In our early years we are charmed with the solitude of groves, with the flowers that dwell in their nooks, with the living creatures that sport among their branches, and with the birds that convey to us by their notes a share of their own indefinable happiness. Nature has made use of trees to wed our minds to the love of homely scenes, and to make us satisfied with life. How many recollections of village merry-makings, of rural sports and pastimes, of the frolics of children and of studious recreation, come to us when we sit down under some old familiar tree that stands in the open field or by the wayside! Trees are among the most poetic objects of creation. Every wood teems with legends of mythology and romance; every tree is vocal with music; and their flowers and fruits do not afford more luxury to the sense than delight to the mind. Trees have their roots in the ground; but they send up their branches toward the skies, and are so many supplicants to Heaven for blessings on the earth.
In whatever light we regard trees, they deserve attention as the fairest ornaments of nature; and the more we study them, the more do we think upon the dangers that await them from the improvidence of man. He takes but a narrow view of their importance who considers only their economical value. The painter has always made them a particular branch of his study; and the poet understands their advantages in increasing the effect of his descriptions, and considers them the blessed gifts of nature to render the earth a beautiful abode and sanctify it to our affections.
THE ALDER.
All persons, however ignorant of trees in general, are familiar with the common Alder. It abounds everywhere in wet places, skirting the banks of small rivers, bordering the sides of old turnpike roads, where they pass over wet grounds, filling up the basins of muddy canals, and covering with its monotonous green foliage many an unsightly tract of land, hiding and then revealing the glittering surface of sluggish stream and lonely mere. The Alder is a homely shrub, employed by Nature merely for the groundwork of her living pictures, for covering stagnant fens with verdure in company with the water-flag and the bog-rush, and as a border growth to the fenny forest, graduating its foliage by a pleasing slope down to the verdure of the plain. The assemblages of Alder constitute the plain embroidery of watercourses, and form the ground upon which many a beautiful flowering shrub is represented and rendered more interesting.
The Alder among shrubs takes the place which the grasses occupy among herbs; having no beauty of its own, but contributing to set off to advantage the beauty of other plants that flourish in the same ground. Nature likewise employs the roots of this tree as a subterranean network, to strengthen the banks of streams and defend them from the force of torrents. The Alder in New England is seldom large enough to be called a tree; it rarely stands alone, but almost invariably in clumps or larger assemblages, the different individuals of the collection forming each a single stem, almost without branches, making an outward curve a few feet from the ground, and bending inwards toward their summit.
The foliage of the Alder is homely, but not meagre, and its color is of a very agreeable tone. It is indeed a very important feature of the landscape in summer; but in autumn it remains unaffected by the general tinting of the season, and retains its verdure till the leaves fall to the ground. Nature seems to regard this tree as a plain and useful servant, not to be decked with beautiful colors or grand proportions for the admiration of the world. But, homely as it is, it bears flowers of some beauty. These consist of a profusion of purplish aments containing a mixture of gold, and hanging tremulously from their slender sprays. The extreme length and flexibility of these clusters of flowers render them exceedingly graceful, and permit them to be set in motion by the slightest breeze. The buds are seen hanging from the branches all winter, ready to burst into bloom when vivified by the first breath of spring.
THE WITCH-HAZEL.
The Witch-Hazel, or American Hamamelis, has many superficial points of resemblance to the common alder, beside its attachment to wet, muddy soils. Its ramification is peculiar; its side branches are very short, and, like the alder, it sends from one root a number of branches diverging outwards, but with an inward curvature of their extremities. The leaves are alternate and ovate, narrowest toward the stem and feather-veined. They turn to a sort of buff-color just before the flowers appear, which are yellow, having long linear petals, without beauty, growing in a cluster of four or five in the axils of the leaves. This tree is worthy of attention chiefly as a curiosity. Like the witch-elm of Great Britain, it was formerly used for divining-rods. Its magic powers might have been suggested by its remarkable habit of bearing flowers late in the autumn, thereby reversing the general order of nature; also by producing buds, flowers, and fruit in perfection at the same time. All such phenomena might be supposed to have some connection with witchcraft.
THE AILANTUS.
The Ailantus is a native of China, where it becomes a very large tree, often attaining the height of seventy feet. It was imported into Great Britain more than a century ago, for the benefit of the silk manufacture. A species of silkworm, which was known to be hardy and capable of forming its cocoons in the English climate, is attached to this tree and feeds upon its leaves. “The Bombyx cynthia,” says Mongredien, “thrives well in the open air (of England) in ordinary seasons, and requires no care after being once placed on the tree. About August it spins its cocoon on one of the leaflets, bending its edges inwards, so as to form a partial envelope. As the tree is deciduous, the leaf would drop and the cocoon with it, were it not that, by an instinct, the insect, before spinning its cocoon, attaches by its strongly adhesive threads the stalk of the leaf to the woody twig that sustains it. Hence the leaves that bear the cocoons are the only ones that do not drop, and there remain persistent through the whole of the winter.”