Arbor

“ I wish much to see there, among other things, an arboretum, where every tree that can bear our climate shall find its classified place,—pleasing the eye by its beauty, protecting the body by its shade, and speaking to all by the voice of Science. ”

“ Even when dying, its foliage takes on the earliest and richest hues of autumn.
The trees about our door become in a sense our companions. They appeal to the eye, fancy, and feelings of different people differently. Therefore I shall leave the choice of arboreal associates to those who are to plant them—a choice best guided by observation of trees. Why should you not plant those you like the best, those which are the most congenial? ”

“ In these the weak branches should also be thinned out, and the strong ones be allowed to remain, without being shortened, as in these an abundant bloom is wanted, rather than large flowers. An arbor, made by training roses from one pillar to another, is represented in figure 7. In training climbing roses over any flat surface, as a trellis, wall, or side of a house, the principal point is so to place the leading shoots that all the intermediate space may be filled up with foliage. ”

“ A tree has been defined as a woody plant that produces naturally and in its native place one principal erect stem with a definite crown of foliage. A plant thus attaining to the dignity of a tree is said to be arborescent. [1]
There are nearly five hundred distinct species of trees growing in the United States, [2] as well as many others peculiar to other countries, yet the great mass of wood everywhere utilized is derived from comparatively few of them. ”

“ The woods, which grew in a luxuriant manner, afforded delightful shade, free of low limbs and underbrush, and in many places were formed into arbors by bending and interlacing the branches when young. ”

“ The Garden of Pleasure shall be set about and compassed with arbors made of jessamin, rosemarie, box, juniper, cypress-trees, savin, cedars, rose-trees and other dainties first planted and pruned according as the nature of every one doth require, but after brought into some form and order with willow or juniper poles, such as may serve for the making of arbors. The ways and alleys must be covered and sown with fine sand well beat, or with the powder of the sawing of marble, or else paved handsomely with good pit stone. ”

“ No one ever sees the full charm of the forest who turns his back upon it in the winter, for its clear-cut tree-forms are an unceasing delight and wonder. Look at the exquisite lines of that drooping birch, the intricate interlacing tracery of the minute branching twigs! Could anything be more graceful or more chaste? could any covering of leaves enhance its beauty? And so the apple-tree by the old stone wall—how different its various angles! how individual in its character! how beautiful its silhouette against the sky! Thus every separate tree affords a perfect study, of infinite design. ”

“ If, at times, I dream behind all this a grove, with now and then one of its broad, steepling or columnar trees pushed forward upon the lawn, it is only there that I see anything so stalwart as a pine or so rigid as a spruce. ”

“ The greater part of the breadth is occupied by the zone of the forest, the willow brakes, and the shrubbery of the bank—I find myself hunting for a word which will more perfectly fix and define this wonderful terrain than the word wood, and yet I am unable to find one. There can be no talk of a wood in the usual sense of the term—a kind of great pillared grove with moss and strewn leafage and tree-trunks of fairly uniform girth. The trees in our hunting-grounds are of different ages and circumference. ”

“ Such infinite grace and strength in the line work of the branches!—branches not bent into gnarled and unexpected fantasies, like those of the oak, but gathered into every conceivable harmony of upward curve and sweep, rising all together, black against the silvery light, each tree related to and completing its neighbour, as though the whole wood, so finely rounded on itself and to the hill, were but one majestic conception of a master artist. ”

“ And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.
O'er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed. ”

“ He will soon discover that not only is every wood different from every other wood in grain, colour, odour, and hardness, but some woods are strong and elastic, others strong and brittle, weak, etc., and that every tree has a different leaf, bark, flower, and seed from its neighbour. ”

“ Some, under the influence of better soil or more light, have done better than others; but they are all sound and stately trees, and together represent the best product of the forest. Long ago other trees that grew in their midst, but were less promising, were removed for the sake of these. Under their continuous roof of foliage [Pg 160] there is a cool, deep shade. The ground is scattered with fern, or covered with deep beds of leaves, or with the glossy needles of the conifers. ”

“ The effect of light and shade on the foliage of those older forest pines is indeed much finer than what we see among their younger neighbors; the tufted branches, in their horizontal growth, are beautifully touched with circlets of a clear light, which is broken up and lost amid the confused medley of branches in trees of more upright growth. ”

“ In field and lawn, the shade tree has space to reach upward and outward for its sunlight. As it grows, the 3 limbs spread and the crown becomes broad and rounded. But the forest tree lives close to its neighbors, and in turning to the sun must reach upward. ”

“ First the elastic tops of the arches begin to appear, then one branch after another, each springing loose with a gentle rustling sound, and at length the whole tree, with the assistance of the winds, gradually unbends and rises and settles back into its place in the warm air, as dry and feathery and fresh as young ferns just out of the coil. ”

“ You must never forget that both kinds of flowers are required if the tree is to produce new seed, and many books have been written to point out the wonderful ways in which the wind and the birds and the bees carry the stamen dust to the seed-vessels, which are waiting to receive it.
Each summer the tree adds a layer of new wood in a circle round the tree trunk; a broad circle when there has been sunshine and the tree has thriven well, and a narrow circle when [x] the season has been wet and sunless. This new layer of wood is always found just under the bark or coarse, outer skin of the tree. ”

“ And, lastly, we get a spreading forest tree equalling the red pine in height. At certain times of the year the bark peels off, and then the Temple columns are splashed with crimson and scarlet—wonderfully beautiful.
Surely it is this continual finding of surprises that make one’s progress through the bush so fascinating? Everywhere one sees those strange black ropes, jointed and polished, hanging from the roof in straight lines, or tying tree to tree, twisting and coiling, with neither beginning nor end that one can find. ”

“ We cut young trees to make our poles and thwarts,
Barked the white spruce to weatherfend the roof,
Then struck a light, and kindled the camp-fire.
⁠The wood was sovran with centennial trees,—
Oak, cedar, maple, poplar, beech and fir,
Linden and spruce. In strict society
Three conifers, white, pitch, and Norway pine,
Five-leaved, three-leaved, and two-leaved, grew thereby. ”

“ A plant with a single trunk of woody structure that does not branch for some distance above the ground, is called a tree. Woody plants that branch directly above the soil, even though they grow to the height of twenty feet or more, are called shrubs, or, in popular language, bushes. Many plants which have a tendency to grow into the form of shrubs may, by pruning, be forced to grow tree-like ”

“ Rows of evergreens set close together make a protecting wall of green against the cold winds. Low clipped hedges of many kinds of trees make living boundaries, much more beautiful than wooden or wire fences. On lawns and near houses trees are planted for their beauty and for their shade. Orchards of fruit trees are planted because they furnish food. Nut orchards are set out for the same reasons.
The trees cut down in the woods, and sawed at the mills give us lumber to build houses to live in, and furniture to make them comfortable, and the same forest furnishes the fuel that keeps us warm. ”

“ A little farther up the dense wood of tufted trees contributed to diffuse that religious light half over the rocks, the brushwood and the fertile soil, and on the limpid water, which is at once the charm and the horror of old neglected woods. ”

“ I see one standing on a bough of an oak-tree, right in the tree, an enormous white tree-creature complacently munching up aloft, then rearing on her hind legs, so lengthy, and putting her slim paws far away on an upper, forward branch. ”

“ Plant Life. The characteristic trees of the mid-Pleistocene period were evergreen. Of these the most abundant forms were the spruce, the fir, and the yew tree. The trees which shed their 147 foliage were represented by the oak and the birch. The banks of rivers were shaded by thickets of laurel and by the sloe, the original form of the wild plum tree. The marshes afforded rich pastures for grass-eating animals as well as hiding-places, for they were partly covered by a heavy growth of alders. Wild peas, beans, stringy-rooted carrots, ruta-bagas, and turnips grew on the hillsides. ”

“ THE wealth of foliage, leaves at their largest, is responsible for the gloom of the wood; beneath the trees all is in shade, though dappled with circular light patches, where a beam has found a pinhole or crack to penetrate. ”

“ The new wood formed each year upon exogenous trees is known as the annual layer, or ring; the separate layers being more prominent in open-grained woods, such as oak, ash, and chestnut, than in close-grained woods, such as maple, cherry, poplar, and birch. ”

“ Also each new path has made it easier to bring up, for the lawn garden, sand, clay, or leaf-mould, or for hearth consumption all the wood which the grove's natural mortality each year requires to be disposed of. There is a superior spiritual quality in the warmth of a fire of h-oak, h-ash, and even h-ellum gathered from your own acre, especially if the acre is very small and has contour paths. ”

“ The branch of a tree, even if it be covered with the sharpest thorns, is to them a well-made road, a climbing plant is a path or a ladder according to its position. They climb forwards or backwards, on the under or upper side of a branch; in leaping or falling they catch a thin twig with one hand, and remain hanging as long as they please in every imaginable position ”

“ It is under the supervision of these educated foresters and trained wood-rangers that, on the mountain-side, apparently but a forbidding rock, by constant, careful, and scientific attention, are found oak-, beech-, birch-, and pine-trees in large quantities and of good dimensions. Each tree is carefully looked after and preserved, and trained so that they shall not interfere with each other; each has its fair share of space and light. ”

“ A wood is trying to grow up on the grassland. If left alone, an oak or beech forest would, after many years, spread over all our grass pastures and hay-fields. These tall herbs are the pioneers, and the briers and brambles are its advanced guard. ”

“ Symmetrical silver firs, giant cedars and spruce, grow side by side with sugar pines of vast and irregular outline, whose huge branches, like outstretched arms, hold aloft the splendid cones—such is the ancient wood. ”

“ Presently I came to thicker wood, where the trees were much taller and in greater variety; and after this came another sterile strip, like that on the edge of the wood, where stone cropped out from the ground and nothing grew except the yellow-flowered thorn bushes. Passing this sterile ribbon, which seemed to extend to a considerable distance north and south, and was fifty to a hundred yards wide, the forest again became dense and the trees large, with much undergrowth in places obstructing the view and making progress difficult. ”

“ But, once entered into the heart of the little wood, walking over its miniature hills and valleys, and breathing the pure, balsamic exhalations of the trees, all the disappointment rising to my mind was charmed away in an instant There are about three hundred trees, in all, many of which are of the last century's growth, but at least fifty of them would be considered grand in any forest. ”

“ When you cut down an oak wood, a pine wood will not at once spring up there unless there are, or have been, quite recently, seed-bearing pines near enough for the seeds to be blown from them. But, adjacent to a forest of pines, if you prevent other crops from growing there, you will surely have an extension of your pine forest, provided the soil is suitable. ”

“ The old tree with its bleached and skeleton arms has a fearful name, and stout of heart must the man be who would pass within sight of it when the sun is set behind the hill, and the trees cast their lengthened shadows on the grass. It is called the ‘haunted oak,’ the ‘spirit’s blasted tree,’ or the ‘hobgoblin’s hollow tree,’ and dismal is the tale to which the name refers. ”

“ This hardy tree occupies fully as wide a range, both of soil and climate, as the oak, and is generally the fastest growing, most vigorous of all our hard-wood kinds, prospering on all soils, on the dry and moist, the aluminous, the calcareous, the siliceous, provided water does not stagnate. ”