The Earth as Modified by Human Action

by George P. Marsh

European and American Trees compared.

The woods of North America are strikingly distinguished from those of Europe by the vastly greater variety of species they contain. According to Clave, there are in "France and in most parts of Europe only about twenty forest-trees, five or six of which are spike-leaved and resinous, the remainder broad-leaved." [Footnote: Etudes Forestieres, p. 7.] Our author, however, doubtless means genera, though he uses the word especes. Rossmassler enumerates fifty-seven species of forest-trees as found in Germany, but some of these are mere shrubs, some are fruit and properly garden trees, and some others are only varieties of familiar species. The valuable manual of Parade describes about the same number, including, however, two of American origin—the locust, Robinia pseudacacia, and the Weymouth or white pine, Pinus Strobus—and the cedar of Lebanon from Asia, which, or at least a very closely allied species, is indigenous in Algeria also. We may then safely say that Europe does not possess above forty or fifty native trees of such economical value as to be worth the special care of the forester, while the oak alone numbers more than thirty species in the United States, [Footnote: For full catalogues of American forest-trees, and remarks on their geographical distribution, consult papers on the subject by Dr. J. G. Cooper, in the Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1858, and the Report of the United States Patent Office, Agricultural Division, for 1860.] and some other North American genera are almost equally diversified. [Footnote: Although Spenser's catalogue of trees occurs in the first canto of the first book of the "Faery Queene"—the only canto of that exquisite poem actually read by most students of English literature—it is not so generally familiar as to make the quotation of it altogether superfluous:

VII.

Enforst to seeke some covert nigh at hand,
A shadic grove not farr away they spide,
That promist ayde the tempest to withstand;
Whose loftie trees, yclad with sommers pride,
Did spred so broad, that heavens light did hide,
Not perceable with power of any starr:
And all within were pathes and alleies wide,
With footing worne, and leading inward farr;
Faire harbour that them seems; so in they entered ar.

VIII.

And foorth they passe, with pleasure forward led,
Joying to heare the birdes sweete harmony.
Which therein shrouded from the tempest dred,
Seemd in their song to scorne the cruell sky.
Much can they praise the trees so straight and hy,
The sayling pine; the cedar stout and tall;
The vine-propp elm; the poplar never dry;
The builder oake, sole king of forrests all;
The aspine good for staves; the cypresse funerall;

IX.

The laurell, meed of mightie conquerours
And poets sage; the firre that weepeth still;
The willow, worne of forlorn paramours;
The eugh, obedient to the benders will;
The birch for shaftes; the sallow for the mill;
The mirrhe sweete-bleeding in the bitter wound;
The warlike beech; the ash for nothing ill;
The fruitfull olive; and the platane round;
The carver holme; the maple seeldom inward sound.

Although the number of SPECIES of American forest-trees is much larger than of European, yet the distinguishable VARIETIES are relatively more numerous in the Old World, even in the case of trees not generally receiving special care. This multiplication of varieties is no doubt a result, though not a foreseen or intended one, of human action; for the ordinary operations of European forest economy expose young trees to different conditions from those presented by nature, and new conditions produce new forms. All European woods, except in the remote North, even if not technically artificial forests, acquire a more or less artificial character from the governing hand of man, and the effect of this interference is seen in the constant deviation of trees from the original type. The holly, for example, even when growing as absolutely wild as any tree can ever grow in countries long occupied by man, produces numerous varieties, and twenty or thirty such, not to mention intermediate shades, are described and named as recognizably different, in treatises on the forest-trees of Europe.]

While the American forest flora has made large contributions to that of Europe, comparatively few European trees have been naturalized in the United States, and as a general rule the indigenous trees of Europe do not succeed well in our climate. The European mountain-ash—which in beauty, dimensions, and healthfulness of growth is superior to our own [Footnote: In the Northern Tyrol mountain-ashes fifteen inches in diameter are not uncommon. The berries are distilled with grain to flavor the spirit.]—the horse-chestnut, and the abele, or silver poplar, are valuable additions to the ornamental trees of North America. The Swiss arve or zirbelkiefer, Pinus cembra, which yields a well-flavored edible seed and furnishes excellent wood for carving, the umbrella-pine, [Footnote: The mountain ranges of our extreme West produce a pine closely resembling the European umbrella-pine.] which also bears a seed agreeable to the taste, and which, from the color of its foliage and the beautiful form of its dome-like crown, is among the most elegant of trees, the white birch of Central Europe, with its pendulous branches almost rivalling those of the weeping willow in length, flexibility, and gracefulness of fall, and, especially, the "cypresse funerall," might be introduced into the United States with great advantage to the landscape. The European beech and chestnut furnish timber of far better quality than that of their American congeners. The fruit of the European chestnut, though inferior to the American in sweetness and flavor, is larger, and is an important article of diet among the French and Italian peasantry. The walnut of Europe, though not equal to some of the American species in beauty of growth or of wood, or to others in strength and elasticity of fibre, is valuable for its timber and its oil. [Footnote: The walnut is a more valuable tree than is generally supposed. It yields one-third of the oil produced in France, and in this respect occupies an intermediate position between the olive of the south and the oleaginous seeds of the north. A hectare (about two and a half acres) will produce nuts to the value of five hundred francs a year, which cost nothing but the gathering. Unfortunately, its maturity must be long waited for, and more nut-trees are felled than planted. The demand for its wood in cabinet-work is the principal cause of its destruction. See Lavergne, Economie Rurale de la France, p. 253.