The yellow birch has a silvery yellow tint in the outer bark, which curls back in ragged ribbons until the tree gets old. The red birch writes its name in the rusty red colour of its papery bark, which splits into tatters in true birch fashion, and flutters the ragged ends from each branch throughout the year. The black birch has no tattered ribbons flying, but wears a close, smooth, black bark, with the narrow slits that all birches show. As the trunks grow larger the surface checks into irregular plates, separated by furrows. It is called the cherry birch, for the bark is like that of cherry trees.
The sycamore has bark which is different from that of every other tree. Indeed, it is by the bark that we recognise this tree. The tall trunk looks as if it were blotched and streaked and spattered with whitewash, from the trunk to the topmost limb. The bark is continually dropping off in thin, irregular plates, leaving smooth whitish patches of an under layer exposed. After sycamore trees grow older, the bark of the lower portion of the trunk stops shedding. Fine-checked plates of rusty brown cover this oldest portion. But even on the oldest and largest trees, the pale blotches are seen in the branches and we shall never mistake the name of the tree.
The shagbark is one of the rugged and shaggy trees that boys find hard to climb without tearing their clothes into tatters. The bark gives the tree its name. Thin, narrow plates, close-woven and tough as sole leather, seem to be attached very loosely to the body of the tree, but if you try to pull off these narrow strips, you find their hold is very firm. Often they are attached at the middle, and spring out at both ends.
An old shagbark tree is a picturesque figure, as it lifts its bare arms up toward the wintry sky. The trunk is straight, but the branches are full of angles. Yet, with all their rigidity, these limbs have an expression of strength, if not of grace, and the tree’s head is usually symmetrical, and always full of character.
A young hickory has smooth, close-knit bark like that on the branches of the older trees. Gradually the growing trunk becomes furrowed, and the peculiar splintering and splitting of the bark is seen only in trees six inches or more in diameter. By the time the tree is old enough to bear nuts, it has built itself a formidable fence that boys must climb over with much hard work and many a scratch, to get up among the branches and shake down the nuts.
The loose, stripping bark gives its name to the shagbark hickory
Left: Warty bark of hackberry
Center: Silky bark of black birch
Right: Close, sinewy bark of hornbeam
The tasteless pignuts grow on a smooth-barked hickory tree, very easy to climb, but the bark of the little shellbark hickory is the guide-post that leads to the trees where the sweet-flavoured hickory nuts grow.