The wood is no longer a green recess, a temple of leafy beauty, a sanctuary of shade, an orchestra of melodious voices. There is perhaps less solemnity within it than when it is darkened by overarching foliage. The sun shines into it and renders some little nooks more cheerful than at any other season. I have often lingered in one of these sunny retreats to watch the chickadees and woodpeckers, that never fail to appear in sight, diligently exploring every branch of the neighboring trees. It is pleasant to woo this solitude when thus enlivened by the sun, to saunter along the turfy wood-paths, still green with clumps of moss and lycopodium, to look up into the lofty trees which have parted with their shade, observing the sculptured elegance of their limbs and the intricate beauty of their spray; pondering on the rare carvings of their bark, broken into many geometrical forms, and the curious devices of nature displayed in the incrustations upon their surface.
Sometimes a solitary evergreen stands in our way, shedding upon the hoary wood some of the greenness of summer. We should know but half of what is open to observation if we never visited the forest in the winter, and we should miss one of the most remarkable features of a winter landscape if the coniferous evergreens were absent from it. Sad and sombre as they appear when the deciduous trees are putting forth their light green leaves, they are great heighteners of the beauty of a winter scene, and are more valuable than any other woods as a protection from wind and cold.
THE LARCH.
The Larch, though one of the coniferous trees, is not an evergreen. It is generally known in this country as the Hacmatack, a name given it by the Indians. In favorable situations it attains a great height, though we are familiar with it as a tree of but ordinary size and stature. Its branches are very numerous, and irregularly disposed at right angles with the main stem, and not in very apparent whorls. The terminal branches are small and numerous, making considerable spray, but without much character. The American and the European Larch do not differ in their manner of putting forth their larger branches, nor in their botanical characters. They are distinguished, however, by an important difference in the style of their secondary branches. The European tree has a graceful hanging spray, drooping perpendicularly from its horizontal boughs, and swinging in the wind like that of the Norway spruce. The American tree has a shorter spray, not in the least pendent, with an appearance of more sturdiness, and less formality of outline. It displays, therefore, less of that beauty which is caused by flowing lines; on the other hand, it exhibits more firmness in its general aspect, and is a more stately tree. I prefer the American Larch because it departs further from that primness which distinguishes the coniferous trees. As it increases in height, it loses its tapering summit, and forms a head of flattened and irregular shape.
The Larch bears no part in romantic history. Neither the ancient poets nor historians say much about it. Hence it is probable that it was not abundant in the forests of the southern part of Europe in the days of Homer and Virgil. Even its importance in furnishing the most durable wood for naval purposes is a discovery of modern times, and not until a very late period was it employed as an ornamental tree. The Larch is reputed in Europe to surpass all other trees as a fertilizer of the soil by the decomposition of its foliage. Another of its advantages, when used for plantations, is its thrifty habit on lofty sites, having a more elevated range than any other tree of equal importance. Gilpin remarks of the European tree: “It claims the Alps and the Apennines for its native country, where it thrives in higher regions of the air than any other tree of its consequence is known to do, hanging over rocks and precipices which have never been visited by human feet. Often it is felled by some Alpine peasant and thrown athwart some yawning chasm, where it affords a tremendous passage from cliff to cliff, while the cataract, roaring many fathoms below, is seen only in surges of rising vapor.”
The American Larch tends to uniformity of shape when young and to variety when old. Yet the fine pyramidal forms of the young trees, and the fantastic and irregular shapes of those of older growth, are equally characteristic. The foliage is of a light green with a bluish tinge, turning to a deep orange in November, just before it falls. The bright crimson cones of the Larch, that appear in June, may be reckoned among its minor beauties. This tree is more abundant in Maine and New Hampshire than in any other part of the United States, though even there it is scarce compared with other conifers. Above the St. Lawrence, however, as far as Hudson’s Bay, it forms assemblages of several miles in extent.
THE HEMLOCK.
The Hemlock is confessedly one of the most beautiful of the coniferous evergreens, though rather narrow in its dimensions. The principal branches are small and short with very slender terminations, in which it differs from all the other spruces. The multitude of these slender sprays, and their rows of soft delicate leaves, cause those beautiful undulations that characterize the foliage of this tree when moved by the wind. The leaves, of a light green on their upper surface and of a silvery whiteness beneath, are arranged in a row on each side of the branchlets. But while those of the other spruces are sessile, those of the Hemlock have slender footstalks, yielding them a slight mobility. The spangled glitter of the foliage is caused by a slightly tremulous motion of the terminal sprays.
In a deep wood the Hemlock shows some very important defects. There it forms a shaft from fifty to eighty feet in height without any diminution of its size, until near the summit, where it tapers suddenly, forming a head of foliage that projects considerably above the general level of the forest. The trunk is covered with dead branches projecting from it on all sides, causing it to wear a very unsightly appearance; and when the tree is sawed into boards, they are found to extend directly through the sapwood of the tree, making a hole in it as round as if it were bored with an auger. This is caused by the continued growth of the trunk of the tree after the decay of its branches, every year forming a new circle round the branch, but not inosculating with it, as in other trees.
The full beauty of the Hemlock is displayed on the edge of a wood, or on a plain where it has grown without impediment, feathering down to the ground. Here we observe how much less formal it is in shape than other conifers. When there are no gaps in its ramification, the numerous branches are mostly in close contact at their extremities, so that, when viewed from the outside of the wood, it seems nearly one uninterrupted mass of foliage, hiding the interior of the tree almost entirely from sight. In its perfection, when it has enjoyed an isolated growth, without any mechanical accident to mar its symmetry, it presents a fine tapering form without stiffness, and a mass of glittering foliage with which that of but few other trees is comparable.