Throughout the Eastern States there is an abundance of broadleaf stump-sprout thickets, which have come by inheritance to the ground from which their progenitors were removed by the wood-cutter’s ax. While some of these approach nearly to the European coppices in intention, they do not bear out the resemblance sufficiently for a comparison. They lack their system and structure, though they depend upon the same power of reproduction for their existence. Nevertheless, they have their own charm. I remember one, at the edge of a tall forest, in which the sprouts were composed of oak, beech, hickory, tulip tree, dogwood, haw, and a few pine saplings, all of which formed a dense thicket of young trees. In summer it was pleasant to thread one’s way through this place, quite concealed by the straight young growth, or to lie down there and listen for a whole morning to the twitterings and songs of birds, shut in by a wealth of foliage.
There is another type of European forest known as “coppice under standards.” This is no more than a coppice growing underneath a selection forest somewhat different in aspect from the one already described. In the present case the selection forest is opener, the trees being fewer in number. Ample light is thus admitted for the growth of the coppice beneath. The appearance of the whole is that of an open forest into which the younger thickets have penetrated.
The esthetic effect of this combination may be described in very few words. While the coppice loses much of its charm, the overspreading forest gains something by this sacrifice. The former keeps the soil in fair and fresh condition, thus insuring a healthy growth to the large trees. It also shades the lower portions of their trunks, in consequence of which many of them develop into clean specimens, with strong, well-rounded stems, and graceful, wide-spreading crowns.
The last of the four types, the “high forest,” is the most artificial and highly developed of the series. In its construction it is in some respects like the coppice; for, as in that type, there is a uniformity of size in the trees on restricted areas, and the species that compose the entire forest are very limited in number. Coniferous high forests, which are the most common, are often composed of only a single kind of tree, and broadleaf forests of the same type rarely contain more than two or three species. These forests, like the coppice, comprise a full complement of sizes and ages, each confined to a separate section; but the steps are not single years, as in the coppice, but periods of ten or twenty years, or even more; so that the high forest, above all, is a much taller and older one. The sections that compose it are not regular in outline, except in certain forests on flats and levels, nor do they necessarily lie side by side in the consecutive order of size and age. Finally, the high forest also differs from the coppice in the manner of its origin; for, while the former owes its existence to seedlings that have grown up spontaneously, or been sown or planted, the coppice is a young forest that has sprouted from the stumps of trees that have been cut.
A “High Forest” of Spruce in Saxony
Thus the high forest, while it may be compared with the coppice in its construction, is yet in certain respects so different from it as to convey a very distinct impression. I here disregard the younger portions of the forest, for, in the light of the present discussion, they are merely preparatory to the mature forest, destined to be useful only after the completeness of age. In the older portions the one distinguishing characteristic is simple dignity. To this one quality all other points of excellence or beauty conform and adjust themselves. The young tree or the casual shrub that may have found its way into the company of the centenarians, is welcome; but the absorbing interest lies in the noble grandeur of the old trees that have grown up together. Some, under the influence of better soil or more light, have done better than others; but they are all sound and stately trees, and together represent the best product of the forest. Long ago other trees that grew in their midst, but were less promising, were removed for the sake of these. Under their continuous roof of foliage there is a cool, deep shade. The ground is scattered with fern, or covered with deep beds of leaves, or with the glossy needles of the conifers. If the forest has originated from seeds borne by a generation of trees that previously occupied the same spot, and the seeds germinated here and there and sprouted into a new forest upon the removal of the old, we shall now find the trees distributed in natural positions. Where, however, the new forest has been planted, which is often the case with the conifers, the trees stand in close rank and file, and we walk among their columns as in natural aisles and corridors. Here there is hardly a shrub to shut out the gloomy distance, and only at intervals a stray intruder with exceptional powers of shade endurance, a dwarfed yew tree, or a beech with refined, fan-like spray, comes into notice in the vista.
If these are some of the changes that are wrought in forests through the application of a new science, if, through forestry in Europe, one kind of beauty has passed away and another kind has been called forth, will our own forests, it may be asked, undergo in time similar alterations? We cannot doubt that they will grow more artificial; but under the modified application of the science of forestry to our own conditions, so different from those of Europe, the esthetic changes to be looked for would be difficult to predict. Nor would these changes be predetermined, but, on the contrary, would depend very largely upon chance. It should be noted that forestry and landscape art are distinct; that the former, ordinarily, is not affected by the latter, and has its own ends and aims—those of material usefulness. I say ordinarily, because there are circumstances under which forestry might, with slight modifications and without a compromise to its own interests, adjust itself to some of the principles of landscape art. Indeed, this possible adjustment has been a subject of interest in Germany for more than twenty years, and the feasibility of a relationship between landscape art and forestry has been practically demonstrated by a noted German forester, Herr Heinrich von Salisch, on his own estates. This gentleman has applied to them the practical methods of approved forestry under such modifications as his experience and taste suggested, and has thereby not only made his forest profitable, but also more beautiful than it was before.[7]