Now the growing shoot has carried up the second bag, which opens and another leaf expands, sheds its leafy stipules, and a third follows. The studies of this unique vernation delight children and grown-ups. It is absolutely unmatched in the world of trees.
The leathery blades of the tulip tree are from four to six inches broad and long, with basal lobes, like those of a maple leaf, and the end chopped off square. Occasionally there is a notch, made by the two end lobes projecting a trifle beyond the midrib. The leaves are singularly free from damage, keeping their dark lustrous beauty through the summer, and turning to clear yellow before they fall.
The winged seeds fall first from the top of the erect cones, the wind whirling them far, because the flat blades are long and the seed-cases light—many of them empty in fact. Far into winter a tulip tree seems to be blossoming, because its bare branches are tipped with the remnants of the seed cones, faded and shining almost white against the dark branches.
Tulip wood is soft and weak, pale brown, and light in weight. It is easily worked and is used locally for house and boat-building. Wood pulp consumes much of the yearly harvest. It is known as "poplar," whose wood it resembles. Ordinary postal cards are made of it. The bark yields a drug used as a heart stimulant.
THE DOGWOODS
Foliage of exceptional beauty is the distinguishing trait of the trees in the cornel family, from the standpoint of the landscape gardener and the lover of the woods. Showy flowers and fruit belong to some of the species; extremely hard, close-textured wood belongs to all; and this means slow growth, which is a limitation in the eyes of the planter who wishes quick results. But he who plants a cornel tree and watches it season after season, finds it one of the most interesting of nature studies through the whole round of the year.
The dogwoods are slender-twigged trees of small size, with simple, entire leaves, strongly ribbed, and with one exception, set opposite upon the twigs. Fifty species are distributed over the Northern Hemisphere; one crosses the equator into Peru. Four of the seventeen species found in the United States are trees; the rest are shrubs, one of them the low-growing bunchberry of our Northern woods.
The Flowering Dogwood
Cornus florida, Linn.
The flowering dogwood (see illustration, [page 134]) is a little tree whose round, bushy, flat-topped head is made of short, horizontal branches. The twigs hold erect in the winter a multitude of buds, large, squat, enclosed in four scales, like the husk of a hickory nut. All the delicate tints that the water-colorist delights in are found in these buds and the twigs that bear them. When spring comes, these scales loosen, expand, turn green, then fade into pure white—forming the four banners, ordinarily called petals—of the bloom of the dogwood. The true flowers are small and clustered in the centre. These white expanses are merely modified bud scales, the botanist will tell you, and the notch at the end is where the horny winter scale broke away, while its base was growing into the large white palm.