Part 11

If we walk through the village or the city in which we live, and stop under each evergreen tree we come to, we shall find nearly all alike in these two points: they have needle-like leaves, and they have cones. The evergreens with needle-like leaves, and cones on and under them, belong to four evergreen tree families, whose names every one would like to know. These four evergreen families are named pine, spruce, fir, and hemlock, and they are planted everywhere. But few people are very sure they know one from another. It is perfectly right to call them all evergreens, or conifers, which means cone-bearers. These names include all the four families. But it is common for people to call a spruce, a pine, or a hemlock, a spruce, when the truth is that one may very easily know these trees apart.

Let us begin with the first needle-leaved cone-bearing evergreen we meet. To find out whether this tree is a pine, a spruce, a fir, or a hemlock, we must ask the tree some questions. It will answer them. First: “Are your needles set one in a place on the twig, or are they in groups, or bundles, of more than one at a place?” Pull down a twig and look sharply for the answer. Suppose there are the leaves in pairs, or in threes, or in fives, each bundle or group growing out of a single point on the twig. The answer is: “Not single, but in bundles, more than one at a place.” Towards the end of the shoot you will find a brownish or silvery sheath binding the leaves into bundles. Further back, this sheath may be missing, but the number of leaves in the bundle remains the same for some distance back from the end of the shoot. The leaves begin to fall from the bundles farthest from the tips, and therefore old. If two leaves is the number in a bundle, there are never more than two, young and old. If three is the number, you will find only threes. If five is the number, then you will rarely find fewer than this in any bundle.

All the trees with more than one leaf in a bundle are pines. All of the rest of the needle-leaved evergreens have a single leaf at a place upon the twig. They are the spruces, firs, and hemlocks. Let us go and look for them.

The very next evergreen we come to we must put the same question to: “Are your leaves single, or are there more than one in a bundle?” Suppose “three in a bundle” is the answer; we recognise the tree as a pine, and pass it by.

Across the street is a tree of different shape, though an evergreen and a conifer. We see the long cones hanging from its drooping branches, especially near the top of the tree. Cross over and examine a twig; the needles are short and sharp-pointed, and they are set singly in spiral lines on the twigs. Every leaf sits on a little shelf, or bracket, that stands out from the twig. Pick up a dead twig under the tree. The leaves are gone, but these little brackets in spiral rows wind around the twig. They are horny and sharp, and would tear your fingers if you drew the twig quickly between them.

Notice that the little brackets are angled at the top. Pick up a dead leaf and notice the shape of its base. The leaf itself has angled sides. Roll it between your thumb and finger. It has three or four sides, and at least three sharp angles.

This is a spruce, and the signs by which we know it are the brackets on the twig, the thick, sharp, three- or four-angled leaf, and the stout twigs, to match the stout leaves.

The next needle-leaved evergreen with cones we meet we may hope will turn out to be a fir or hemlock, but the chances are that its twigs will show two, three, or five needles in a bundle. What shall we call the tree? A pine, of course, and pass it by. We need ask no further question.

The next tree has stiff twigs with brackets, and stout, stiff, angled and pointed leaves. Cones hang down upon its branches. We recognise a spruce, and go on.

Over yonder is an evergreen which waves a featherly spray of very slender twigs. There is scarcely a breeze stirring, and yet the tree is all a-tremble, and its drooping branches carry a load of pretty little brown cones. Turn up a branch, and you notice that the leaves are all silvery underneath. They are single on the twigs, so this is not a pine. They part and lie flat, a row on each side of the twig. This is very different from a spruce whose leaves stand out all around the twigs. These sprays are flat, each like a feather. The leaves are soft, not stiff. They are blunt, flat, and each has a tiny stem. The twigs are like fine wire, they are so slender. The leaves are mounted on brackets, just as the spruce leaves are, but the brackets are much smaller, to match the daintier twigs and leaves.

It is a hemlock tree. The tiny leaf stem is the thing which sets it apart from all other needle-leaved evergreens. Take a good look before you go, at the leaf itself, at the slender twigs, with their little brackets, at the shining upper surface of the flat leaf and the silvery lining that makes this tree so lovely as the wind lifts the flexible branches. Pick up a handful of dead leaves, and notice that though dead and brown, they show the flat surface with a middle ridge on the under side, prolonged into the short leaf stem. The pale lining is not so distinct now.

One tree family remains of the needle-leaved, cone-bearing evergreen. That is the fir, the Christmas tree, and its close relatives. Not often do we plant our native fir, because the trees are not as handsome, nor as useful as pines, spruces, and hemlocks. We may walk far before we find an evergreen which does not turn out to be a pine, a spruce, or a hemlock. However, it is near Christmas time. The little firs will be brought into market in sufficient numbers to supply a Christmas tree to every house. This is our chance. We will go to market, and look at these little trees that stand together, with their limbs trussed like fowls, ready to be baked. This is for economy of space in shipping.

The clean, pungent odour of balsam comes from the bleeding stub, and we see tears of the whitish wax wherever the bark of a twig or branch is bruised. These are balsam firs. They have their name from this fragrant, sticky resin that leaks from their veins.

First, as to the leaves. We find them single and spirally arranged, as in the spruce, but there are no brackets on the twigs. Pull off a leaf and the twig is smooth. The leaves are blunt, but flattened, and on most of the twigs they spread, feather-like, on two sides. There are more of them, however, than on the hemlock spray. They are white-lined, like the hemlock leaves, but there are no little leaf stems. The twigs are stouter than those of the hemlock, resembling the spruce twigs in size, but they lack horny little leaf brackets which are so prominent on spruce twigs.

One reason that spruce trees make poor Christmas trees is that the leaves fall so soon. Almost the day after Christmas the floor is scattered with them. The fir trees keep their leaves for weeks. This little bracket makes all the difference. Fir leaves seem to be fastened right into the twig itself, and made thus more secure.

If it chances that you find a fir old enough to bear cones, you will see another very distinct trait of this family. The cones are held erect on the twigs; the cones of pines, and spruces, and hemlocks hang down. If you are fortunate enough to find a fir tree growing, and old enough to bear its fruit, these upright cones will tell you the tree’s name before you come near enough to look at the leaves, and to see if the twigs are smooth.

THE FIVE-LEAVED SOFT PINES

An evergreen with needle-like leaves in bundles, two to five leaves in a bundle, is a pine. These bundles are usually bound with a thin, papery sheath at the base, and set in spiral rows that wind around the twig. The leaves in the newest sheaths are nearest the growing tip of the shoot. Here we shall find the leaves shorter, some so short that they have not yet got outside of their sheaths. The silky covering hides them, as the bud scales on other trees covered the undeveloped shoot with its flowers and leaves, wrapped in the winter buds.

The kind of pine depends upon the number of leaves in a bundle. This is the first thing to find out when we undertake to determine the name of a pine tree. All of the vigorous young shoots have bundles that do not vary in number of needles. Further back on the limb are leaves more than a year old. The sheaths are shorter, or have fallen away entirely. Now the number of needles in a bundle begins to be uncertain. We find bundles that have fewer needles than those on the younger wood. This is because the older leaves are falling. Finally we reach a point where the twigs are bare. On white pine shoots it is easy to find leaves that are five to seven years old.

“Soft pine” is a lumberman’s term. Carpenters use it, so do all people who work in wood. It means that the wood of a certain group of pines is soft and light, and the sap is not gummy. Any boy who has cut kindling wood knows what a joy it is to whittle soft pine. Until a few years ago, this was the wood out of which boxes of all sorts were made, and it was the only kindling wood we had. Now things are changed. Much box lumber is made of poplar and other soft woods, which do not split as easily as pine. This means that soft pine is getting scarce, and is too valuable to use where cheaper woods will serve.

THE WHITE PINE

The white pine has the softest, most hair-like leaves in the whole pine family. Five needles are in each bundle, and each is delicate and flexible. When the wind blows through the top of one of these five-needled trees, the end shoots nod like plumes. The tree sends up a straight shaft sometimes to the height of nearly two hundred feet, and whorls of branches, five in a place, form regular platforms extending horizontally from the trunk. Each of these sets of branches counts a year of the tree’s life; for the end bud lengthens the trunk, and at the same time, five buds that surround it grow out into horizontal branches. It is easy to count the age of a young white pine, by beginning at the tip, and counting downward. We could do it with large trees, except that the lower branches die, and at length are lost. The bark heals over the scars left where they fell, so the count is lost when we reach the point where the branches stop. The white pine is slow to shed its dead branches.

In the woods of the Eastern half of the United States any five-leaved pine that we meet is a white pine. Before we are near enough to count the needles in a bundle, we may count five branches at a whorl around the trunk, and this determines the name. Beautifully regular pyramids, the little trees are. In old age these pines lose symmetry by the loss of limbs, and become very rugged and picturesque. A white pine tree, crippled by two or three centuries of struggle with winds and lightnings, is a noble figure. The plume-like branches soften its rugged outlines, and the sombre blue-green of the older leaves is brightened by the fresher colour of the new ones. The upper half of the tree is hung with slim cones whose smooth, thin scales spread wide in the autumn of their second year to let the winged seeds go.

In spring the clustering catkins of staminate flowers look like yellow cones on the ends of the pale yellow-green shoots. The wind shakes an abundant supply of golden dust out of these pollen flowers, then lets the fading catkins fall. The pistillate flowers are pinkish-purple and almost hidden, just back of the tips of the upper twigs. They are cone-shaped, and they part their scales and stand erect to catch the pollen as it drifts through the tree tops. The flowers on each scale require a grain of pollen each, in order to set seed. When its flowers are fertilised the cone closes its scales tight, but they stand erect all summer. In the autumn they are green and fleshy, and they turn downward. In winter we shall see among the swaying branches of these pines, the green, half-grown fruits, and further back, on wood a year older, the brown, full-grown cones with their scales spread. These cones often curve slightly. The largest of them may be ten inches long, but the average cone is little over half that length.

The lumbermen have stripped the white pine from the Eastern forests until there is very little left. Many states are planting this valuable timber tree, to restore the forests that wasteful lumbering, and forest fires have destroyed. Thousands of young trees grown in nursery rows are transplanted to beautify home grounds and parks. We shall find no difficulty in discovering white pine trees, even though no forest near us has a specimen left. It is one of the commonest pines to be planted in cities and villages. It is the only five-leaved pine that will grow successfully on this side of the Rocky Mountains.

THE GREAT SUGAR PINE

All along the coast mountains from Oregon to Lower California, a five-leaved soft pine grows whose size makes our Eastern white pine seem like a dwarf. In that far country of big trees, it is one of the giants. I had read of these trees which grow to be over 200 feet in height, with trunks six to ten feet in diameter at the ground, but figures do not give much idea of the truth. I first saw the groves of sugar pines miles ahead of us, as the stage climbed the foot hills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. We were on the way into the wonderful Yosemite Valley. The scrawny, grey, digger pines, with cones as big as a man’s head, grew on the lower foot hills. Next came the great yellow pines, and still higher up, the grand sugar pines, along the highest level of the stage road. They stood oftenest in close ranks so that their tops were small, because of the crowding. And here they had stood for centuries. The road was no wider than the broad stumps of some that had been cut down, and their prostrate trunks were longer than any log I have ever seen before. I remember calculating that the round dining table at home could be set upon this stump, and all the family seated round it with no danger of their chairs being too near the edge. The standing trunks seemed like great builded columns, too large for real trees to grow. Their feathery, dark green tips reached nearer to the sky than any trees in Eastern forests.

Under these pines old cones were lying. They were big, to match the trees. Twenty inches the longest one measured, with scales two inches long, and plump seeds as big as navy beans. Far off in the tree top the hanging cones looked moderate in size. We could just see the green, half-grown cones nearer the ends of the branches, for this Western white pine, like our Eastern species, requires two years to mature its fruit.