Bay tree

“ The swamp bay has lustrous, bright green leaves with silvery linings. In Florida and across to Texas and Arkansas it grows into a superb evergreen tree, fifty to seventy-five feet in height. Northward along the Atlantic Coast its growth is stunted as the climate becomes more rigorous, until it reaches Massachusetts and Long Island, where it becomes a many-stemmed shrub, whose beautiful leaves fall in the autumn. ”

“ In England bay is used to designate the bay-tree (Laurus nobilis) ; in America it designates a shrub, the wax myrtle (Myrica cerifera) . Both the tree and the shrub have berries. Those of the latter are used to make the well-known bayberry candles. ”

“ The pandanus palm tree, with its clustering branches of drooping leaves, fringes the shores of the bay nearly its whole extent. The innumerable huge stones and rocks that cover the bottom of the bay make it impossible for a boat to land. ”

“ The Bay is the true Laurel, of whose leaves and berries the wreaths were made in ancient days for poets and conquerors. Naturally it is more of a shrub than a tree, for though it often attains a height of sixty feet, it persists in sending up so many suckers that the tree-like character is lost. In cultivation, however, it is often grown on a single stem, as well as formed by cutting into arbours and arches. ”

“ The Frutex and Suffrutex have the way of production from the Seed, and in other respects the Suffrutices, or Cremia, have a middle and participating nature, and referable unto Herbs.
The Bay Tree, in Psal. 37. 35
42. I have seen the ungodly in great power, and flourishing like a green Bay Tree. Both Scripture and humane Writers draw frequent illustrations from Plants. Scribonius Largus illustrates the old Cymbals from the Cotyledon Palustris, or Umbelicus Veneris. Who would expect to find Aaron’s Mitre in any Plant? ”

“ A Bay-tree invites criticism, as it is certainly not a “herb,” but it is so often classed with some of them, [142] especially with rosemary (to whom it seems to have been a sort of twin) that a brief extract from its interesting history must be made. Herrick’s verses show that both for weddings and decorations, rosemary and bays were paired together—bays being also gilded at weddings—and Brand quotes some lines from the “Wit’s Interpreter” to show that alike at funerals, they were fellows:—
Shrouded she is from top to toe,
With Lillies which all o’er her grow,
Instead of bays and rosemary. ”

“ The whole forest has a tropical luxuriance, the abundant vegetation being well sustained by a rich soil of sandy loam, with a layer of marl and decomposed shells. Besides the orange, we see the live-oak, magnolia, hickory, bay-tree, and many other native woods, interspersed with grape-vines measuring three feet in circumference, climbing to the tops of the tallest trees, forming a dense shade, where sunbeams can rarely or ever penetrate. ”

“ Now in regard that there be diuers trees and shrubs mentioned here in this booke that beare euer greene leaues, wherein there is very great beauty, and many take pleasure in them; as the ordinary Bay, the Rose Bay, and the Cherry Bay trees, the Indian Figge, the Cypresse, the Pine tree, the Mirtle and dwarfe Boxe, and many others; I will here shew you how to plant and order them, as is fittest for them. For in that they doe not shed their greene leaues in winter as other trees doe, you may in reason be perswaded that they are of another nature ”

“ The Moreton-Bay ash, poplar gum, and a rough-barked gum-tree with very green leaves, were added to the ironbark, bloodwood, and other eucalypti which constituted the forest, while casuarina and Melaleuca leucodendron grow in the beds of the larger watercourses. The channel of the river is about 150 yards, with a small stream winding along the sandy bed; much of the running water is due to the late rain, but it is evident from the character of the vegetation that it continues to run throughout the dry season. ”

“ Speaking generally of the land round the bay, it might be said to be much more barren that productive; that there are several patches of tolerably good, and some few of excellent soil; but by far the greater part is incapable of cultivation, and fit only for pasturage.
The most common timber is a sort of gum tree, the bark of which along the trunk is that of the iron bark of Port Jackson; and its leaf, that of the blue gum tree; but its branches toward the head are of a yellow colour, smooth, and resembling the barked limbs of trees. ”

“ A year ago I camped on the shore of Chesapeake Bay near an oak that measured eighteen feet six inches in circumference four feet from the ground, and in St. Paul’s church-yard, not a great way off, are five big oaks, one of which is twenty feet around shoulder high from the roots. Such trees are very old. The church-yard was enclosed two centuries ago, and these were big trees then, and so older by far than any monument of white men on the continent, except possible traces of the Norsemen. ”

“ First for Bay trees, the most vsuall way is to let them grow vp high to bee trees, and many plant them on the North or East side of their houses that they may not bee scorched with the Sunne; but the bitter winters which we often haue, doe pinch them shrewdly, insomuch that it killeth euen well growne trees sometimes downe to the roote: but some doe make a hedge of them being planted in order, and keep them low by lopping of them continually, which will make them bush and spread. ”

“ Then came three miles of dangerous "Bay of Biscay" ground; then five miles of still treacherous track, on which were many patches of "Biscay holes" and lengths of fallen timber; and then again the jungle, and so to Daly Waters.
Besides the higher trees, a heavy undergrowth, and many kinds of grass flanked either side. The trees were in great variety—bloodwood, ironwood, lancewood, coolabah, bauhinia, hedgewood, whipcord tree and quinine tree. Added to these, a bush known as the water wattle, a native orange, and a turpentine bush ”

“ The Woods do not produce any great variety of Trees; there are only 2 or 3 sorts that can be called Timber. The largest is the gum Tree, which grows all over the country; the wood of this Tree is too hard and ponderous for most common uses. The Tree which resembles our Pines I saw nowhere in perfection but in Botany Bay ”

“ On the mountains a few miles east of the Bay of San Francisco, there are a number of patches of young redwoods, indicating where large trees have been felled, it being a peculiarity of this tree that it sends up vigorous young plants from the roots of old ones immediately around the base. ”

“ And although many ignorant persons and Gardiners doe remoue Bay trees, and are so likewise perswaded that all other trees of that nature, that is, that carry their greene leaues continually, may bee remoued in Autumne or Winter, as well as all other trees may bee, yet it is certaine it is a great chance if they doe thriue and prosper that are set at that time, or rather it is found by experience, that scarce one of ten prospereth well that are so ordered. ”

“ Huge trees of wonderful form stand out far into the water. There seems no intervening beach. A thick hedge of reeds, tall as the masts of pinnaces, runs along the deeper bays, like water-flags at the edge of a lake. A river of vast volume comes rolling from the interior, darkening the water for leagues with its slime and mud, and bearing with it to the open sea reeds and ferns and cones of the pine, and 394immense floats of leaves, and now and then some bulky tree undermined and uprooted by the current. We near the coast, and now enter the opening of the stream. ”

“ The westward shore is a gentle, grass-grown slope, stretching up beyond a charming little bay formed by a spit of meadow. Near the sandy beach of this bay a country highway passes, winding in and out and up and down, as it follows the river and the bases of the knolls. Above this and commanding delightful glimpses of forest and stream and bayou and prairie, a goodly hillock is crowned, some seventy-five feet above the water's edge, with a dark, unpainted, time-worn, moss-grown house, part log and part frame, set in a deep tangle of 222 lilacs and crabs. ”

“ It was nothing more than a small lake enclosed by trees at the ends and by the way-side, and opposite by the island, a steep bank on which the purple heath was seen under low oak coppice-wood, a group of houses over-shadowed by trees, and a bending road. There was one remarkable tree, an old larch with hairy branches, which sent out its main stem horizontally across the road, an object that seemed to have been singled out for injury where everything else was lovely and thriving, tortured into that shape by storms, which one might have thought could not have reached it in that sheltered place. ”

“ The trees are lofty and large, and the underwood grows so close together that in many places it is impassable. The east side of the bay is a rich loamy soil; but near the tops of the hills is very much encumbered with stones and rocks: the underwood thinly placed and small. The trees on the south, south-east, and south-west sides of the hills grow to a larger size than those that are exposed to the opposite points; for the sides of the trees open or exposed to the north winds are naked with few branches; while the other sides are in a flourishing state. ”

“ After standing in one place for centuries they thus go round the world like tourists, meeting many a friend from the old home forest; some traveling like themselves, some standing head downward in muddy harbors, holding up the platforms of wharves, and others doing all kinds of hard timber work, showy or hidden.
This wonderful tree also grows far northward in British Columbia, and southward along the coast and middle regions of Oregon and California; flourishing with the redwood wherever it can find an opening, and with the sugar pine, yellow pine, and libocedrus in the Sierra. ”

“ If we trace the north-west shore of the bay, from the Mount westward to Newlyn, the ebb tide leaves a large space uncovered; the sea sand is from one to two or three feet deep; and under this stratum of sand is found a black vegetable [17] mould, full of woodland detritus, such as the branches, leaves, and nuts of coppice wood, together with the roots and trunks of forest trees of large growth. All these are manifestly indigenous; and, from the freshness and preservation of some of the remains, the inundation of sand, as well as water, must have been sudden and simultaneous ”

“ These same trees may have grown continuously above tide-marks during several successive stages, until at last the upward creeping water rose sufficiently to reach this part of the forest. The large well-grown oaks seen in Mount’s Bay and various other places are, as far as I have seen, all rooted on [Pg 119] ancient gravels, solid rock, or boulder clay, not on beds of silt.
We cannot speak confidently as to the time needed to form each thin layer of vegetable soil, marsh peat, or estuarine silt. ”

“ We ran the boat upon the beach, and drawing her up high and dry, plunged into, not the greenwood, but the black-wood tree. It was hard walking. The pines grew out of fine bright sand, bound here and there together by carpets of long bent grass, and the air was sickly with the peculiar resinous smell of the rich sap of the tree fermenting and distilling down the gashes. In our ramble, we encountered two of [Pg 91] the peasants, whose dreary work it is to hack the pines and ladle up the flowing proceeds. ”

“ The bay, which stretches in vast extent, is filled with high reeds and wild rice, and rarely exceeds a few feet in depth except where open passages mark the deeper channels. It is a matter of no little intricacy for a stranger to find his way, and after nightfall the oldest habitué, will often become bewildered, as the various bunches of weeds, tufts of rice, or stretches of pond lilies look alike, and when a southerly wind is blowing the water falls and leaves all but the deep channels nearly or quite bare. ”

“ The lake was once in the heart of a white pine forest. Scores of huge stumps show where the giant trees lived until a tornado overturned them. Now the canoe birch is the prevailing tree, and few creations of the New England soil can rival it in grace, beauty, and useful qualities. The forest’s carpet of gray and green mosses, wintergreen, checkerberry, linnæa, dwarf cornel, asters and goldenrod, ferns and brakes, is strangely lacking in one flower generally common to the region. ”

“ Above the island the river is a league broad, having a straight channel and swift current, and is navigable three leagues up, but how much farther I know not. It runs through a very rich soil, producing all kinds of the tallest trees that are usually met with in this country, but especially red and white cotton-trees, and cabbage-trees of large size. The white cotton-tree grows not unlike an oak, but much bigger and taller, having a straight trunk, without branches to the top, where it sends out strong branches. ”

“ The path is carpeted with moss that feels like a sponge beneath your feet. The greenish-grey tint of the lichen clinging to the trees is most effective when it stands in the shadows a little removed from the pathway. The larch, the pine, and the birch lift their proud heads above the spruce-trees, the white of the pine glimmering like silver in the sunlight. If the stillness of the woods is broken at all, it is by the thud of the woodman’s axe, the sound of falling water, or the weird, haunting note of the woodpecker. ”