TREES THAT BLOOM IN MIDSUMMER
In spring the big chestnut tree is late in putting out its leaves. It is May before the bare limbs are clothed with green. This crown is made of long, pointed leaves, each short-stemmed, strongly ribbed, with parallel veins on each side of the midrib, polished and sharp-toothed along its margin. It is a superb dome of unusually handsome leaves.
When the flower procession is long past and the grain fields have turned yellow, and the mower and reaper are humming busily, the chestnut’s crown turns from green to gold, as if to harmonise with the landscape of midsummer. Each twig ends in a feathery yellow plume, which waves in the breezes, and sheds its yellow pollen abroad. The fertile flowers are at the base of the plume. As the yellow pollen flowers fade, the green scaly ones below them are swelling. They are the young chestnuts. The long tongue each held out to catch pollen when it was ready for use. Each flower has three nuts as its full quota to form. Failure to be pollenated may cause one of the three to fail. The husk will then contain two nuts.
Leaves and flowers of the ear-leaved cucumber tree are the largest in the magnolia family
The orange-yellow flower cups and squared leaves of the tulip tree
In May the yellow locust trees still stand along the roadsides, or herded together along the banks of streams, bare and ugly, while the trees around them are beautifully clothed in their green garments, and adorned with blossoms. The dead pods still cling to the locust’s branches, and not even the buds are in sight to prove the twigs alive.
Suddenly the trees wake, push out their hidden buds into shoots which unfold leaves made of tiny leaflets. The leafy spray is light and graceful, pale green with a silvery sheen at first. Soon the leaves are inundated with a flood of white blossoms, fragrant with their nectar, which hang in clusters from each twig. The bees see the white cloud on the locust tree, and hurry to the feast. Each curious pea-like flower has a honey pot in its horned petal. Throughout the summer the locust trees wave their fern-like leaves, among which the young pods swing, rosy and green, and velvety soft. The two thorns at the base of each leaf are there, but they are not conspicuous, unless you grasp a limb; then they let you know where they are, and what they can do.
On a summer evening we shall see that the locust has closed its leaves, folding the opposite leaflets together, and the whole leaf drooping from its stem. It reminds us of the old-fashioned sensitive plant whose leaves resembled these, folded its leaflets and drooped whenever it was touched. Indeed, the locust tree and these plants are near relatives. The locust leaves are sensitive to the evening air. They close if a rain comes up, but open when the sun comes out again and the sky clears.
Locust trees have an insect enemy which bores into the solid wood, and ruins it for lumber. Even the twigs are swollen and distorted by these insects, which feed upon the rich sap that should go to feed the tree. It is impossible to reach this enemy with poison, so the trees are helpless.
Except for this unfortunate fact, locusts would be a profitable crop to raise for timber. Locust wood is very hard, durable, and strong. It is slow to decay when in water, so it is valuable for fence posts, and for boat building. It is used for hubs and spokes of waggon wheels, and it is an excellent fuel. The locust timber that reaches market comes from the mountain slopes, where the locust-borer is thus far unknown. The range of the tree is all over the Eastern states and west to the Rocky Mountains. We shall not find them south of the latitude of Tennessee.
Flowers, fruit, and the three different leaf patterns of the sassafras tree
Waxy flower of the evergreen magnolia, usually eight inches across when open
The catalpa’s great heart-shaped leaves, as broad as a man’s hat, come out in May, but the leafy shoots grow a foot or more in length, and it is well along toward Independence Day before the flower buds show streaks of white above the foliage mass. The upturned twigs end in a spike of blossoms, creamy in colour, but speckled within their wide throats with purple and yellow. The rim of the flower cup is daintily scalloped, and frilled, and the tree top is even more showy than the horse chestnut a month earlier.
There is stateliness, even stiffness, in the figure of a blossoming horse chestnut—a pyramid of green holding up a thousand pyramids of white. The catalpa has a round head, and the loose flower clusters are quite informal in their arrangement. The flowers nod gracefully on their stems—a thing the horse chestnut flowers are unable to do.
Why are the dots of colour sprinkled in the throat of the flower? Why are they arranged in lines that lead to the nectar sac? To guide the bees which come in swarms in answer to the signals of colour and fragrance the flowers fling out as lures to them.
The two stamens are ripe before the pistil. The bee rubs the pollen off by crowding into the flower. Some of this dust is bound to be rubbed off on the ripe stigma of an older blossom visited by this bee. Thus, unconsciously the bee helps the tree to set good seed. Of these we will study when we come to the tree again in autumn. Only a hint of the seed vessel is given by looking at the oldest flower in a cluster, and noticing the green part at the base.
The linden or basswood holds its arms out so that the broad leaves are exposed to the sun in slanting strata, or platforms of shade, that strike downward. The tree’s frame is roofed in with them in an almost unbroken thatch of green. Cattle love to crop this foliage, and to enjoy the dense shade on a hot day.
In July the dark green is illuminated by thousands of starry white blossoms, a few at the end of a slender stem that rises out of a pale green, leaf-like blade. There is nothing like it borne on any other tree.
The news that the basswoods are in bloom reaches the hives in good time. One is able to hear the murmur of bees as far as he can see the flowers, but the fragrance travels much farther. Basswood honey is higher in price than other kinds. Is this the reason the bees are so hard at work? Small as the individual flowers are, they have an unusual supply of nectar, and the bees revel in the plenty of what will feed them and yield wax. They make honey while the sun shines, counting the basswoods their best source of the crude materials for honeymaking. It was so in the days of old. Greek poets sang of the honey-laden lindens. Honey made from linden trees in the Lithuanian forests was carried to Rome, where it sold for three times the price of ordinary honey.
Bees swarm, and the new colony often takes to the woods and sets up housekeeping in a hollow tree. This is so likely in the Southern states to be a linden that “bee tree” is a familiar name of this tree.