A year among the trees

by Wilson Flagg

THE WHITE BIRCH.

On the sandy plains of many parts of New England, some of the most prominent objects are coppices of slender White Birch trees, intermingled with pitch-pine. These trees are seldom more than four or five inches in diameter, rising to the height of about twenty feet, with a grayish-white trunk, and, as may be observed in winter, a dense and dark-colored spray. This species is called Poplar Birch, from the tremulous habit of the foliage, but is never assembled in large forest groups. Like the alder, it is employed by Nature for the shading of her living pictures, and for producing those gradations which are the charm of spontaneous wood-scenery. In all the Northern States, a pitch-pine wood is generally fringed with White Birches, and outside of them is a still more humble growth of hazels, cornels, and vacciniums, uniting them imperceptibly with the herbage of the plain.

The White Birch is remarkable for its elegance. It seldom divides the main stem, which extends to the summit of the tree, giving out from all parts numerous slender branches, forming a very neat and beautiful spray, of a dark chocolate-color, contrasting finely with the whiteness of the trunk. This tree, when growing as a standard, has more of a pyramidal shape than in a wood; but it does not attain in this country the magnitude of the same species in Europe. The durability of the bark of the White Birch is said to be unsurpassed by that of any other vegetable substance. Selby records a fact related by Du Hamel, which is remarkable. In the ruins of Dworotrkoi, in Siberia, a piece of birch wood was found changed into stone, while the outer bark, white and shining, remained in its natural state.

So many of the most delightful scenes of nature are in my own mind allied with the different birches, that there is not one that does not immediately call up some charming scenery and impress my mind with pleasant memories. He who in his early days was a rambler in the woods is familiar with the White Birch trees. They have shaded him in his sylvan researches and his solitary musings, his social walks in quest of flowers with the sex for whom the flowers seemed to be created, or with his male companions in pursuit of game. When journeying, these graceful trees, in company with the fragrant pitch-pines, have offered him their flickering shade, and along the sandy plains have defended him from the scorching heat of the sun, and spread a leafy canopy over his rustic path. In the sultry heat of summer noonday, I have often followed the course of some humble cart-path through their tangled undergrowth, gathering wild fruits from bush and bramble, or watching the singing birds that nestled in their boughs and blended their wild notes with the sound of the green rustling leaves.

All the birches are graceful trees. Their branches are finely divided, like those of the elm and the lime, and many of them incline to a drooping habit. There is a remarkable airiness in their slender feathery spray, rendered still more lively in the White Birch by its small tremulous leaves. This species is found in the highest latitude in which any tree can live. It is the last deciduous tree in the northern boundaries of vegetation in America and Europe, before we reach the Arctic Circle, and the last that appears when we ascend high mountains, occupying the belt just below the line of perpetual snow. It is worthy of notice that the small White Birch in this country, though considered identical with the White Birch of Europe, is greatly inferior to it in size. In America, however, the white canoe birch, a very similar species, equally surpasses the European White Birch. It seems as if the thrifty habit of the canoe birch had some mysterious influence in dwarfing the other species in America.

THE CANOE BIRCH.

Some of the most beautiful assemblages of wood in high latitudes on this continent consist of the Canoe Birch. It is seen in Massachusetts and Connecticut only in occasional groups; but in the States of Maine and New Hampshire, on the sandy river-banks and diluvial plains, it forms woods of great extent and unrivalled beauty. With their tall shafts resembling pillars of polished marble, supporting a canopy of bright green foliage, they form one of the picturesque attractions of a Northern tour. Nature indicates the native habitat of this noble tree by causing its exterior to display the whiteness of snow. The foliage of the Canoe Birch is of a very bright green, and exceeds that of all the family in the depth of its golden tints in autumn. We never see in the foliage of the birches any of that glaucous or pea-green color so common in the maples. The leaves of the Canoe Birch deviate from the ovate form and approach the heart shape. Its bark is almost purely white, and attracts the attention of every visitor of the woods. The clean white shafts of a Canoe Birch wood, towering upward among the other trees of the forest, present a scene with which nothing else is comparable. The uses which have been made of the bark of this tree are so numerous and so familiar to all that it would be idle to enumerate them. Indeed, it would be difficult to estimate its importance to the aboriginal inhabitants of America.

RELATIONS OF TREES TO BIRDS AND INSECTS.

“My neighbors,” said my philosophic friend, “are the cause of more than half the injury my crops receive from caterpillars and other insects. They will not allow the birds a harbor of wood and shrubbery upon their own grounds, and they shoot those which I endeavor to entice by offering them a shelter in my farm. It is strange they cannot understand the mischievous character of their operations of smoothing and grubbing. That little rising ground you see before you, covered with trees and shrubs, is hardly more than a bare rock. It occupies about an eighth of an acre; but no other possible use could be made of it, except as a quarry. The little grove, or coppice, that stands upon it, is the most beautiful object in sight from my house. I have never allowed it to be disturbed or frequented by social assemblages. I keep it sacred for the use of the birds, and it is a perfect aviary. The birds that feed upon the destructive insects that infest my grounds are raised in that temple of the gods, which is watered by numerous little springs that ooze from the crevices of the rock. While they are rearing their young, all species, even if they live exclusively upon seeds after they have left their nest, feed their offspring upon larvæ, which they collect from the nearest ground that affords them a supply. Hence I consider that bare rock, with its trees and shrubbery, the most profitable division of my farm, from the shelter it affords the birds, which are in an important sense my most profitable stock.”

I have often thought of my neighbor’s remarks, especially when I have observed the diligence of our farmers in destroying upon their grounds every acceptable harbor for the birds. When we are traversing a wood, if we discover an apple-tree growing in a little clearing or open space, we find it invariably exempt from the ravages of the common apple-borer. The same exemption is observed in those fruit-trees that stand very near a wild wood, or any wood containing a spontaneous undergrowth. The explanation of this fact is that the wood affords a harbor to the birds that destroy these insects in all their forms. Orchards and gardens, on the contrary, which are located at any considerable distance from a wood, have not this security. Robins, it is true, are very abundant in orchards, which are their breeding-places; but robins, though the most useful birds that are known to exist, take all their food from the ground. They destroy vast quantities of cutworms and chrysalids buried in the soil, but they take no part of their insect food from the trees. The birds that perform this work are the sylvias, woodpeckers, creepers, and other species that live only in woods and thickets. Hence an orchard that is nearly surrounded by a wild wood of much extent is not badly infested by borers and other injurious insects.