There are other good native birches, and one foreigner—the true white birch—whose cut-leaved form, a familiar lawn tree of drooping habit, is worth watching and liking. The name some of the nurserymen have given it, of "nine-bark," is significantly accurate, for at least nine layers may be peeled from the glossy whiteness of the bark of a mature tree.
Flowers of the spice-bush
I intend to know more of the birches, and to see how the two kinds of flowers act to produce the little fruits, which are nuts, though they hardly look so. And I would urge my tree-loving friends to plant about their homes these cheery and most elegantly garbed trees.
The spice-bush, of which I spoke above, is really a large shrub, and is especially notable for two things—the way it begins the spring, and the way it ends the fall. About my home, it is the first of wild woods trees to bloom, except perhaps the silver maple, which has a way of getting through with its flowers unnoticed before spring is thought of. One finds the delicate little bright yellow flowers of the spice-bush clustered thickly along the twigs long before the leaves are ready to brave the chill air. After the leaves have fallen in the autumn, these flowers stand out in a reincarnation of scarlet and spicy berries, which masquerade continually as holly berries when cunningly introduced amid the foliage of the latter. Between spring and fall the spice-bush is apparently invisible.
Leaves and berries of the American holly
How many of us, perfectly familiar with "the holly berry's glow" about Christmas time, have ever seen a whole tree of holly, set with berries? Yet the trees, sometimes fifty feet high, of American holly—and this is very different from the English holly in leaf—grow all along the Atlantic sea-board, from Maine to Florida, and are especially plenty south of Maryland and Delaware. There is one superb specimen in Trenton, New Jersey's capital, which is of the typical form, and when crowded with scarlet berries it is an object of great beauty. One reason why many of us have not seen holly growing in the wild is that it seems to prefer the roughest and most inaccessible locations. Years ago I was told that I might see plenty of holly growing freely in the Pennsylvania county of my home. "But," my informant added, "you will need to wear heavy leather trousers to get to it!" The nurserymen are removing this difficulty by growing plants of all the hollies—American, Japanese, English and Himalayan—so that they may easily be set in the home grounds, with their handsome evergreen foliage and their berries of red or black.
One spring, the season and my opportunities combined to provide a most pleasing feast of color in the tree quest. It was afforded by the juxtaposition at Conewago of the bloom-time of the deep pink red-bud, miscalled "Judas tree," and the large white dogwood,—both set against the deep, almost black green of the American cedar, or juniper. These two small trees, the red-bud and the dogwood, are of the class of admirable American natives that are notable rather for beauty and brightness of bloom than for tree form or size.