White thorn

“ White-thorn, or May, which grows in hedges, woods, and old parks. This is a very valuable shrub, and, on account of the stiffness of its branches, the sharpness of its thorns, and its hardiness in enduring the severest winters without injury, it is universally preferred for making fences and hedges. The berries during winter afford food to various birds, but may be more usefully employed in fattening hogs: the wood is very tough, and, like the white-beam hawthorn, converted into axle-trees and handles for tools. ”

“ Indeed, without aid it is almost impossible for him to get away. There is another kind called the Karra-dorn or white thorn, found generally on the banks of rivers, whose thorns are nearly seven inches long, and of such strength and sharpness that a lion has been known to have been impaled on them, and died of the wounds inflicted.
Hearing this account of them, I loudly rejoiced at my good fortune which had kept me from too close a proximity, when first seeing them in the bush. ”

“ The rest of the day—and of days to follow—we spent in picking a way through the thorn scrub and over loose rocks and shifting stones. A stream bed contained an occasional water hole. Tall aloes were ablaze with red flowers. The country looked arid, the air felt dry, the atmosphere was so clear that a day's journey seemed—usually—but the matter of a few hours. Only rarely did we enjoy a few moments of open travel. Most of the time the thorns caught at us. In the mountain passes were sometimes broad trails of game or of the Masai cattle. ”

“ Black-Thorn is another excellent shrub for a fence: it is, however, much inferior to the white-thorn, as its growth is not so certain; and, where it thrives, its roots spread, and are apt to run in too much upon the land. For dead hedges and mending open places, the bushes of this plant are superior even to the white-thorn; they are likewise less liable to be cropped by cattle. 3. Furze, to which we refer. 4. To these may be added the Holly, which is indeed preferable to either of the plants above-mentioned ”

“ No less esteemed, too, in the same country, is a certain kind of thorn,856 though only the black variety, its wood being imperishable, in water even, a quality which renders it particularly valuable for making the sides of ships: on the other hand, the white kinds will rot very rapidly. ”

“ On the alluvial land, the grass-wattle and the gum-trees flourish; on another portion, the herbage is of inferior quality, and the trees are consequently of a dwarfish and shrubby nature: one of these looks and smells like white-thorn, and has a white flower, but not of the same shape—I believe it to be of the Mespilus species. It is called here, generally, by the English appellative, the May-thorn. The third division has a shrubby covering, and produces the red-gum, white-gum, broom, wattle, and grass trees. ”

“ This is generally a white-thorn, of about four or five feet high, and they carry it to the street or place of their residence, in the centre of which they dig a hole, and having planted the bush, they go round to every house and collect money. ”

“ This did not disturb Kingozi in the least: indeed he did not see it. His eyes were taking in the surroundings.
The dead rhinoceros lay a scant fifteen paces distant; loads were scattered everywhere; the askaris, their ancient muskets reloaded, had drawn near in curiosity. From the thorn trees across the tiny grass opening porters were descending, very gingerly, and with lamentations. It is comparatively easy to ascend a thorn tree with the fear of death snapping at your heels: to descend in cold blood is another matter. ”

“ The country mounted steadily through the densest thorn scrub I have ever seen. It was about fifteen feet high, and so thick that its penetration, save by made tracks, would have been an absolute impossibility. Our road ran like a lane between two spiky jungles. Bold bright mountains cropped up, singly and in short ranges, as far as the eye could see them.
This sort of thing for twenty miles—more than a hard day's journey on safari. We made it in a little less than two hours; and the breeze of our going kept us reasonably cool under our awning. ”

“ There are a great many species of the thorn distributed throughout the United States. All the Northern species, so far as I know, have white flowers. In the South they are more inclined to be pink or roseate. If Columbus picked up at sea a spray of the thorn, it was doubtless some Southern species. Let us believe it was the Washington thorn, which grows on the banks of streams from Virginia to the Gulf, and loads heavily with small red fruit. ”

“ The chief sustenance of the former animal consists of the roots of certain bushes, which it plows up with its strong horn, and the shoots and tender boughs of the “wait-a-bit” thorn; while the “white” rhinoceros, on the contrary, feeds solely on grasses.
In disposition, also, there is a marked distinction between them; for while the “black” is of a very savage nature, the [374] “white,” on the other hand, is of a comparatively mild disposition, and, unless in defense of its young, or when hotly pursued, or wounded, will rarely attack a man. ”

“ We have found that in dry and hot seasons the layers do not root freely, and that it is often necessary to allow the layers to remain for two years before separating them from the parent plant.
The Flowering Hawthorns are best and easiest propagated by budding them upon the common White Hawthorn. The buds take readily, unite firmly, and grow rapidly. We have not tried the experiment of budding or grafting these upon our common Wild Thorn ”

“ Some of the dead thorn-trees are to be seen standing half eaten by white ants, and the débris of fallen ones are found scattered about half-buried in the soil, where they have been swept along by sheets of water during the last rains. The remains of galól bushes attain an almost iron hardness, and many a wound have I and my followers received at night by stumbling against a gori, or jagged stump, half hidden in the high grass. There is excellent pasture in the glades and between the bushes, the Haud pastures being considered better than those of Ogo or Guban. ”

“ On the summit it vanishes once more, but those who use it know it for a laborious road crossing several high ridges before dropping down into the valley road leading to Salisbury.
When, standing in the village street, your eye travels up that white band, you can distinctly make out even at that distance a small, solitary tree standing near the summit—an old thorn with an ivy growing on it. My walks were often that way, and invariably on coming to that point I would turn twenty yards aside from the road to spend half an hour seated on the turf near or under the old tree. ”

“ The illustration No. 1, on page 247, represents a still closed seed-vessel, and, formidable as it looks, its powers are more than doubled when it is open and dry, each half being covered with thorns pointing in opposite directions. The thorns are as sharp as needles, and nearly as strong as if they were made of the same material.
The reader may easily imagine the horrors of a bush which is beset with such weapons. No one who wears clothes has a chance of escape from them. If only one hooked thorn catches but his coat-sleeve, he is a prisoner at once. ”

“ The seed is carried and scattered everywhere by the birds, but no sooner does it germinate and send up a shoot than it is eaten down to the roots; for there is no scent that attracts a sheep more, no flavour it has greater taste for, than that of any forest seedling springing up amidst the minute herbaceous plants which carpet the downs. The thorn, like other organisms, has its own unconscious intelligence and cunning, by means of which it endeavours to save itself and fulfil its life. ”

“ Everything, even the smallest of the mimosa tree, is armed with long, strong, very sharp thorns. Each thorn is as sharp as a needle and about an inch long; indeed, the native women use them as a cobbler does his awl, and I have often seen a woman using the thorn to pierce a girba and shreds of the palm leaf to sew it up with. The thorns of the kittar bushes are quite semicircular in shape, very near to each other, not long but very strong, and each successive thorn crooks in a different direction to its predecessor—one crooks up and the other down. ”

“ Attractive as it is when robed in the bloom and leafage of summer, the thorn develops a new beauty in its gnarled and naked branches and the hoariness of its gray antiquity. Loveliest, too, are the birch and hemlock in midwinter; whilst the swamp, ablaze with the scarlet fruit of the Prinos and smooth winterberry, presents its most 92vivid life above the snow. From it, likewise, I catch the gleam of the golden willow, with purple rufous lights that smolder amid the twigs and branchlets of the shrubs which seek its cool and solitude. ”

“ For how comes it, I asked, that a thorn can grow to a tree and live to a great age in such a situation, on a vast, naked down, where for many centuries, perhaps for thousands of years, the herbage has been so closely fed by sheep as to have the appearance of a carpet, or newly mown lawn? ”

“ It would be an astounding fact if any varying plant suddenly produced, without the aid of reversion or selection, perfect thorns. That Natural Selection would tend to produce the most formidable thorns will be admitted by every one who has observed the distribution in South America and Africa (vide Livingstone) of thorn-bearing plants, for they always appear where the bushes grow isolated and are exposed to the attacks of mammals. Even in England it has been noticed that all spine-bearing and sting-bearing plants are palatable to quadrupeds, when the thorns are crushed. ”

“ They start to be leaves or branches but get nipped, in some way, so they turn into thorns. They are very useful to roses. They help the slender canes catch on supports, and they frighten away some enemies. Little boys and girls would be sure to pull too many sweet roses if it wasn't for the scratchy thorns. Can you think of any other plants that have thorns? Thistles? No thistles have spines and prickles. A true thorn has wood and bark. Blackberry and raspberry briars have thorns. So have crabapple and hawthorn trees. Those plants, too, have five-petaled, rose-like, fragrant blossoms. ”

“ The Acacia tomentosa is of the same genus, with thorns so large as to be called the "jungle-nail" by Europeans. It is frequent in the woods of Jaffna and Manaar, where it bears the Tamil name of Aani mulla, or "elephant thorn." In some of these thorny plants, as in the Phoberos Goertneri, Thun., [1] the spines grow not singly, but in branching clusters, each point presenting a spike as sharp as a lancet; and where these formidable shrubs abound they render the forest absolutely impassable, even to the elephant and to animals of great size and force. ”

“ A remarkable peculiarity in the forests of this country is the absence of thorns: there are but two exceptions; one a tree bearing a species of 'nux vomica', and a small shrub very like the plant of the sarsaparilla, bearing, in addition to its hooked thorns, bunches of yellow berries. The thornlessness of the vegetation is especially noticeable to those who have been in the south, where there is so great a variety of thorn-bearing plants and trees. We have thorns of every size and shape ”

“ The differences between such a prickle and a thorn like that of the hawthorn should be carefully noticed. A thorn is really a little twig which has remained short and become pointed at the end. It has a core of wood which is continuous with the wood of the branch bearing it. That a thorn is really a little branch is shown by its origin in the axil of a leaf, and by its often giving rise to leaves and buds. ”

“ It is interesting, too, to find thorns which are long enough to have little thorns branching from them. A straight thorn seems formidable enough even on a rose stem, but a thorn some ten inches long with eight thorns branching from it, each varying from half an [Pg 133] inch to two inches long, and this but one of a cluster of thorns, keeps the trunk of the honey locust sacred from climbing boys and from browsing cattle. The honey locust is more effective than a barbed wire for fencing. The fruit is in the form of a flat, crooked reddish brown pod from seven to eighteen inches long. ”

“ Thorns are developed in the most diverse ways. In many of the bushes on the coast of the Mediterranean true leaves are wanting altogether, the green branches and twigs being themselves the assimilating parts, and these are so stiff and rigid, so like some kind of thorn, that they suffice to scare off any greedy herbivore. ”

“ Finally, rising to the top, the long serpent stem opens out in a flat disc-shaped mass of close-packed branchlets and twigs densely set with small round leaves, dark dull green and tough as parchment. One could only suppose that thorn and ivy had been partners from the beginning of life, and that the union was equally advantageous to both. ”

“ A wide prospect, whose grateful silence was only broken by the cry or song of some wild bird. Great thickets of dwarf thorn tree and brambles and gorse, aflame with yellow flowers or dark to blackness by contrast with the pale verdure of the earth. And open reaches of elastic turf, its green suffused or sprinkled with red or blue or yellow, according to the kind of flowers proper to the season and place. The sight, too, of wild creatures: fallow deer, looking yellow in the distance when seen amid the black gorse ”