the milliners did the herons of Florida from which were torn the "aigrets," now happily "out of style." Though walnut furniture is no longer the most popular, the deadly work has been done, for the most part, and but few of these wide-spread old forest monarchs yet remain. ”

“ Perhaps there is a "crab" in the old orchard, ready to give the greatest burst of bloom—for the crab-apple flower is usually finer and more fragrant than any other of the cultivated forms. It is an especial refuge of the birds and the bees, you will find, and it invites them with its rare fragrance and deeper blush, so that they may work all the more earnestly at the pollination without which all this richness of bloom would be ineffective in nature's reproductive scheme. ”

“ But, after all, I think it is in winter that the American elm is at its finest, for then stand forth most fully revealed the wonderful symmetry of its structure and the elegance of its lines. It has one advantage in its great size, which is well above the average, for it lifts its graceful head a hundred feet or more above the earth. The stem is usually clean and regular, and the branches spread out in closely symmetrical relation, so that, as seen against the cold sky of winter, leafless and bare, they seem all related parts of a most harmonious whole. ”

“ First the apple blossom drive introduces the spring, and the lilac drive confirms the impression that really the season is advancing; but the locust drive is the sweetest of all, taking these nature lovers along some shady lanes, beside the east bank of a great river, and in places where, the trees planted only for the fence utility of the hard yellow wood, these fragrant flowers, hanging in grace and elegance far above the highway, have redeemed surroundings otherwise sordid and mean. ”

“ Who has not admired the soft gray silky buds of the "pussy" willow, swelling with the spring's impulse, and ripening quickly into a "catkin" loaded with golden pollen? Nowadays the shoots of this willow are "forced" into bud by the florists, and sold in the cities in great quantities; but really to see it one must find the low tree or bush by a stream in the woods, or along the roadside, with a chance to note its fullness of blossom. It is finest just when the hepaticas are at their bluest on the warm hillsides ”

“ Others have nearly the richness of color, others again show nearly the elegance of leaf form, but no one tree rivals completely the sweet-gum at the time when the autumn chill has driven out all the paleness in its leaf spectrum, leaving only the warm crimson that seems for awhile to defy further attacks of frost. ”

“ Those little button-balls that give name to this good American tree follow the flower clusters without much change of form—they were flowers, they are seeds—and they stay by the tree persistently all winter, blowing about in the sharp winds. After a while one is banged often enough to open its structure, and then the carrying wind takes on its wings the neat little cone-shaped seeds, each possessed of its own silky hairs to help float it gently toward the ground—and thus is another of nature's curious rounds of distribution completed. ”

“ It was tall and grand, but its adornment of long, trailing gray Spanish moss, which was to have attached the sadness to it, seemed merely to make it unkempt and uncomfortable. I was instantly reminded of a tree at home in the far North that I had never thought particularly beautiful, but which now, by comparison, took on an attractiveness it has never since lost. Imagine a great spreading weeping willow turned dingy gray, and you have a fair picture of a moss-covered live-oak; but you will prefer it green, as is the willow, I believe. ”

“ We know of the great magnolias, with blooms befitting the richness of the foliage that follows them. We see, and some of us admire, the exquisitely delicate blossoms of that splendid American tree, the tulip or whitewood. We inhale with delight the fragrance that makes notable the time when the common locust sends forth its white racemes of loveliness. ”

“ It is difficult to say when the American elm is most worthy of admiration. In summer those same arching branches are clothed and tipped with foliage of such elegance and delicacy as the form of the tree would seem to predicate. The leaf itself is ornate, its straight ribs making up a serrated and pointed oval form of the most interesting character. ”

“ A fine tree it is, too, this same chestnut-oak, with its masquerading foliage of deep green, its upright and substantial habit, its rather long and aristocratic-looking acorns. The authorities tell that its wood, too, is brownish and valuable; but we tree-lovers are not enthusiastic over mere timber values, because that means the killing of the trees.
The willow-oak will not deceive, because its habit is so oak-like and so willow-less; but its foliage is surely borrowed from its graceful and more rapidly growing neighbor. ”

“ I have seen many rare orchids brought thousands of miles and petted into a curious bloom—indeed, often more curious than beautiful. If the bloom of the liriodendron, in all its delicate and daring mingling of green and yellow, cream and orange, with its exquisite interior filaments, could be labeled as a ten-thousand-dollar orchid beauty from Borneo, its delicious perfume would hardly be needed to complete the raptures with which it would be received into fashionable flower society. ”

“ Many of the finest pictures painted by the Master of all art are visible only in rain and in mist; and the subtlest coloring of tree leaf and tree stem is that seen only when the dust is all washed away by the shower that should have no terrors for those who care for the truths of nature. In these days of rain-proof clothing, seeing outdoors in the rain is not even attended by the slightest discomfort, and I have found my camera quite able to stand a shower! ”

“ I have said little of the habitat, as the botanist puts it, of the American elm. It graces all North America east of the Rockies, and the specimens one sees in Michigan or Canada are as happy, apparently, as if they grew in Connecticut or in Virginia. Our increasingly beautiful national Capital, the one city with an intelligent and controlled system of tree-planting, shows magnificent avenues of flourishing elms.
But I must not forget some other elms, beautiful and satisfactory in many places. It is no discredit to our own American elm to say that the English elm is a superb tree in America. ”

“ In the sweet springtime, when the rising of the sap incites some to poetry, some to making maple sugar, and some to watching for the first flowers, it is well to look at a few tree-blooms, and to consider the possibilities and the pleasures of a peaceful hunt that can be made with profit in city street or park, as well as along country roadsides and in the meadows and the woods. ”

“ The American red-bud is a joy in the spring about dogwood time, for it is all bloom, and of a most striking [Pg 203] color. Deep pink, or purplish light red, or clear bright magenta—all these color names fit it approximately only. One is conscious of a warm glow in looking toward the little trees, with every branch clear down to the main stem not only outlined but covered with richest color. ”