The close-knit, grey bark of beech trees hardly needs to be described. The temptation to cut initials on beech trunks is more than folks with pocket-knives can resist. No matter how many fine trees there are in a beech grove near town, they are scarred all over with letters and hieroglyphics as far as hand can reach. The tree never covers these wounds. Though they do not cripple it, they mar its beauty painfully.
A little further from the haunts of picnic parties, we shall come upon beech woods that have not thus been abused by thoughtless jack-knives. From the ground, far up into the high tops, a close, beautiful garment of ashy grey bark clothes the tree. Saplings of all ages grow up among the big trees, for beeches grow in colonies. A soft radiance from these many pale tree trunks seems to lighten the woods paths, overshadowed by the dense foliage of the tree tops.
It is said that beech trees die when they come into contact with civilisation. Fine beech woods are included in additions to towns; you will see the great trees die when lawns and gardens are made about their roots. In the outskirts of Indianapolis there are noble beech trees, but they are dying, as the city grows around them.
The copper beeches and the cut-leaved and weeping beeches have the same close-knit bark as our native tree, but it is not grey, but dark brown. These fancy forms are varieties of the European beech, one of the principal lumber trees of the Old World.
The bark of this tree played an interesting part in the early history of the human race. Long before the European tribes had written languages, they sent messages from one to another. These messages between tribes, friendly or warlike, were written in hieroglyphics, cut into the smooth surface of beech bark, and messengers carried them back and forth.
Sheets of beech bark, as well as birch, made the walls and roofs of the huts in which people lived. Their boats and various household utensils were made out of beech wood, which is so close-grained that vessels made of it hold water without leaking.
Another American tree with bark like the beech, but darker grey, grows always, by preference, with its roots in wet soil. It is a little tree, with rigid, horizontal twigs, that form a flat tree top. This is called the blue beech, and its trunk does often have a bluish cast. It is also called hornbeam, for its wood is so hard that it was used in the early days to make the beams which went across the horns of the oxen. This is the part of the ox yoke which is the most subject to wear. Ironwood is another name that describes the hard wood.
We shall notice that this tree has not a regular cylindrical trunk like that of a beech. Strong swellings, that look like muscles, are seen, especially where the trunk branches into the main limbs. Have you ever noticed the arms of a blacksmith, or of an athlete? How the veins and muscles stand out when the arm is in use! Just like them are the irregular swellings that course up the trunk of the hornbeam, and out into the limbs.
The hackberry is a handsome shade tree, which might, at first glance, be mistaken for an elm. The bark is different from that of any other tree. Once we see a hackberry, and learn its name, we will never mistake it again. The bark is light brown or grey, and finely checked by deep furrows. The ridges between bear strange, warty outgrowths. Look for these warts among the small branches. The twigs are smooth, but back a little way the warty eruptions begin, and become more prominent as the limbs thicken and approach the trunk. Sometimes the limbs have these warts so close together as to form continuous ridges.
Another tree with warty bark is the sweet gum. The negroes of the South call the tree “alligator wood,” because the lower part of the trunk is broken by furrows and cross-furrows into horny plates like the skin of an alligator. From the red-brown trunk up into the grey branches, there is a change in the character of the bark. The fissures usually run lengthwise, and the bark rises in thin ridges on each side of the fissure. These ridges become thin as knife blades on the smaller twigs, which also have a sprinkling of small warts.