A year among the trees

by Wilson Flagg

A peculiar type of the drooping tree is seen in the fir, whose lower branches bend downwards, almost without a curve, from their junction with the stem of the tree. This drooping is caused by the weight of the snow that rests upon the firs during the winter in their native northern regions. There is a variety of the beech, and another of the ash, which has received the appellation of weeping, from an entire inversion of the branches, both large and small. Such trees seem to me only a hideous monstrosity, and I never behold them without some disagreeable feelings, as when I look upon a deformed animal.

VERNAL WOOD-SCENERY.

All the seasons display some peculiar beauty that comes from the tints as well as the forms of vegetation. Even the different months have their distinguishing shades of light and color. Nature, after the repose of winter, very slowly unfolds her beauties, and is not lavish in the early months of any description of ornament. Day by day she discloses the verdure of the plain, the swelling buds with their lively and various colors, and the pale hues of the early flowers. She brings along her offerings one by one, leading from harmony to harmony, as early twilight ushers in the ruddy tints of morn. We perceive both on the earth and in the skies the forms and tints that signalize the revival of Nature, and every rosy-bosomed cloud gives promise of approaching gladness and beauty.

By the frequent changes that mark the aspect of the year we are preserved at all times in a condition to receive pleasure from the outward forms of Nature. Her tints are as various as the forms of her productions; and though spring and autumn, when the hues of vegetation are more widely spread and yield more character to the landscape, are the most remarkable for their general beauty, individual objects in summer are brighter and more beautiful than any that can be found at other times. In the early part of the year, Nature tips her productions with softer hues, that gradually ripen into darker shades of the same color, or into pure verdure. By pleasant and slow degrees she mingles with the greenness of the plain the hues of the early flowers, and spreads a charming variety of warm and mellow tints upon the surface of the wood.

In treating of vernal tints, I shall refer chiefly to effects produced, without the agency of flowers, by that general coloring of the leaves and spray which may be considered the counterpart of the splendor of autumn. In the opening of the year many inconspicuous plants are brought suddenly into notice by their lively contrast with the dark and faded complexion of the ground. The mosses, lichens, and liverworts perform, therefore, an important part in the limning of the vernal landscape. On the bald hills the surfaces of rocks that project above the soil, and are covered with these plants, are brighter than the turf that surrounds them, with its seared grasses and herbage. They display circles of painted lichens, varying from an olive-gray to red and yellow, and tufts of green mosses which surpass the fairest artificial lawn in the perfection of their verdure. Many of the flowerless plants are evergreen, especially the ferns and lycopodiums, and nearly all are earlier than the higher forms of vegetation in ripening their peculiar hues.

The first remarkable vernal tinting of the forest is manifest in the spray of different trees. As soon as the sap begins to flow, every little twig becomes brightened on the surface, as if it had been glossed by art. The swelling of the bark occasioned by the flow of sap gives the whole mass a livelier hue. This appearance is very evident in the peach-tree, in willows and poplars, in the snowy mespilus, and in all trees with a long and slender spray. Hence the ashen green of the poplar, the golden green of the willow, and the dark crimson of the peach-tree, the wild rose, and the red osier, are perceptibly heightened by the first warm days of spring. Nor is this illumination confined to the species I have named; for even the dull sprays of the apple-tree, the cherry, the birch, and the lime, are dimly flushed with the hue of reviving life. As many of the forest trees display their principal beauty of form while in their denuded state, this seasonal polish invites our attention, particularly to those with long and graceful branches.

The swelling buds, which are for the most part very highly colored, whether they enclose a leaf or a flower, add greatly to this luminous appearance of the trees. These masses of innumerable buds, though mere colored dots, produce in the aggregate a great amount of color. This is apparent in all trees as soon as they are affected by the warmth of the season. But as vegetation comes forward, the flower-buds grow brighter and brighter, till they are fully expanded, some in the form of fringes, as in most of our forest trees, others, as in our orchard trees, in clusters of perfect flowers. This drapery of fringe, seldom highly colored, but containing a great variety of pale shades, that hangs from the oak, the birch, the willow, the alder, and the poplar, is sufficient to characterize the whole forest, and forms one of the most remarkable phenomena of vernal wood-scenery.

It is generally supposed that the beauties of tinted foliage are peculiar to autumn. I do not recollect any landscape painting in which the tints of spring are represented. All the paintings of colored leaves are sketches of autumnal scenes, or of the warm glow of sunlight. Yet there is hardly a tree or a shrub that does not display in its opening leaves a pale shade of the same tints that distinguish the species or the individual tree at the time of the fall of the leaf. The birch and the poplar imitate in their half-developed leaves the yellow tints of their autumnal dress, forming a yellow shade of green. The tender leaves of the maple and of the different oaks are all greenish purple of different shades. On the other hand, the foliage of trees that do not change their color in the autumn displays only a diluted shade of green, in its half-unfolded state. This remark, however, is not universal in its application; for we see the lilac, that appears in autumn without any change, coming out in the spring with dark impurpled foliage.

Green cannot, therefore, be said to characterize a vernal landscape. It belongs more especially to summer. The prevailing color of the forest during the unfolding of the leaf, when viewed from an elevated stand, is a cinereous purple, mingled with an olivegreen. The flowers of the elm, of a dark maroon, and the crimson flowers of the red maple, coming before their leaves, are an important element in the earliest hues of the wood. The red maple, especially, which is the principal timber of the swamps in all the southern parts of New England, yields a warm and ruddy glow to the woods in spring, hardly less to be admired than its own bright tints in October. Green hues, which become, day by day, more apparent in the foliage, do not predominate until summer has arrived and is fully established.

It is only in the spring that the different species of the forest can be identified by their colors at distances too great for observing their botanical characters. A red-maple wood is distinguished by the very tinge that pervades the spray, when the trees are so far off that we cannot see the forms of their branches and flowers, as if the ruddy hues of morning illuminated the whole mass. A grove of limes would be known by their dark-colored spray, approaching to blackness; an assemblage of white birches by that of a chocolate-color diverging from their clean white shafts. A beechen grove would manifest a light cinereous color throughout, mixed with a pale green as the foliage appears.