Woodland Gleanings: Being an Account of British Forest-Trees

by Robert Tyas

Of all the hues of autumn, those of the oak are commonly the most harmonious. In an oaken wood, you see every variety of green and brown, owing either to the different exposure of the tree, the difference of the soil, or its own nature. In the beechen grove, this variety is not to be found. In early autumn, when the extremities of the trees are slightly tinged with orange, it may be partially produced; but late the eye is usually fatigued with one deep monotonous shade of orange, though perhaps it is the most beautiful among all the hues of autumn. And this uniformity prevails wherever the ash and elm abound, though of a different hue; and, indeed, no fading foliage excepting that of the oak, produces harmony of colouring.

Even when the beauty of the landscape has departed, the charms of autumn may remain. When the raging heat of summer is abated, and ere the rigours of winter are set in, there are frequent days of such heavenly temperature, that every mind must feel their effect. Thomson thus describes a day of this kind:

The morning shines
Serene, in all its dewy beauties bright,
Unfolding fair the last autumnal day,
O'er all the soul its sacred influence breathes;
Inflames imagination, through the breast
Infuses every tenderness, and far
Beyond dim earth exalts the swelling thought.

We now proceed to give a detailed notice of some of the component parts of the woodland scenery, beginning with the single tree.

We feel no hesitation in calling a tree the grandest and most beautiful of all the various productions of the earth. In respect to its grandeur, nothing can compete with it; for the everlasting rocks and lofty mountains are parts of the earth itself. And though we find great beauty—beauty at once perceptible and ever-varying, and consequently more universally felt and appreciated—among plants of an inferior order—among shrubs and flowers, yet these latter may be considered beautiful rather as individuals, for as they are not adapted to form the arrangement of composition in landscape, nor to receive the effect of light and shade, they must give place in point of beauty—of picturesque beauty at least—to the form, and foliage, and ramification of the tree.

The tree, however, we do not place in competition with animal life. "The shape, the different coloured furs, the varied and spirited attitudes, the character and motion, which strike us in the animal creation, are unquestionably beyond still life in its most pleasing appearance." With regard to trees, nature has been more liberal to them in point of variety, than even to its living forms. "Though every animal is distinguished from its fellow, by some little variation of colour, character, or shape; yet in all the larger parts, in the body and limbs, the resemblance is generally exact. In trees, it is just the reverse: the smaller parts, the spray, the leaves, the blossom, and the seed, are the same in all trees of the same kind; while the larger parts, from which the most beautiful varieties result, are wholly different." For instance, you never see two oaks with the same number of limbs, the same kind of head, and twisted in the same form.

When young, trees, like striplings, shoot into taper forms. There is a lightness and an airiness about them, which is pleasing; but they do not spread and receive their just proportions, until they have attained their full growth.

There is as much difference, too, in trees—that is, in trees of the same kind—in point of beauty, as there is in human figures. The limbs of some are set on awkwardly, their trunks are disproportioned, and their whole form is unpleasing. The same rules, which establish elegance in other objects, establish it in these. There must be the same harmony of parts, the same sweeping line, the same contrast, the same ease and freedom. A bough, indeed, may issue from the trunk at right angles, and yet elegantly, as it frequently does in the oak; but it must immediately form some contrasting sweep, or the junction will be awkward.

Generally speaking, trees when lapped and trimmed into fastidious shapes, become ugly and displeasing. Thus clipped yews, lime hedges, and pollards, being rendered unnatural in form, are disagreeable; though sometimes a pollard produces a good effect, when Nature has been suffered, after some years, to bring it again into shape.

Lightness is a characteristic of beauty in a tree; for though there are beautiful trees of a heavy, as well as of a light form, yet their extremities must in some parts be separated, and hang with a degree of looseness from the fulness of the foliage, which occupies the middle of the tree, or the whole will only be a large bush. From position, indeed, and contrast, heaviness, though in itself a deformity, may be of singular use in the composition both of natural and of artificial landscape.