Flowering dogwood, in flower and fruit, the winter flower buds and alligator-skin bark
It is not fair to charge Jack Frost with all the gay colours of the autumn woods. Perhaps I should say, rather, that he does not deserve all the credit people give him for painting the landscape with the sunset glories of the dying leaves. The cause is the ripening of the leaves themselves, as I have already explained. Frost may hasten the process, but if a heavy freeze comes in September, before the leaves have coloured, we lose our chance for autumn colouring that year. The leaves drop as if scalded, and the trees lose their leaf pulp, which they had expected to withdraw and save for future use. A long dry autumn of warm days and mildly frosty nights produces the finest succession of colours.
Countries that have a more moist, warm climate than ours, do not have the vivid autumn colours that we enjoy. England, and the countries of Western Europe, are like our West coast in lacking the colour changes that make October for us the most glorious month of the year. Our New England woodlands and the forests of Canada are matched in brilliancy by the wooded slopes of the Swiss Alps, and the forests along the Rhine and the Danube. In our Southern states there is little or no change that comes to the foliage towards the end of the year. The leaves on the trees of Florida are lazy in falling. They wait until pushed off by the swelling buds in early spring. Many trees that shed their leaves promptly each autumn in the Northern states, gradually become evergreen in the Southern parts of their range. The longer a tree carries its leaves, the more battered and worn they become. A tree with fresh, new leaves mingling with old ones is not a pleasant object, at least to Northern eyes. This is the way most trees in the South look in spring.
If we should travel the world over, and see the trees of many lands, in spring, in summer, in autumn, and in winter, I believe we should all come back to the clean, beautiful mixed woods of our north temperate zone, and declare that these woods are the most beautiful in the world. In the dead of winter, they are budded full of promise. We learn to love them as well in this period of rest as we do in the beauty of their spring flowers, or in the glory of their autumn colouring, or in the steady growth of summer.
Each leaf is nurse to a bud that is growing between its base and the twig. Find these little buds on any tree with broad leaves. A part of all the food that passes that way stops to feed this growing bud; and in the late summer the twig provides for the future welfare of all its buds. The thrifty tree withdraws the green pulp from its leaves, before it lets them fall. A store of starch is put away in the twig, close to each bud. This is the food supply which will be used in the spring to enable the bud to open and spread its young leaves, or its flowers, in a surprisingly short time.
When the worn-out leaf has been drained of all of its pulp, the tree lets it go. It has done its work, and given up its pulp to be stored in the twig for future use. It seems as if the tree knows that, with the coming of cooler weather, growth must stop; that the tender leaves must die when frost overtakes them. So it is a frugal habit to save all of the good green leaf pulp, and to cast off only the dry leaf skin.
TREE STUDIES IN THE WINTER
TREES WE KNOW BY THEIR BARK
Hunters and foresters who spend much of their time in the woods learn to know trees by name through long acquaintance. In the dead of winter, the framework of a tree may be enough to recognise it by. Where trees are crowded, this sign is not to be depended upon. The bark is often a guide to the tree’s name. The forester will tell you that the bud is the surest sign of all. The bark is one of the best signs.