Getting Acquainted with the Trees

by J. Horace McFarland

The wide-spreading black walnut

Alas for the great black walnut of Paxtang! It went the way of many another tree monarch whose beauty and living usefulness were no defense against sordid vandalism. In the course of time a suburb was laid out, including along its principal street, and certainly as its principal natural ornament, this massive tree, around which the Indians who roamed the "great vale of Pennsylvania" had probably gathered in council. The sixty-foot "lot," the front of which the tree graced, fell to the ownership of a man who, erecting a house under its beneficent protection, soon complained of its shade. Then came a lumber prospector, who saw only furniture in the still flourishing old black walnut. His offer of forty dollars for the tree was eagerly accepted by the Philistine who had the title to the land, and although there were not wanting such remonstrances as almost came to a breaking of the peace, the grand walnut ended its hundreds of years of life to become mere lumber for its destroyers! The real estate man who sold the land greatly admired the tree himself, realizing also its great value to the suburb, and had never for one moment dreamed that the potential vandal who bought the tree-graced parcel of ground would not respect the inherent rights of all his neighbors. He told me of the loss with tears in his eyes and rage in his language; and I have never looked since at the fellow who did the deed without reprobation. More than that, he has proven a theory I hold—that no really good man would do such a thing after he had been shown the wrong of it—by showing himself as dishonest in business as he was disregardful of the rights of the tree and of his neighbors.

The black walnut is a grand tree from any point of view, even though it so fully absorbs all water and fertility as to check other growth under its great reach of branches. The lines it presents to the winter sky are as rugged as those of the oak, but there is a great difference. And this ruggedness is held far into the spring, for the black walnut makes no slightest apparent effort at growth until all the other trees are greening the countryside. Then with a rush come the luxuriant and tropical compound leaves, soon attaining their full dignity, and adding to it also a smooth polish on the upper surface. The walnut's flowers I have missed seeing, I am sorry to say, while registering a mental promise not to permit another season to pass without having that pleasure.

Late in the year the foliage has become scanty, and the nut-clusters hang fascinatingly clear, far above one's head, to tempt the climb and the club. The black walnut is a tree that needs our care; for furniture fashion long used its close-grained, heavy, handsome wood as cruelly as the milliners did the herons of Florida from which were torn the "aigrets," now happily "out of style." Though walnut furniture is no longer the most popular, the deadly work has been done, for the most part, and but few of these wide-spread old forest monarchs yet remain. Scientific forestry is now providing, in many plantings, and in many places, another "crop" of walnut timber, grown to order, and using waste land. It is to such really beneficent, though entirely commercial work, that we must look for the future of many of our best trees.

The American sweet chestnut

The butternut, or white walnut, has never seemed so interesting to me, nor its fruit so palatable, probably because I have seen less of it. The so-called "English" walnut, which is really the Persian walnut, is not hardy in the eastern part of the United States, and, while a tree of vast commercial importance in the far West, does not come much into the view of a lover of the purely American trees.

Of the American sweet chestnut as a delightful nut-fruit I need say nothing more than that it fully holds its place against "foreign intervention" from the East; even though these European and Japanese chestnuts with their California-bred progeny give us fruit that is much larger, and borne on trees of very graceful habit. No one with discrimination will for a moment hesitate, after eating a nut of both, to cheerfully choose the American native as best worth his commendation, though he may come to understand the food value, after cooking, of the chestnuts used so freely in parts of Europe.

As a forest tree, however, our American sweet chestnut has a place of its own. Naturally spreading in habit when growing where there is room to expand, it easily accommodates itself to the more cramped conditions of our great woodlands, and shoots upward to light and air, making rapidly a clean and sturdy stem. What a beautiful and stately tree it is! And when, late in the spring, or indeed right on the threshold of summer, its blooming time comes, it stands out distinctly, having then few rivals in the eye of the tree-lover. The locust and the tulip are just about done with their floral offering upon the altar of the year when the long creamy catkins of the sweet chestnut spring out from the fully perfected dark green leaf-clusters. Peculiarly graceful are these great bloom heads, high in the air, and standing nearly erect, instead of hanging down as do the catkins of the poplars and the birches. The odor of the chestnut flower is heavy, and is best appreciated far above in the great tree, where it may mingle with the warm air of June, already bearing a hundred sweet scents.