Trees Worth Knowing

by Julia Ellen Rogers

THE MOUNTAIN LAUREL

The mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia, Linn.) grows from Nova Scotia to Lake Erie and southward through New England and New York, and along the Alleghanies to northern Georgia. Hardier than the rhododendrons, smaller in blossoms and in foliage, the laurel is in many points its superior in beauty. In June and July the polished evergreen foliage of the kalmia bushes is almost overwhelmed by the masses of its exquisite pink blossoms, beside which the bloom of rhododendrons looks coarse and crude in coloring. Coral-red fluted buds with pointed tips show the richest color, making with the yellow-green of the new leaves one of the most exquisite color combinations in any spring shrubbery. The largest buds open first, spreading into wide five-lobed corollas, with two pockets in the base of each forming a circle of ten pockets. Ten stamens stand about the free central pistil, and the anther of each is hid in a pocket of the corolla—the slender filament bent backward. This is a curious contrivance for insuring cross-fertilization through the help of the bees. (See "Flowers Worth Knowing.")

Linnaeus commemorated in the name of this genus the devoted and arduous labors of Peter Kalm, the Swedish botanist, who sent back to his master at the university of Upsala specimens of the wonderful and varied flora found in his travels in eastern North America. Most of the names accredited to Linnaeus were given to plants he never saw except as dried herbarium specimens from the New World.

THE MADROÑA

The madroña (Arbutus Menziesii, Pursh.), another member of the Heath family, is one of the superbly beautiful trees in the forests that stretch from British Columbia southward into California. South of the bay of San Francisco and on the dry eastern slopes of California mountains it is stunted to a shrub, but on the high, well-drained slopes through the coast region and in the redwood forests of northern California it is a tree that reaches a hundred feet in height.

John Muir writes: "The madroña, clad in thin, smooth, red and yellow bark, with big, glossy leaves, seems in the dark coniferous forests of Washington and Vancouver Island like some lost wanderer from the magnolia groves in the South." All the year around this is one of the most beautiful of American trees. It bears large conical clusters of white flowers above the vivid green of its leathery leaves, that are wonderfully lightened by silvery linings. In autumn the red-brown of the branches is enriched and intensified by the luxuriant clusters of scarlet berries against the red and orange of the two-year-old leaves. Among the giant redwoods this tree commands the highest admiration.

THE SORREL TREE

The sorrel tree, or sour-wood (Oxydendrum arboreum, DC.) belongs among the heaths. Its vivid scarlet autumn foliage is its chief claim to the admiration of gardeners. In spring the little tree is beautiful in its bronze-green foliage, and in late July and August it bears long branching racemes of tiny bell-shaped white flowers. This multitude of little bells suggests the tree's relationship to the blossoming heather we see in florists' shops.

The leaves give the tree its two common names: they have a sour taste, resembling that of the herbaceous sorrels. The twigs, even in the dead of winter, yield this refreshing acid sap, that flows through the veins of the membranous leaves in summer. Many a hunter, temporarily lost in Southern woods, quenches his thirst by nibbling young shoots of the sour-wood.

After the flower comes a downy capsule, five-celled, with numerous pointed seeds. The leaves are not unlike those of a plum tree except that they attain a length of five to seven inches. In the woods from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, southward to Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas this tree ranges, and we often see it in cultivation as far north as Boston. It grows to its largest size on the western slopes of the Big Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, attaining here a height of sixty feet. In cultivation it is one of the little, slender-stemmed, dainty trees, beautiful at any season. It is the sole representative of its genus in the world, so far as botanists know.