Trees Every Child Should Know: Easy Tree Studies for All Seasons of the Year

by Julia Ellen Rogers

I remember walking in a corn field in late June; the corn had been last ploughed a month before. Among the weeds that had grown up in this short time was a crop of young red maples, now six inches high. It was amazing to see these little trees grow so plentifully in a cultivated field. I looked for the seed tree, and there it stood on the edge of the field, the only maple tree in sight. A few young trees were growing in the matted grass of the roadside under the tree, but the great crop was from the seeds that flew out to the mellow ground between the corn rows. The disappointed seeds, those which fell and did not grow, were under the tree and in the dusty road.

In the autumn the hard maple, which we call the sugar maple, ripens its winged seeds. So does the three-leaved box elder (which is a maple) and the Norway maple, now a very familiar street tree. The wind takes its time, and the trees stubbornly hang on to their seeds, so that these maples are busy all winter with the sowing. Every day they give up a few, and many seeds that fall on the snow are picked up, again and again, by the wind and thus carried further and further away.

The maple seed, with its curiously one-sided wing, is the sign by which the maple family is easily recognised. Other trees have winged seeds, but none have the peculiar form of this one.

All summer long we may know the trees that belong to the ash family by the clusters of pale green darts that hang among their leaves. These are the ash seeds. Each one is a pointed seed case, containing the embryo plant, and out behind it extends the thin, light, two-edged wing. There is no one-sidedness to this blade. The seed is winged, but balanced like a dart. When the wind loosens one from the wiry stem, it goes like an arrow, seed downward. If there is a gale blowing, the seed may be caught up and borne far away in the upper air, before a lull lets it take a downward course, and drive its point into a snowbank, or into the ground. This little feathered arrow may be long or short, depending upon whether it belongs to the red ash, the white ash, or the black; but there is no mistaking an ash tree for any other, once the form of an ash seed is fixed in the mind.

I have said that a maple seed is shaped like that of no other tree. I must describe here the seeds of the needle-leaved evergreens, which, though very much smaller, are somewhat like maple seeds in form. Go to a pine tree or a spruce, and get one of the cones that has begun to spread its scales apart. Shake the cone over a piece of paper. If nothing comes out from between the scales, cut or break the cone open with knife or hatchet. Under each scale will be found two seeds, each with a thin, one-sided wing. Spruces, hemlocks, firs, and arbor vitæs, all have this same type of seed, hid away in the same fashion, under the protecting scales of their cones. Do you understand how the wind, blowing through the tops of evergreens, shakes the winged seeds from their places, and carries them far away? Do you understand why the ripe cones of these trees hang on so stubbornly, and spread their scales to allow the seeds to escape?

It is a peculiarity of the firs that they hold their cones erect. It would seem hard for the wind to get at the seeds, but the fir cones let their scales fall, and when they loosen, the seeds are freed.

Out of the balls of the sweet gum tree, which dangle on the twigs all winter, the wind shakes little winged seeds, not unlike those of the pines.

Do you know the catalpa’s long, green pods that hang all summer on the top of trees? They are longer than the newest lead pencil, and show no signs of splitting, until the autumn. Now, the two halves of the pod spread apart, and gradually the thin seeds shake out. Each one is in the centre of a thin, fringed wing, that looks as if made of tissue paper. The wind can carry these ghostly seeds for miles. Indeed, it is strange that they ever come to the ground, for they seem to have no thickness nor weight at all.

The birches all bear their seeds in cones, some long and pencil-like, others quite the shape of a pine cone. Under each quaintly notched scale of the cone, a seed is borne; and each heart-shaped seed has a thin rim, which acts like a wing, catching the wind as the seed falls. We shall look far in the woods before we find seeds daintier in form, or better sailors through the air, than those of all the birch family.

The hop hornbeam has a hop-like cluster of seeds, each in an inflated papery bag. When the leaves drop in the fall, the wind has a chance to pick off these little paper seed balloons, one at a time, from the clusters. Take off one of these little bags, open it, and you will find, set in the bottom, the shiny, pointed seed. It is likely to have a long journey, if there be a good breeze, before its bag is punctured.