A year among the trees

by Wilson Flagg

It may be truly said that no splendor of flowers or of the foliage of trees would make amends for the absence of grass. Distant hills and plains may be made beautiful by trees alone; but all near grounds require this velvety covering to render them grateful to the sight or interesting to the mind. This is the picturesque view of the subject; but in the eyes of a botanist grass is almost infinite in its attractions. In every field or pasture that offers its tender blades to the grazing herds, there are multitudes of species, beside the thousands of herbs and flowers and ferns and mosses which are always blended with them, and assist in composing their verdure. What seems to the eyes of a child a mere uniform mass of green is an assemblage of different species that would afford study for a lifetime. Grasses, though minute objects, are vast in their assemblages; but if we reflect on the phenomena of nature, we shall not consider the least thing any less admirable than the greatest. The same amount of wonderful mechanism is indicated in a spear of herdsgrass as in the bamboo that exceeds in height the trees of our forest; and the little cascade that falls over the pebbles in our footpath is as admirable to one who regards it as evincing the power of nature, as the Falls of Niagara.

THE TUPELO.

The old town of Beverly, which was a part of Salem during the era of witchcraft, abounds, like other townships on the northern coast of Massachusetts Bay, in rugged and romantic scenery. On one of the bald hills of this town, a pond fed by a spring near the top of the hill served as a watering-place for the flocks that were pastured there. The only tree on this elevation of bare granite, interspersed with little meadows of thin soil, covered with sweet-fern and whortleberry-bushes, stood on the brink of this pond. It was an ancient Tupelo, and attracted the attention of every visitor by the singular manner in which it spread its long branches in a crooked and horizontal direction over this emerald pool. It became the wonder of all that the tree should adopt such an eccentricity of habit, hardly showing a single branch on the land side, and bending over the water like an angler sitting at his task. It was evident that it had never been trimmed into this shape by artificial means. Many people, therefore, believed that its grotesque appearance had some connection with witchcraft, and that the witches who were hanged upon it had caused all the branches to wither and fall on the side that held the victims.

This tree has, I believe, no representative on the old continent; and though there are several species in the United States, only one is found in New England. Here it is one of the most remarkable trees as a picturesque object in landscape. Indeed, there is no other tree, not excepting the oak, that will compare with it in certain eccentricities of habit. It has received a variety of names in different parts of the country, being called “Swamp Hornbeam,” from the toughness of its wood; “Umbrella Tree,” from a peculiar habit of some individuals to become flattened and slightly convex at the top. Among our country people it is known as the “Wild Pear,” from a fancied resemblance between its foliage and that of the common pear-tree. The resemblance seems to consist only in the size and gloss of its leaves. In the Middle and Southern States it is called the “Sour Gum,” to distinguish it from the “Sweet Gum,” or Liquidambar. The name of Tupelo was given it by the aboriginal inhabitants.

The shapes assumed by the Tupelo are exceedingly grotesque, though it is frequently as regular in its growth as our most symmetrical trees. It is sometimes quite erect, extending its branches horizontally and pretty equally on all sides, but generally forming a more or less flattened top. More frequently the Tupelo displays no symmetry of any kind, extending its branches mostly on one side, and often putting forth two or three branches greatly beyond all the others. Many of these are considerably twisted, inclining downward from a horizontal position, not with a curve like those of the elm, but straight, like those of the spruce, though without any of its formality. The spray is very different from that of other trees. Every important branch is covered all round, at top, bottom, and sides, with short twigs, at right angles with the branch. Some of the swamp oaks resemble the Tupelo in fantastic shape, but they never have a flattened top.

The Tupelo is the very opposite of the ash in its general characters; the one is precisely regular in its habits, the other eccentric and grotesque. The leaves and small branches of the ash are opposite, those of the Tupelo alternate; the one has a coarse, the other a finely divided spray: so that there are no two trees of the forest so entirely unlike. It is remarkable that an isolated situation, which is favorable to symmetry and good proportions in other trees, increases the specific peculiarities of the Tupelo. If it has stood alone and sent forth its branches without restraint, it then displays the most grotesque irregularity, showing that its normal habit of growth is eccentric.

The foliage of the Tupelo is remarkable for its fine glossy verdure. The leaves are oval, narrowing toward the stem and rounded at the extremity. The flowers are greenish and inconspicuous, borne in minute umbels on the end of a long peduncle. They produce small berries of a deep blue color, containing a hard stone. This tree is one of the brightest ornaments of our forest in autumn; the fine green color of its foliage attracts our attention in summer, and in winter its grotesque forms, rising out of the shallow meres, yield a romantic interest to these solitary places. It is not well adapted to dressed grounds, but harmonizes only with rude, desolate, and wild scenery.

THE HORNBEAM.

The Hornbeams, of which in New England there are two species belonging to a different genus, are small trees, rather elegant in their shape, and remarkable for the toughness and hardness of their wood. The American Hornbeam, or Blue Beech, is distinguished by its fluted trunk, which, as Emerson describes it, “is a short irregular pillar, not unlike the massive reeded columns of Egyptian architecture, with projecting ridges, which run down from each side of the lower branches. The branches are irregular, waving or crooked, going out at various but large angles, and usually from a low point on its trunk.” Old Gerard remarks concerning the English Hornbeam: “The wood or timber is better for arrows and shafts, pulleys for mills, and such like devices, than elm or witch-hazel; for in time it waxeth so hard that the toughness and hardness of it may rather be compared to horn than to wood; and therefore it was called Hornbeam.”

The foliage of the American Hornbeam resembles that of black birch, neatly corrugated, of a delicate verdure in summer, and assuming a fine tint of varying crimson and scarlet in the autumn. The name of Blue Beech was applied to it from the similarity of its branches to the common beech-tree, while their surface is bluish instead of an ashen color. Though existing in every part of the country, it is not abundant anywhere, and is not in any tract of woodland the principal timber. It is most conspicuous on the borders of woods, by the sides of roads lately constructed. The scarcity of trees of this species near old roadsides has been caused by the value of their timber, which is cut for mechanical purposes wherever it may be found. The wood of this tree is used for levers, for the spokes of wheels, and for nearly all other purposes which require extreme hardness of the material used.