Foliage of the White Oak
In winter, however, the beauty of the oak’s foliage is gone. The dry leaves still hang on the boughs, sometimes even until spring, but they look disheveled and dreary. Still, they are not without some esthetic value, though it be through the sense of hearing instead of sight. Thoreau says,—
“The dry rustle of the withered oak-leaves is the voice of the wood in winter. It sounds like the roar of the sea, and is inspirating like that, suggesting how all the land is seacoast to the aërial ocean.”
Deep and glorious, too, is the light that rests in the oak woods on midsummer days. It filters, softened and subdued, through the wealth of foliage, and wraps us in a mellow radiance. Its purity and calm depth lift the senses to a higher level. Most limpid is the light in a misty shower, when the sun is low and the level rays break through the moist leaves and dampened air, while we stand within and see everything bathed in a golden luster.
Our common chestnut is of less economic value than the oak, but one suggests the other, for the two are often found together and are similar in size and habit. The chestnut is, in truth, one of our finest deciduous trees. It has a luxuriance of healthy, dark-green foliage, and is happy-looking in its abundance of yellow-tasseled blossoms. It is even more beautiful in August, when the young burs mingle their even tinge of brown with the fresh green of the glossy leaves. In old age it has the same firmness that is so noticeable in the oak, and seems to be just as regardless of the winds and gales.
The character of the leaf and the manner in which the branches of a tree divide and ramify have so much to do with certain beautiful effects, that I shall make some remarks on these features in two of our maples. The sugar or hard maple is the most useful member of this genus, and may advantageously be compared with the red maple, which is perhaps more beautiful.
It is of great advantage to both of these trees that the sweep of their branches, which is carried out in ample, undulating lines, is in perfect harmony with the elegance of their foliage. In the sugar maple the latter spreads over the boughs in soft and pleasing contours. The leaves are a trifle larger than those of the red maple, and their edges are wavy or flowing, while their surfaces are slightly undulating and have less luster than those of the other tree. They are thus well fitted to receive a flood of light without being in danger of presenting a clotted appearance. The petioles, or little leaf-stems, assume a more horizontal position than they do in the red maple, and the twigs are usually shorter, which allows a denser richness in the foliage, which every breeze plays upon and ruffles as it passes by.
