Part 11

Maples make beautiful shade trees, and some species grow to a large size. One of the largest and most beautiful of them is the sugar maple, which is not only valuable as a shade tree, but yields delicious maple syrup from its sap.

The bark of this tree is “tapped,” that is, a hole is bored through it into the wood beneath, early in the spring, and a little wooden tube or trough is driven into the hole. A pail is hung or set beneath to catch the sap as it runs out. Sap runs best when the days are warm and the nights cold; then there are merry times in the sugar camps.

The sap is collected in large kettles and boiled to syrup, or until it hardens into sugar. Just before it is ready to turn to sugar, it makes delicious “wax.” You pour the hot, thick syrup upon snow, and when it thickens into a sticky paste you eat it. It is better than any kind of candy—at least I think so.

A great deal of sugar is made in the New England States, where the maple grows abundantly, and in the early days the only sugar some of the people had was maple sugar.

Sometimes the sap of other trees, as birches or elms, is made into syrup, but none is as abundant or as good as the maple syrup.

The wood of the sugar maple is hard and is valuable for furniture and other uses. Indeed the wood of most of the maples is prized for furniture making.

The bird’s eye maple is a very pretty satiny wood dotted over with round spots that look a little like eyes. It comes from certain sugar maples whose wood is full of little knotty places.

The curled maple is also a pretty wood with wavy, shining lines made by irregular streaks in the wood. It is sometimes found in sugar maples and sometimes in other maples. Maple wood is light in color, and the bark of the tree is rather smooth. It is gray in most species, and often has white spots on it.

ELMS.

The American elm is one of the most beautiful trees in the world, it is so majestic in size and so graceful in form.

If you do not know the elm tree, get some one to point it out to you at once, and you will feel that you have made a new friend. It is a very good thing to make friends with the trees and to learn to know them when you see them.

Elm trees have winged seed pods or samaras. The trees are covered with pretty, short fringes in the springtime—very pretty, but not as airy and pretty as the maple fringes. The pistillate flowers are followed by samaras that do not grow two together, and that have the wing growing around them instead of from one end.

The bark of the elm is very handsome; it is marked quite regularly and is easy to recognize. It is a good thing to learn to know a tree by its bark. The bark of trees is an interesting and beautiful subject for study.

The wood of the elm is tough and hard, and is used in building ships and making wheels, and for other purposes where a tough, hard wood is required.

There are a number of species of elm trees, but the best-known one is the beautiful American elm that is everywhere used in parks and for shade trees. Next to this is the red elm, or slippery elm, whose inner bark is fragrant and mucilaginous and good to chew. This bark is good for colds and is sometimes ground up and made into lozenges.

Every country boy lays up a supply of slippery elm bark to dry in the attic along with his nuts.

ASH TREES.

Ash trees are tall, straight, and handsome, with a very dark-colored bark, so regularly marked that one soon learns to know it at a glance. I once knew three of them that stood in an open pasture on the shore of Lake Ontario.

It was worth going to the pasture in a high wind to see the tall, beautiful trunks sway as the wind struck them. I used to wish I could climb up into the tops of them, though it would have been a very unsafe perch indeed.

You have guessed by now that ash trees have winged seed pods, and so they have.

When the little clusters of ash flowers first show in the springtime they are black, and the tree seems to have black-tipped branches. Soon the black tips develop into dark green fringes, though these are not airy and light, like the maple and elm fringes.

The best way for you to find out just how ash blossoms look is—but you know perfectly well what is the very best way to find out, and I hope you will take care to do it.

Ash seeds are winged like those of the maples and are called samaras, but they do not grow two together. Ash trees often bear great numbers of samaras, more than any other tree. Where ash trees grow near houses, the samaras often fall on the roofs and fill up the gutters, so that they have to be cleaned out, sometimes more than once in a season.

The wood of the ash is so very tough and elastic that from all time it has been used to make bows and spear shafts. Of course it is also valuable for less warlike uses.

When you read the “One Hoss Shay,” you will find one use to which ash wood is sometimes put.

The ash tree used to be held sacred by the ancient Norsemen, and some day you will read beautiful stories about the wonderful ash Ygdrasil.

The small tree we call “mountain ash” is not an ash at all, and it has, as you know, red berries instead of samaras.

PINES.