Forest Trees and Forest Scenery

by G. Frederick Schwarz

A similar warmth of expression belongs to the leafy woods of other regions. If we compare New England with Pennsylvania, we shall find that the broadleaf forests of the latter are denser and more continuous, while they are at the same time richer in the variety of trees, shrubs, and other forms of embellishment, which find here a milder air and a richer soil. Springtime is more luxuriant and replete with happy surprise and change. But while these forests are perhaps more elaborate than those of southern New England, I cannot say that they impress me as being so homelike and engaging.

Along the Gulf and in Florida the dank forests of the swamps and river bottoms, finding all the conditions favorable to a luxuriant vegetation, are characterized by extraordinary complexity of growth. Perhaps we enter some secluded patch of virgin forest, and sit down for a while in its dense shade, impressed by the strangeness and solitude of the place. Our curiosity is aroused by the multifarious assemblage of trees, vines, and shrubbery, and we wonder how many ages it has been thus, and how far back some of the oldest trees may date in their history. But they seem rather to have no age at all; only to be linked in some mysterious way with the dim past out of which they have arisen.

Virgin Forest Scene in Florida

A mighty live oak leans across the scene, moist and green with moss; another is noticed farther away among slender palmettos, whose spear-edged leaves catch the sunlight. Vines and climbers hang about the stems or droop lazily from the boughs. In the nearby sluggish water, where the soil is deep and moldy, stands a sweet gum with curiously chiseled bark, as if some patient artist had been at work; and a little beyond, some cypresses are roofed by the delicate web of their own foliage.

We may sit dreaming away a full hour thus, with only the hum of a few insects and perhaps a stray scarlet tanager flitting by to disturb our meditations.

It has been indicated in a former chapter that the broadleaf woods, taken as a whole, are decidedly richer in shrubs and small plants than the evergreen or coniferous forests. This adventitious source of beauty has much to do with their general character, because the gay show of blossom and fruit, bright stem, and diverse habits of growth of these lesser plants, contributes appreciably to the liveliness of sylvan scenery. But the effect derived from the blossoms and fruits of many of the trees themselves should not be overlooked. In this respect the broadleaf trees are superior to the evergreens. The poplars and willows ripen their woolly and silvery tassels when the snow has scarcely disappeared. The bright tufts of the red maple, the little yellow flowers of the sassafras, the snowy white ones of the serviceberry and flowering dogwood, the latter’s red berries in fall, the brilliant fruit of the mountain ash, the perfect flowers of the magnolias, the heavily clustered locusts, honey locusts, and black cherries, and the basswoods with fragrant little creamy flowers, alike do their part in lending character to the forest wherever they may have their range.

Then, in addition to the beauty that appeals to us through the outward senses, there is a quality in the forests that is dear to us through an inward sense. It is the influence of a temperament that seems to belong to the place itself: the pure and health-giving atmosphere, the quiet and rest that binds up the wounded spirit and brings peace to the troubled mind.

We leave the turmoil of the city and the thousand little cares of daily life and seek refuge for a while in sylvan retreats, in some pleasant leafy forest with murmuring water and sunbeams; and presently the ruffled concerns of yesterday are smoothed away and the forest, like sleep, “knits up the raveled sleeve of care.”