The aspen (Populus tremuloides) was very common on burnt grounds. We saw many straggling white pines, commonly unsound trees, which had therefore been skipped by the choppers; these were the largest trees we saw; and we occasionally passed a small wood in which this was the prevailing tree; but I did not notice nearly so many of these trees as I can see in a single walk in Concord. The speckled or hoary alder (Alnus incana) abounds everywhere along the muddy banks of rivers and lakes, and in swamps. Hemlock could commonly be found for tea, but was nowhere abundant. Yet F. A. Michaux states that in Maine, Vermont, and the upper part of New Hampshire, etc., the hemlock forms three fourths of the evergreen woods, the rest being black spruce. It belongs to cold hillsides.
The elm and black ash were very common along the lower and stiller parts of the streams, where the shores were flat and grassy or there were low gravelly islands. They made a pleasing variety in the scenery, and we felt as if nearer home while gliding past them.
The above fourteen trees made the bulk of the woods which we saw.
The larch (juniper), beech, and Norway pine (Pinus resinosa, red pine) were only occasionally seen in particular places. The Pinus Banksiana (gray or Northern scrub pine), and a single small red oak (Quercus rubra) only, are on islands in Grand Lake, on the East Branch.
The above are almost all peculiarly Northern trees, and found chiefly, if not solely, on mountains southward.
II. FLOWERS AND SHRUBS
It appears that in a forest like this the great majority of flowers, shrubs, and grasses are confined to the banks of the rivers and lakes, and to the meadows, more open swamps, burnt lands, and mountain-tops; comparatively very few indeed penetrate the woods. There is no such dispersion even of wild-flowers as is commonly supposed, or as exists in a cleared and settled country. Most of our wild-flowers, so called, may be considered as naturalized in the localities where they grow. Rivers and lakes are the great protectors of such plants against the aggressions of the forest, by their annual rise and fall keeping open a narrow strip where these more delicate plants have light and space in which to grow. They are the protégés of the rivers. These narrow and straggling bands and isolated groups are, in a sense, the pioneers of civilization. Birds, quadrupeds, insects, and man also, in the main, follow the flowers, and the latter in his turn makes more room for them and for berry-bearing shrubs, birds, and small quadrupeds. One settler told me that not only blackberries and raspberries but mountain maples came in, in the clearing and burning.
Though plants are often referred to primitive woods as their locality, it cannot be true of very many, unless the woods are supposed to include such localities as I have mentioned. Only those which require but little light, and can bear the drip of the trees, penetrate the woods, and these have commonly more beauty in their leaves than in their pale and almost colorless blossoms.
The prevailing flowers and conspicuous small plants of the woods, which I noticed, were: Clintonia borealis, linnæa, checkerberry (Gaultheria procumbens), Aralia nudicaulis (wild sarsaparilla), great round-leaved orchis, Dalibarda repens, Chiogenes hispidula (creeping snowberry), Oxalis Acetosella (common wood-sorrel), Aster acuminatus, Pyrola secunda (one-sided pyrola), Medeola Virginica (Indian cucumber-root), small Circæa (enchanter’s nightshade), and perhaps Cornus Canadensis (dwarf cornel).