Part 20

THE RED MAPLE.

Not dainty of its soil, but thriving equally well in a bog or upon a fertile river-bank, by the side of a stream or upon a dry eminence; coming forth in the spring, like morning in the east, arrayed in crimson and purple; bearing itself not proudly, but gracefully, in modest green, among the more stately trees in summer; and, ere it bids adieu to the season, stepping forth in robes of gold, vermilion, crimson, and variegated scarlet, stands the queen of the American forest, the pride of all eyes and the delight of every picturesque observer of nature,—the Red Maple. There are but few trees that surpass it in general beauty of form and proportion, and in the variety and splendor of its autumnal tints it is not equalled by any known tree. Without this species, the American forest would hardly be distinguished from that of Europe by any superiority of tinting. It stands among the occupants of the forest like Venus among the planets, the brightest in the midst of brightness, and the most beautiful in a constellation of beauty.

The Red Maple is a tree of second magnitude, very comely at all periods of its growth, producing many branches, forming a somewhat pyramidal top while young, but expanding into a round head as it grows old. It is very evenly subdivided, the central shaft seldom being distinguished above the lower junction of its principal branches. The leaves are palmate, of rather a pale green, and the spray, though neat and elegant, does not equal that of the lime or the birch. We associate this tree with the valleys and lowlands, but a wet soil is not necessary for its prosperity. Some of the finest single trees I have known were standing upon a dry soil; but a forest of them is always located in a swamp.

The Red Maple is one of the most common trees in the southern parts of New England, and it occupies a very wide geographical range. In the North it first appears in the latitude of Quebec. It seems to avoid the company of the rock maple, and forms no large assemblages above the northern boundary of Massachusetts, below which the kindred species becomes rare in New England. The Red Maple is abundant in all the Atlantic States, as far as Florida, and there is no other tree that occupies so large a proportion of the wet lands in the Middle States. According to Michaux, it is the last tree which is found in swamps, as we approach the boundary of vegetation.

Preference is generally given to the other two species for planting by waysides and in pleasure-grounds in Massachusetts, because they are more luxuriant in their growth. Perhaps they are chosen for the sake of variety, being less common in the woods of this State than the Red Maple; and being planted from nurseries, and costly, they are found chiefly in dressed grounds. But the Red Maple is far more interesting and beautiful than any other species, and its lighter foliage, more airy habit, and more delicate spray bring it into better harmony with wild and rude scenery, as the paler and less luxuriant wild flowers better adorn a wood-path than the more showy denizens of the garden. The Red Maple bears a profusion of crimson flowers in the spring, and from them it derives its name. When the flowers have dropped their petals, the keys, or fruit-pods, that succeed them, retain the same crimson hue for some days, gradually fading into brown as they mature.

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.

All species of insects multiply in cultivated grounds, while the birds, with a few exceptions, that feed upon them, can find a nursery and protection only in the woods. “The locust,” says George P. Marsh, “which ravages the East with its voracious armies, is bred in vast open plains, which admit the full heat of the sun to hasten the hatching of the eggs, gather no moisture to destroy them, and harbor no bird to feed upon their larvæ. It is only since the felling of the forests of Asia Minor and Cyrene that the locust has become so fearfully destructive in those countries; and the grasshopper, which now threatens to be almost as great a pest to the agriculture of North American soils, breeds in seriously injurious numbers only where a wide extent of surface is bare of woods.”

Some men destroy trees and shrubbery in their borders, because they are supposed to harbor insects. But if this be true, it is because they are not sufficient in extent to shelter the birds that feed upon them. The insects that multiply upon our lands deposit their eggs some in the soil, some on the branches of trees and upon fences and buildings. They are nowise dependent on a wild growth of wood and shrubbery. These pests of agriculture need nothing better than the under edge of a clapboard or a shingle whereon to suspend their cocoons or lay their eggs. So minute are the objects that will afford them all the conveniences they need, when hatching and when passing through all their transformations, till they become perfect insects, that no artifice or industry of man can deprive them of their nurseries, or appreciably lessen their numbers. All inventions and appliances used to rid the trees and grounds of these pests never destroyed more than one in a million of their whole number. It is not in the power of man, with all his science, unassisted by birds, to prevent the multiplication of insects from being the cause of his own annihilation. But the farmer, when he destroys the border shrubbery in his fields and the coppice and wood on his hills, exterminates the birds by hosts, while the mischievous boy with his gun destroys only a few individuals. The clipped hedge-row, which is often substituted for a border of wild shrubbery, may assist in breeding insects; but the birds never build their nests in a hedge-row, unless it be a long-neglected one.

I have in another essay spoken of the scarcity of birds and other animals in the primitive forest. They are not numerous there, because the forest would yield them only a scanty subsistence. The forest border is their nursery and their shelter, but their best feeding-places are the cultivated grounds. There is not a single species whose means of subsistence are not increased by the clearing of the forest and the cultivation of the land; but they require a certain proportion of wild wood for their habitation. Very few species build their nests in the trees and shrubbery of our gardens, unless they are near a wood. In that case the catbird often nestles in the garden, that during the rearing of its young it may be near the grounds that produce larvæ. Most of the woodpeckers, the sylvias, and the small thrushes, including some of our most valuable birds, cannot rear their young except in a wild wood. Yet all these, solitary as they are in their habits, increase under favorable circumstances with the multiplication of insects consequent upon the culture of the soil. It may be affirmed as an indisputable truth, that if their increase were not checked by the sporting habits of men and boys, and the clearing and grubbing habits of “model farmers,” birds of every species would increase in the same ratio with the multiplication of their insect food, and proportionally diminish their ravages.

THE BLACK OR CHERRY BIRCH.

The epithets “black,” “white,” “red,” and “yellow,” which are so commonly misapplied to certain trees for specific distinction,—a misapplication very remarkable with reference to the poplar,—are very well applied to the different species of birch, and serve as intelligible marks of identity. The Black Birch, for example, is clothed with a dark-colored bark, which comes nearer a pure black than any other color. No person would dispute the color of the white birches; that of the yellow birch, though not pure, would never be mistaken for anything but yellow; and the bark of the red birch, though nearly white, is so thoroughly stained with red as to demonstrate the propriety of its name.

The Black Birch is also named the Cherry Birch, from the resemblance of the tree to the American black cherry. Its inner bark has the flavor of checkerberry, and its wood some of the colors of mahogany; and it has received names corresponding with these characters, such as Sweet Birch and Mahogany Birch, and was formerly a favorite material for cabinet furniture. The bark of this species and of the yellow birch has very little of that leathery or papyraceous quality which is so remarkable in that of the white birches. This species does not extend so far north as the others, but has a wider geographical range in and below the latitude of New England.

The Black Birch puts forth its flowers very early in the year, of a deep yellow and purple and sensibly fragrant. The foliage also appears early. The leaves are finely serrate, oval, with conspicuous veins, turning yellow in the autumn. Not one of the birches ever shows a tint approaching to red or purple in its foliage. The Black Birch delights in moist grounds, and commonly occupies a stand on mountain slopes and on the banks of rivers. When growing singly on a plain, or in an open space, it takes a hemispherical shape, with its terminal and lower branches drooping to some extent like those of the elm. This tree is conspicuous on craggy precipices, among the mountains, where it extends its roots into the crevices of the rocks, and spreads its branches over chasms and hollows. On these sites it displays a variety of picturesque forms, corresponding with the rudeness and the wildness of the scenery around it. Nature has furnished this tree with a chaffy or winged seed, which is soon wafted and sown by the winds upon mountain-sides and among inaccessible rocks, where the soil collected in thin fissures supplies it with sustenance.

THE YELLOW BIRCH.

The Yellow Birch, named excelsa by botanists, from its superior height, is perhaps the most beautiful of the genus. Its branches are extremely numerous, long and slender, corresponding with the superior length of its trunk, and they are prone, like those of the elm, to equality in size, and to divergency from nearly a common centre. Indeed, where this tree has grown as an isolated standard, it commonly displays a very symmetrical head, differing in form from a perfect elm only by less inclination to droop. The leaves of this species have much of the same quality which I have remarked as peculiar to the beech, every leaf standing erect upon its stem. The flexible appearance of the tree is derived entirely from its slender flowing branches.

The Yellow Birch is very abundant in Maine and New Brunswick, and formerly constituted the greater part of the wood which was brought into Massachusetts for fuel. Many of the logs were of immense size before the primitive forest was removed. At the present day we seldom find one more than eighteen inches in diameter, though many slender individuals still occupy our woods. It delights in cold, damp soils, and I have seen the finest standards near springs on an open hillside. The Yellow Birch derives its name from the golden hue of the bark that covers the trunk and larger limbs. This silken bark, which is rolled into multitudes of soft ringlets, is peculiar to this tree.

THE RED BIRCH.

The Red Birch is a rare species, and but very little known. By careless observers it might be mistaken for a white birch, the redness of its bark seeming only a departure from its usual type. The only trees of this species I have seen in Massachusetts were in Andover, in a swamp through which the Shawsheen River flows. If you would behold this tree to the best advantage, you must follow the streams that glide along the level woodlands which are inundated a part of the year. There it may be seen, like some pilgrim bending worshipfully over the stream, by whose beneficent waters it is sustained in beauty and health. Its picturesque attractions, arising from the great variety of its outlines and the peculiar wreathing of its foliage around the stem, are not surpassed by those of the willow, that delights in similar places. The reddish whiteness of the bark and wood has given the name to this tree. It is a tall, bushy tree of rapid growth, rolling up its bark in coarse ringlets, which are whitish with a stain of crimson.

THE INDIAN SUMMER.