Part 23

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.”

This experiment with the Ailantus proved a failure; but the tree, being very stately and ornamental, continued to be cultivated in pleasure-grounds. It was introduced into the United States in the early part of this century, and is now very common in almost all the States as a wayside tree. It possesses a great deal of beauty, being surpassed by very few trees in the size and graceful sweep of its large compound leaves, that retain their brightness and their verdure after midsummer, when our native trees have become dull and tarnished.

The leaves of the Ailantus are pinnate, containing from nine to eleven leaflets, each of these being as large as the leaf of the beech-tree. It has a great superficial resemblance to the velvet sumach, both in its foliage and ramification, so that on first sight one might easily be mistaken for the other; for its branches, though more elegant, have the same peculiar twist that gives the spray of the sumach the appearance of a stag’s horn. The flowers are greenish, inconspicuous, and in upright panicles, resembling those of the poison sumach. They emit a very disagreeable odor while the flowers are in perfection, impregnating the air for a week or more.

BURNING-BUSHES.

There is a class of plants, not all belonging to the same genus, which have received the name of Burning-Bushes from the profusion of scarlet or crimson fruit that covers their branches after the leaves have fallen. The most beautiful of these are two species of euonymus, cultivated in gardens and ornamental grounds, and bearing the names of strawberry-tree, spindle-tree, and burning-bush. The fruit is from three to five cleft, of a pale crimson, and before the leaves have dropped, which in the autumn are nearly of the same color, the tree might, at a glance, be mistaken for a bush in flames. The euonymus, though abundant in the forests of the Middle States, is not wild in any part of New England. Here it is known only as a beautiful occupant of gardens.

Another of the Burning-Bushes is the prinos, very common in wet grounds, and known in the winter by the scarlet berries, clinging, without any apparent stems, to every twig and branch, and forming one of the most attractive objects in a winter landscape. Every part of the bush is closely covered with this fruit, which is never tarnished by frost and remains upon it until the spring. This plant has never received a good specific name. It is sometimes called winter-berry,—a name as indefinite as Mayflower to mark species, or human being to distinguish persons. It is also called black alder, because it has a dark rind, to distinguish it from the true alder, which is also of the same color.

The evergreen species is a more elegant shrub, with bright green leaves of a fine lustre. It is abundant in Plymouth County in Massachusetts, around New Bedford, and in Connecticut. It it highly prized in ornamental grounds and by florists, who bind it into their bouquets and garlands of cut flowers. The leaves of this plant have some pleasant bitter properties, and were used by our predecessors as a substitute for the tea plant, under the name of Appalachian tea.

THE BUCKTHORN.

The Buckthorn would hardly deserve mention in these pages, except that it is very generally employed for clipped hedge-rows, in the suburbs of our cities. It is a native both of Europe and America, though as it is seen only in grounds which have formerly been cultivated, or near them, it was probably introduced. It attains the height of a small tree. It is without any beauty, having a thin foliage that falls early and is never tinted. Its black shining berries are the only ornament it possesses, and its only merit is that of patiently enduring the shears of the gardener.

THE PRIVET.

The Privet is a much handsomer shrub of an allied family. Its foliage is more delicate, both in hue and texture, not so thin, and almost evergreen. It has become extensively naturalized in our woods, and is distinguished by its clusters of white flowers in summer and its black, shining berries in autumn. It is abundant in all lands once tilled which have become wild, in the vicinity of our old towns, and was probably introduced at an early period for an ornamental hedge plant.

WOOD-SCENERY IN WINTER.

Winter scenery has met with a remarkable share of neglect both from authors and painters. Poets have sung of winter festivals and holidays, of Christmas festivities, of garlands of holly and trailing evergreens; but they have said little in prose or verse of the beauty or the sublimity of the season’s ordinary aspects. More effort has been made to divert attention from winter, as entirely disagreeable, except within doors, than to lure the mind to its attractions. Its features have been described as only waste and desolate, and what is really admirable in them has been set aside as hardly worthy of thought. It is true there is not much variety in the countenance of winter. Its expressions are wild and rude, and partake more of sublimity than beauty. It presents an insufficient number of individual objects that can be brought to the aid either of painting or poetry; so that the composition must be made up in great degree by auxiliaries drawn from the imagination.

Winter scenery is plainly monotonous. Instead of the charming mosaic of agriculture, displayed by summer and autumn in assemblages of fields, varying in color with the native hue of their different crops, we see either a dull universal waste of seared vegetation, or one broad expanse of whiteness, relieved only by the dark slender lines of fences and the broader stripes of roads and lanes winding over the face of the snow, interspersed with buildings and occasional woods and thickets. It is apparent, however, that snow increases the variety of the landscape, when it is mapped out with groves and fragments of forest, resembling wooded islets rising out of a white sea.

The charm of winter scenery is greatly heightened by the clearing of the forest, which hides the surface of the snow and causes the scene to wear less of the aspect of grandeur than of desolation. Grandeur characterizes the view wherever an almost uninterrupted expanse of some miles of surface is completely whitened with snow. The buoyancy we feel when rambling over such a landscape resembles that produced by great altitude. Our greater physical vigor in clear winter weather prepares us to be agreeably affected by surrounding views, because our thoughts are not diverted by any sense of uncomfortable exertion, as in the languid heat of summer. Our constant transition from valley to open plain, from plain to hill, and from hill to wood, keeps the mind constantly amused with new views. We are also inspired by the grandeur of the whole scene, and do not, as in summer, give ourselves up to voluptuous sensations, but to enjoyments more purely intellectual.

Our attention is not so often directed to the beauty of trees in their denuded state, as when they are dressed in foliage and adorned with flowers and fruit. But when we consider that for six months of the year all the deciduous trees, constituting the greater part of the woods, are leafless, we cannot regard their appearance at this time as an unimportant study. When trees are in leaf their primary qualities as objects in landscape are apparent; but many secondary points of beauty are almost entirely hidden under this mass of foliage. In winter, when the whole frame of the tree is exposed to view, the delicate sculpture, the forms, the angles, and the divergences of their branches, present to sight an infinite variety of picturesque appearances.

There are certain trees, however, which are almost ugly in winter, though very beautiful in their summer dress. We see nothing attractive in the horse-chestnut, the sumach, the catalpa, and the ash, in their denuded state, when the coarseness and deformity of their spray become their salient points. Of these the horse-chestnut and the catalpa are not surpassed in beauty when they are in flower, nor the sumach in its autumnal dress, nor the ash either in summer or autumn. There is as great a variety in the style of the frame and framework of different trees as in the forms and colors of their leaves and flowers. Indeed, in some respects, trees are a more interesting study in their denuded state than when dressed in foliage. In this condition single trees become more special objects of attention than assemblages. Yet it is in winter that we perceive to the best advantage the characters of a forest vista. As we pass under the interlacing branches of the trees, we observe that peculiar arch formed by the meeting and contact of those on opposite sides of an avenue. We see this appearance only in a wide avenue, where the trees have grown since it was laid out. In the pathless wood, or in a path made through the forest after the trees have attained maturity, they have no well-formed lateral branches, and display above our heads only a formless canopy.

We may observe in the spray of different trees an invariable correspondence with some of their other characters. Nut-bearers, for example, have a coarser spray than small seed-bearers; trees with large or compound leaves, than those with small or simple foliage; and trees with opposite, than those with alternate branches. Hence the oak and the hickory have a coarser spray than the birch and the elm, and the large-leaved poplar than the slender-leaved willow; the ash, with compound leaves, than the maple with simple leaves, though both have opposite branches. But if a tree bears a large nut, with leaves compound and branches opposite, like the horse-chestnut, it has no spray at all. The beech-tree, however, having a very small nut, has a fine and elegant spray, not surpassed by any tree of the forest. The opposite character of the smaller branches of certain trees is never continued in the larger divisions. But the angularity of the boughs of the oak is repeated in its angular spray, and the gracefulness of the principal branches of the elm, the birch, and the lime is traced through all their minute subdivisions.

All these phenomena are interesting subjects of observation in winter wood-scenery. But the geometric beauty of the spray of trees is hardly less remarkable than its different colors. A maple wood, for example, is gray; a poplar wood is greenish olive; a wood consisting chiefly of limes, black birches, and cherry-trees has a dark shade. These differences of coloring, as seen in masses, when viewing the wood from an elevated stand, often excite the surprise of spectators; for it is only the most careful observers who have noticed this variety of shades. In many assemblages of wood that consist of an evenly promiscuous combination of species, we observe no such picturesque marks of distinction. But in all unique assemblages, of which our land affords very frequent examples, the differences between a maple, a poplar, a willow, and a lime grove are respectively very striking. The study of these shades is of considerable importance to the painter who should wish to give a true representation of a winter landscape, with reference chiefly to its wood.

Some of my most delightful wood rambles have been taken in the winter, which has always seemed to me less a season of melancholy than autumn. The sadness we feel while the leaves are falling around us and the light of noon seems but an ominous twilight passes away after these changes are completed; we resume our cheerfulness, and look forward in pleasant anticipation of spring. I have never allowed the winter to interfere with my rambling, save when the cold was intense, the weather wet or stormy, or the snow too deep for pedestrian excursions. These difficulties are seldom in the way for more than a fourth part of the season. When the snow has been hardened by repeated freezing and thawing so as to bear our footsteps, or when the ground is bare, a winter walk affords positive pleasure. At such times I have often passed a day in the woods, not only to enjoy the physical pleasure of air and exercise and the sweet odors of the pines, but also to note the changes in the face of nature, and the manners and habits of the few remaining birds and quadrupeds.