A year among the trees

by Wilson Flagg

If we follow the course of any rustic lane which has not been improved, bounded by a rude fence of any kind which will form a support for the plants that come up beneath it, we see the climbing and creeping plants in their unrestrained freedom and beauty. If in the course of our walk we meet with a rude shed or any building old enough to be overgrown with mosses and incrusted with lichens, its walls are sure to be covered either with the climbing sumach or the Virginia creeper; for these plants seem designed by nature as the native embroidery of all neglected places and buildings. On many accounts, the most interesting plants are the climbers and creepers. Whether it be that we associate them with the idea of dependence on their part and of protection on the part of the tree of other object that supports them, or whether their ascent may suggest the idea of motion and progression, causing them to resemble a living creature, they never fail to interest the spectator, and to fill his mind with many poetic images.

The Virginia creeper possesses all the advantages of the English ivy, save that it is not an evergreen. But its deciduous character is not to be regarded as a defect, since if it were an evergreen it would want its annual attractions of scarlet and crimson that distinguish it in autumn. In this particular it is not surpassed by any production of the American forest, except the red maple. These colors render it very conspicuous in October, when it surrounds the trunks and branches of some of the tallest trees with its garlands of crimson, hiding them under its own splendid frondage. There is not a rustic lane where it is not seen creeping over the fences and mixing its glowing tints with other wayside plants. It is particularly luxuriant by the woodside; for though it is common in the deep forest it grows feebly and is deficient in leaves until it gains the summits of the trees. It needs the broad eye of day, and prospers only upon trees that stand outside of a wood. No other climbing plant is so generally used in New England as a drapery for houses and fences, taking the place occupied in Europe by the ivy. Many old houses are covered by it, and many an old stone-wall is completely enveloped in its foliage.

The poison ivy, or climbing sumach, is the only rival of the Virginia creeper in our woods. It is even more common in open fields, and though less luxuriant, surpasses it in the beauty of its leaf. It is a very pertinacious parasite, adhering very closely to the object that supports it, with its innumerable rootlets, but sustaining life only by communication with the soil. The growth of this plant is discouraged on account of the liability of many persons to be injuriously affected by its poisonous properties. Those who are not familiar with wild plants are generally unable to distinguish the poison ivy from the Virginia creeper. Their general appearance and habits are nearly the same, but their leaves furnish a sure mark of distinction. They are compound in each; but those of the Virginia creeper are in fives, those of the poison ivy in threes, without exception.

As we pass along the rustic lane, where it is involved in deep shadow by a dense growth of shrubbery and vines we see the woody nightshade adorning the mass with its singular halberd-shaped leaves, its dark blue flowers with a golden centre, and its pendent clusters of scarlet fruit. I know but few plants of which so little has been said that possess a greater share of beauty. There is a common prejudice against the woody nightshade, from its supposed poisonous qualities, and from our habit of identifying it with the deadly nightshade of Europe. If our plant has some poisonous qualities, they are not of a dangerous character. All parts of it may be bruised and handled with impunity, and its berries are so nauseous to the taste and smell that they are not liable to be eaten.

In the wild hedge-rows that skirt our fields and farms, made up of viburnum, elder, cornel, hazel, and wild rose-bushes, the woody nightshade, in company with the glycine, contributes greatly to the interest attached to these flowering thickets. What excites my surprise is that so few persons praise this modest little climber. How would its varied foliage, interwoven with that of more luxuriant plants, the deep but contrasted colors of its flowers and fruit, and its constant presence in the borders of all wet fallows, attract the admiration of a painter who, imbued with a love of nature equal to his love of art, should attempt to paint a New England stone-wall with its many native accompaniments!

A more conspicuous climber, and more common by the woodside than by the rustic lane, is the bitter-sweet. It is seen climbing over trees, not attaching itself by rootlets or tendrils, but twining round its supporter, like the morning-glory. It is often fifteen or twenty feet in height, covering some unfortunate tree with its own dense foliage, and finally causing it to perish by excluding light and air from it. This plant is well known to simplers, who have named it bitter-sweet, from the mingled sweet and bitter of the scarlet and orange-colored berries which they collect for medical use. I cannot learn that they contain any medicinal virtue; but it is well understood, in these days, that the possession of decided efficiency renders any medical substance unpopular. All popular remedies are physic only to the faith; hence the incomparable virtues of saffron and elder-flowers, whiteweed and everlasting!

We are prone, when thinking of plants merely as ornaments of nature, to forget that the fruit-bearing shrubs and vines have in general anything to recommend them except their fruit. It will be admitted that very many of these plants are deficient in beauty; yet I will confess that I have often admired the different species of bramble, which are so common in the rustic lane and woodside, trailing over fences and abrupt elevations, or hanging down from projecting cliffs, and exposing their clusters of red, black, and purple fruit. Our common species are not remarkable for elegance or beauty, but the country waysides would look bald and cheerless without the simple decoration afforded by these plants.

Among the trailing species of bramble, one of the most important as a natural ornament of lanes and field-borders, is the dewberry, or evergreen blackberry. It is very abundant on the edges of woods, where the trees are thin and scattered, and in pastures covered with low shrubs, where it may be recognized by its small, elegant, and shining leaves. These in protected situations remain green all winter, becoming slightly impurpled as spring advances. The dewberry covers with its close network of trailing branches the virgin turf which has been left undisturbed in the borders of lanes and wood-paths. When the soil has been repeatedly turned by the plough, this little inhabitant of the primitive sods gives place to a larger species, that trails in a similar manner upon the ground, and bears an excellent fruit.

The only native species of bramble which is admired for the beauty of its flowers, but not so common in fields and lanes as in old gardens, is the flowering raspberry. It is so called from the size of its large crimson flowers with a yellow disk, resembling a dark red single rose. The leaves of this species are not pinnate, like the leaves of other species of bramble, but palmate, resembling the leaf of the striped maple. We sometimes find it in a shady nook, concealing itself under a stone-wall, and seldom in company with other shrubs. The delicacy of its habit unfits it to contend with its more hardy congeners, and it is soon driven away from its retreat by the ingress of other species.

I have not yet spoken of the grapevine, which, if not very ornamental in gardens, where its beauty is marred by excessive pruning, cannot be surpassed in a certain kind of suggestive or relative beauty. Hence the pleasure it affords us when we see it on the borders of woods, hanging its purple clusters of fruit over some placid stream from the summit of an alder, or hiding the rudeness of a neglected building with its broad foliage. There is hardly an old road or rustic byway in the interior of the country which is not festooned by wild grapevines, and some of the most delightful arbors on old country roadsides are formed by these vines, trellised upon an ancient apple-tree or drooping birch.