Trees Every Child Should Know: Easy Tree Studies for All Seasons of the Year

Part 1

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Trees EVERY CHILD SHOULD KNOW

EASY TREE STUDIES FOR ALL SEASONS OF THE YEAR BY JULIA ELLEN ROGERS

Illustrated

NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP Publishers

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1909

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

CONTENTS

PAGE How to Know the Trees 3

AUTUMN STUDIES The Nut Trees: The Shagbark Hickories 9 The Disappointing Hickories 12 The Black Walnut 16 The Butternut 18 The English Walnut 19 The Chestnut and Chinquapin 22 The Beech 26 The Witch Hazel 29 The Oak Family 33 The White Oak Group: The White Oak 37 The Bur or Mossy-cup Oak 39 The Live Oak 41 The Post Oak 44 The Swamp White Oak 45 The Chestnut Oak 46 The Black Oak Group: The Black Oak 47 The Red Oak 50 The Scarlet Oak 51 The Pin Oak 52 The Willow Oak 54 Trees with Winged Seeds 55 Tree Seeds that have Parachutes 62 The Autumn Berries in the Woods 64 The Changing Colour of the Autumn Woods 74

WINTER STUDIES Trees We Know by Their Bark 83 Trees We Know by Their Shapes 93 Trees We Know by Their Thorns 98 The Needle-leaved Evergreens 101 The Five-leaved Soft Pines 108 The White Pine 109 The Great Sugar Pine 112 The Nut Pines 114 The Hard Pines 118 The Southern Pitch Pines 119 The Longleaf Pine 119 The Shortleaf Pine 121 The Cuban Pine 123 The Loblolly Pine 124 The Northern Pitch Pines 125 The Cedars, White and Red 127 Two Conifers Not Evergreen 131 The Larches 131 The Bald Cypress 134 The Hollies 136 The Burning Bush 139

SPRING STUDIES The Awakening of the Trees 143 Trees that Bloom in Early Spring 146 The American Elm and Its Kin 150 The Maple Family 154 The Willow Family 163 Why Trees Need Leaves 169 Leaves of All Shapes and Sizes 173

SUMMER STUDIES Trees with the Largest Flowers 183 Trees Most Showy in Bloom 189 Trees that Bloom in Midsummer 192 The Early Berries in the Woods 197 The Sassafras 200 The Ash Family 203 The Horse-chestnut and the Buckeyes 208 The Buckeyes 211 The Locusts and Other Pod-bearers 214 Wild Apple Trees and Their Kin 221 The Cherries 226 The Plums 229 The Serviceberries 232 Valuable Sap of Trees 233 The Uses of Trees 237

Identification Keys to Tree Groups and Families 251 Index 261

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Glory of Autumn Trees Frontispiece FACING PAGE Three Pignuts, Three Shagbarks, and Two Pecans; Flowering Twig of the Shagbark Hickory 16 Black Walnut and Butternut; Twig of Butternut 17 Buds and Flowers of the Beech Tree 32 Catkins of a Hornbeam and a Birch; Catkins and Acorn Flowers of an Oak 33 Leaves, Acorns, and Twigs of the Bur Oak 48 The Horizontal Limbs of the Pin Oak Form a Regular Pyramidal Head 49 Cone Fruits of a Birch, a Pine, a Magnolia, and a Fir 64 Clusters of the Winged Seeds of Hornbeam and White Ash 65 The Flowering Dogwood Covers Its Bare Branches with Blossoms in May 76 Flowering Dogwood, in Flower and Fruit, the Winter Flower Buds, and Alligator Skin Bark 77 We Recognise Birches by their Silky, Tattered Bark 84 The Beech Trunk Is Clothed in Smooth, Pale Grey Bark 85 The Loose, Stripping Bark Gives Its Name to the Shagbark Hickory 86 Bark of Hackberry, Black Birch and Hornbeam 87 Warty, Ridged Bark of the Sweet Gum, the Swinging Seed Balls, and Winged Seeds 90 Bark and Seed Balls of the Sycamore 91 The Lombardy Poplar 92 The Live Oak of the South 93 Fruiting Branch of a Cockspur Thorn 96 Clustered Thorns on Trunk of Honey Locust Tree; Flowers and Foliage of the Black Locust 97 Cones of Hemlock and Norway Spruce 112 Pine Twig with Cones, and Clustered Staminate Flowers 113 Thousands of Little Balsam Firs Supply the Market with Christmas Trees 114 Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Outdoor Study 115 The Spiny-leaved, Red-berried Holly 126 What Would Christmas Be Without Holly Branches and Wreaths for Decoration! 127 “The Grizzly Giant,” a Sequoia Over Three Hundred Feet High 128 Scaly-leaved Evergreens 129 The Opening Buds of the Shagbark Hickory 144 Catkins and Leaves of the Trembling Aspen 145 Flower Buds, Blossoms, Seeds, and Leaf of the American Elm 148 Elm Tree in Bloom 149 Buds and Flowers of the Red Maple 156 Seeds of the Red Maple 157 The Sugar Maple 176 Leaves of the Black Willow; Pussy Willow Twigs 177 Leaves and Flowers of the Ear-leaved Cucumber Tree 192 The Orange-yellow Flower Cups and Squared Leaves of the Tulip Tree 193 Flowers, Fruit, and the Three Different Leaf Patterns of the Sassafras Tree 194 Waxy Flowers of the Evergreen Magnolia 195 Fruits, Leaves, and Flowers of the Basswood Tree 206 The Chestnut Tree 207 An Old Apple Orchard 224 Nothing Tastes as Good as Ripe Apples Picked Right off the Tree! 225 Flowers and Fruit of the Wild Black Cherry 240 The Delicate, White Flower Clusters of the Serviceberry Tree 241

HOW TO KNOW THE TREES

The best time to begin to study the trees is to-day! The place to begin is right where you are, provided there is a tree near enough, for a lesson about trees will be very dull unless there is a tree to look at, to ask questions of, and to get answers from. But suppose it is winter time, and the tree is bare. Then you have a chance to see the wonderful framework of trunk and branches, the way the twigs spread apart on the outer limbs, while the great boughs near the trunk are almost bare. Each branch is trying to hold its twigs out into the sunshine, and each twig is set with buds. When these buds open, and most of them send out leafy shoots, the tree will be a shady summerhouse with a thick, leafy roof that the sun cannot look through. Among the big branches near the trunk very few leaves will be found compared with the number the outer twigs bear.

How can we tell whether the tree is alive or dead in winter? Break off a twig. Is there a layer of green just inside the brown bark? This is the sign that the tree is alive. Dead twigs are withered, and their buds are not plump and bright. The green is gone from under the bark of these twigs.

Under each bud is the scar of last year’s leaf, and if you look on the ground you are pretty sure to find a dead leaf whose stem fits exactly into that scar. If there are a number of these leaves under the tree, you may feel sure that they fell from the tree last autumn. Look carefully among the leaves, and on the branches for the seeds of this tree. If there is an acorn left on the tree, you may be sure that you have the tree’s name!

The name is the thing we wish first to know when we meet a stranger. If an acorn is found growing on a tree, that tree has given us its name, for trees that bear acorns are all oaks. An acorn is a kind of nut, and there are many kinds of oaks, each with its own acorn pattern, unlike that of other oaks. Yet all acorns sit in their little acorn cups, and we do not confuse them with nuts of other trees. So we know the family name of all trees whose fruits are acorns. They are all oaks, and there are fifty kinds in our own country, growing wild in American forests. But if those of all countries are counted, there are in all more than three hundred kinds.

If, instead of acorns, pods hang on the twigs, the tree belongs to the locust family, related to our garden peas and beans. The signs by which we learn to know trees are not many. The bark of the white birch is so silky white that everybody knows that tree. The sycamore sheds its bark in thin, irregular sheets, leaving patches of dirty white streaking the trunk and limbs, as if the tree had been daubed and spattered with whitewash. This tree is so strikingly different from others that nearly everybody knows it by name. Or they call it “buttonwood.” The seed-balls hang on slender stems, swinging in the winter wind.

The winter signs to notice are the bark, the buds, and the leaf scars, the shape of the tree, and the way it branches. The fruit it bears may be seen in summer, autumn, or winter. The flowers come in warm weather, some kinds early, some later, and the leaves are new in spring, and most trees shed them in autumn. There is no time of year when there are not three or four of the important signs hung out on every tree to guide those who are trying to find out its name, and learn the story of its interesting life. And the finding out of tree names is not dreary and hard, but a good game to be played out-of-doors.

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