Deciduous tree

“ They sometimes come on gradually, but, in a majority of instances, they make their appearance at once on the cutting off of old forests, in the tracks of tornadoes, or where fire has devastated extensive regions of timber. From the facts which have been gathered, it is difficult to determine any regular order of alternation, except that oaks and other deciduous trees succeed the different varieties of pine and other evergreen growths, and, perhaps, vice versa. ”

“ The foliage glistens with a strange dew, that all day long drips on to the ground below, nurturing a rank growth of grasses, which shoot up in places so high that their spikes of fierce blood-fed green show far up among the deep-tinted foliage of the terrible tree, and, like a jealous body-guard, keep concealed the fearful secret of the charnel-house within, and draw round the black roots of the murderous plant a decent screen of living green. ”

“ Noble trees they are that fill the hollow. Some have long since passed their prime. Their mighty branches are thick with moss and lichen, and fringed with green tongues of fern. In rifts that time and storm have carved in their huge columns, rowan and bramble and young holly trees are rooted. Grey arms of ivy, almost as broad and vigorous as they, are twined with fatal clasp about their sturdy stems. Where the pathway crosses at the ford, there stands a blasted tree: a giant oak, whose top, wrecked and shattered though it is, rises high above its forest brothers. ”

“ These hollow trees, according to woodcraft, ought to come down by the axe without further loss of time. Yet it is fortunate that we are not all of us, even in this prosaic age, imbued with the stern utilitarian spirit; for a decaying tree is perhaps more interesting than one in full vigour of growth. ”

“ Some of them take root and in course of time what was first a single stem becomes a thicket of branches and stems. The winter snow often has much to do with bending the trunk, which appears to have no power to get back to the perpendicular when once bowed down. The damp situation where this tree thrives best, induces a luxuriant growth of moss and mold which help to bury the branches that lie on the ground. ”

“ Its rusty summer foliage turns yellow in autumn, and as the leaves begin to fall, the tree bursts into delicately-scented golden flowers, the most visible part of each consisting of four petals which float out like streamers. At the same time that flowers are scenting the air, the seeds are discharging. A full year is required to ripen them; and when dry, cold weather comes, the contraction of their envelopes shoots them with sufficient force to send them fifteen or twenty feet. They depend on neither wings, birds, nor squirrels to scatter them. ”

“ It grows on a succulent stem formed of sheath-like leaf-stalks rolled over one another, and terminating in enormous light green, glossy blades nearly ten feet long by two feet wide, so delicate that the slightest wind will tear them transversely. Each tree (vulgarly called "the tree of paradise") produces fruit but once, and then dies. ”

“ A sunbeam pierces the scented gloom, creeps down a tree-trunk, steals over a knoll of green-and-brown tree-moss, which then looks like a tiny forest on fire, over yellow violets, which dissolve in its light, over a bank of rich dark mould veined with the golden powder of decayed pine-trees, moist and soft, and full of glistening white roots, where the flowers push down their pearly feet. ”

“ No matter if it is shaded by forest trees so that the sun cannot penetrate, it will manage to make a short stem and a few leaves the first season, enough to keep life in the root, which will drill in deeper and deeper. When age or accident removes the tree which has overshadowed it, then it will assert itself. ”

“ Large branches push out at right angles to the trunk, forming stubborn elbows and shoot up parallel with the axis. Very old trees are usually dead at the top. The flat fragrant plumes are exceedingly beautiful: no waving fern-frond is finer in form and texture. In its prime the whole tree is thatched with them, but if you would see the libocedrus in all its glory you must go to the woods in midwinter when it is laden with myriads of yellow flowers about the size of wheat grains, forming a noble illustration of Nature’s immortal virility and vigor. ”

“ It displays its ramification chiefly near the top; while the imperfection of its life is manifested in the whole character of its vegetation. In open exposures, on the other hand, the tree developes its existence, in full health and luxuriance. It reaches a height, such as the soil and situation admit, and sufficient to allow the branches, which are thrown out on every side, to expand their leaves freely to the sun. ”

“ Like most trees it becomes more expressive as it grows older and little by little rejects the [Pg 53] features and traces of its earlier years. Its arms gradually bend inward, and the whole tree becomes more cylindrical, till in its maturity it speaks freely through its broken and twisted boughs of storms and battles and insect ravages of long ago; yet it strives to cover its scars with luxuriant masses of verdure and numberless purplish cones—a truly magnificent spectacle of a hoary veteran of crisp and sturdy aspect. ”

“ There was a blue haze among the tree trunks and a nip in the air, and often the smell of bonfires, burning up leaves and sticks, and the dew on the grass would lie thick till midday, though the sun was shining. And in the walled garden, the dahlias would be out, and dark red chrysanthemums and michaelmas daisies, and old Joseph, the gardener, would be pottering slowly about the summer borders, clearing up, and rooting out and burning up piles of finished flowers, on the rubbish heap behind the potting shed. ”

“ The trees that cannot reach this level will in a few years perish; and this is the fate of the greater number in the primitive forest. But after they have attained this level, they spread out suddenly into a head. Many such trees are seen in recent clearings; and when their termination is a regular hemisphere of branches and foliage, the tree exhibits a shape nearly approaching that of a parasol. ”

“ For Nature’s successes are by no means easily won. She lays such plans for a hickory tree that if all the blossoms which open in May were to produce fruit the trees’ tough limbs would be torn from their sockets with the weight of it long before maturity. Some years, because of storm or frost, the tree’s crop is a total failure, but the resourceful mother, the moment she notes the death of the embryos, sets the wood to making a more vigorous growth than would have been possible in a fruiting season. ”

“ It likes moist, rich hillsides, and does not object to shade. The flowers come late, but within a month or six weeks after the bloom appears, the fruit is full grown, but it remains on the tree till autumn. The tree’s bark is smooth and very thin. ”

“ At the same time ribs and creases slowly develop, and by the time the tree is old, it is as ungainly as one of the giant sequoias. Its appearance is hurt by characteristics other than the swelled base and the buttresses. While the tree is small, the limbs ascend, and maintain a graceful upright position. Toward middle life they begin to droop, and the limbs of old trees hang down the trunks—the reverse of their attitude in early life. ”

“ In fact, a leaf is a layer of the precious cambium spread out on a framework of veins and covered [Pg 18] with a delicate, transparent skin—a sort of etherealized bark. What a vast quantity of leaf pulp is in the foliage of a large tree!
As summer wanes, and the upward tide of sap begins to fail, starch making in the leaf laboratories declines proportionately. Usually before midsummer the fresh green is dimmed. Dust and heat and insect injuries impair the leaf's capacity for work. The thrifty tree undertakes to withdraw the leaf pulp before winter comes. ”

“ But with our modern views of vegetation, though we know that all perennial plants do eventually die and molder away to the dust from whence they were created, and that many trees of our own planting come to an untimely end, while we yet survive to observe their decay, still, we can see no reason why a tree or parts of a tree taken from it, and placed under circumstances favorable to its growth from time to time, may not be sempiternal. ”

“ The tree may be a century-old gnarled trunk, too crooked and knotty to be worthy the woodman's axe, or a verdant sprout of a score of years' standing, green and lusty-the result will be the same. When the seeding year comes the brown cones will open and the winds will bear the germs of the new growth forth, spinning down the gale, whichever way they list to blow. ”

“ The trees most liable to sunstroke—which it practically amounts to—are the Lime, Willow, Horse Chestnut, Sweet Chestnut, Birch, Mountain Ash, Ash, and Plane, and generally in the order they are given, the softer wooded trees suffering more severely than those of harder growth. The Oak, Elm, and Beech are seldom much damaged by the sun, though in cases of failure it will be well to notice the stems and see how far the direct rays of the sun are responsible for the death of the tree. ”

“ When a tree is supplied by numerous, consequently small and not wide-extending roots, as the tree acquires size, the wide spreading branches and leafy top shed off the rain and dews from the space occupied by these roots, very few of them extending beyond this shade; at the same time, this narrow space becomes soon exhausted of the more particular pabulum necessary to the kind of plant, the exhaustion being accelerated by the dryness. ”

“ The two principal causes of decay are starvation at the root and injury by storms and disease. Such [Pg 130] trees as the Beech and Horse Chestnut, that root close to the surface of the soil—quite different from the Oak—may often be invigorated by covering the ground with a few inches of good soil or short manure. Artificial watering, during prolonged drought, when thoroughly done, is also very helpful to the tree. Trees with large crowns of branches are frequently seen thinly furnished with foliage, and altogether sickly owing to unhealthy or insufficient roots. ”

“ It stands alone and inviolate—a Sacred Tree. In the damp ground at the tree's foot is a small dark hole, the sides of which are roughly formed by stones overhung with moss and grass. A cover of unwrought stone lies beside it, and it is filled up with dead leaves. This is the healing-well "of power unspeakable in cases of lunacy". All the brief space is circled round by an impenetrable mesh of dripping bough and briar; ferns and grass luxuriate in the dim light; ivy and honeysuckle strands cling and fall; and damp depths of fallen leaves silence every step. ”

“ In summer, when clothed with leaves, it forms a compact green mass, till it is ruffled by the wind, when it suddenly assumes a mealy whiteness. In the winter season, the tree is attractive from its smooth branches and its large green buds; which, from their size and colour, seem already prepared for spring, and remind us of the approach of that delightful season. When the tree is covered with its fruit, it is exceedingly ornamental. ”

“ When the heavy cluster of ripe, red fruit hangs under this dark vault, the tree is in its greatest beauty. As the leaves of this palm are not so closely set in the younger specimens as in the older ones, its aspect changes at different stages of growth; the leaves in the younger trees being distributed over a greater length of the trunk, while, in the adult taller ones, they are more compact. ”

“ Under the genial rain and genial heat the timber tree itself, all its tangled ruin of lianes and parasites, and the boughs and leaves snapped off not only by the blow, but by the very wind, of the falling tree—all melt away swiftly and peacefully in a few months—say almost a few days—into the water, and carbonic acid, and sunlight, out of which they were created at first, to be absorbed instantly by the green leaves around, and, transmuted into fresh forms of beauty, leave not a wrack behind. ”

“ The trees here grow on a sort of amphitheatre of rocks, all of colossal size, and the most widely different forms, no two of the same species adjoining each other, their stems and branches adorned with the most beautiful parasites and the blood-red leaves of innumerable creepers, which in their lavish luxuriance now stretch like garlands from tree to tree, now hang perpendicularly down from the very highest branch of the tree like a network of green lace, till they sweep along the ground. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Pick up a handful of dead leaves, and notice that though dead and brown, they show the flat surface with a middle ridge on the under side, prolonged into the short leaf stem. The pale lining is not so distinct now.
One tree family remains of the needle-leaved, cone-bearing evergreen. That is the fir, the Christmas tree, and its close relatives. Not often do we plant our native fir, because the trees are not as handsome, nor as useful as pines, spruces, and hemlocks. We may walk far before we find an evergreen which does not turn out to be a pine, a spruce, or a hemlock. ”