The live-oak, by the way, has a leaf very little like the typical oak—it is elliptical in shape and smooth in outline. The curious parasitic moss that so frequently covers the tree obscures the really handsome foliage.
The English Oak, grand tree that it is, grows well in America, as everything English should by right, and there are fine trees of this Quercus Robur on Long Island. The acorns are of unusual elegance, as the photograph which shows them will prove.
Acorns of the English oak
The red oak, the black oak, the scarlet oak, all splendid forest trees of the Northeast, are in the group of confusion that can be readily separated only by the timber-cruiser, who knows every tree in the forest for its economic value, or by the botanist, with his limp-bound Gray's Manual in hand. I confess to bewilderment in five minutes after the differences have been explained to me, and I enjoyed, not long ago, the confusion of a skilful nurseryman who was endeavoring to show me his young trees of red oak which the label proved to be scarlet! But the splendidly effective trees themselves can be fully appreciated, and the distinctions will appear as one studies carefully the features of these living gifts of nature's greenness. The trees wait on one, and once the habit of appreciation and investigation is formed, each walk afield, in forest or park, leads to the acquirement of some new bit of tree-lore, that becomes more precious and delightful as it is passed on and commented upon in association with some other member of the happily growing fraternity of nature-lovers.
These oak notes are not intended to be complete, but only to suggest some points for investigation and appreciation to my fellows in the brotherhood. I have never walked between Trenton and New York, and therefore never made the desired acquaintance with the scrub-oaks along the way. Nor have I dipped as fully into the oak treasures of the Arnold Arboretum as I want to some day. But my camera is yet available and the trees are waiting; the tree love is growing and the tree friends are inviting, and together we will add to the oak knowledge and to that thankfulness for God and life and love and friends that the trees do most constantly cause to flourish.
The Pines
In popular estimation, the pines seem to belong to the North, not quite so exclusively as do the palms to the South. The ragged, picturesque old pines, spruces and hemlocks of our remembrance carry with them the thought of great endurance, long life and snowy forests. We think of them, too, as belonging to the mountains, not to the plains; as clothing steep slopes with their varied deep greens rather than as standing against the sky-line of the sea. Yet I venture to think that the most of us in the East see oftenest the pines peculiar to the lowlands, as we flit from city to city over the steel highways of travel, and have most to do, in an economical sense, with a pine that does not come north of the Carolinas—the yellow pine which furnishes our familiar house-flooring.