Part 15

There is another bushy Willow which perhaps you might mistake for the Goat Willow or Sallow: this is the Purple Osier. It grows in boggy marshes, by the banks of slow-running streams, and it too has silky grey catkins. But you will easily recognise the Purple Osier by two things. It has long, slender stems like whips, rising straight from the tree trunk. These slender stems are covered with a fine purple skin or peel, and if you try to pick an Osier stem the peel comes away in your hand, leaving the white Willow stem still growing. These Osier stems are valuable for making baskets, and are grown in great quantities for this purpose.

The second point in which the Purple Osier differs from the Goat Willow is this: if you gather a yellow catkin and look at the yellow-headed stamens which cover it, you will see that the slender stalks of the stamens are joined together, making one stalk with two yellow heads, whereas in the Goat Willow or Sallow each yellow stamen head sways at the end of its own stalk.

There is one other Willow tree I should like to tell you about, because it is so curious. It is a tree which creeps close to the ground, and which is found growing in great quantities in the Highlands among the grass and heather. It is called the Dwarf Willow, and it too has silky catkins which grow on the tough wiry branches.

You might not notice these stamen catkins, but you could not help noticing the seed catkins. These cover the ground with tufts of white cotton wool like thistle-down, and when you lift one of these tufts you find that the pear-shaped green seed-vessels have split down the centre to allow many tiny seeds to escape, and each seed is winged with a tuft of silky down. After all the seeds have flown away on the wind, the withered seed-vessels still remain on the catkin, no longer green, but a rusty red-brown colour, which is very noticeable among the small glossy green leaves.

PLATE XVII

THE SCOTCH PINE OR SCOTCH FIR

The Scotch Pine (1), or, as it is often called by mistake, the Scotch Fir, is one of our noblest trees; it is tall, and rugged, and sturdy, with a beauty which lies in its strength and dignity rather than in its grace. In bygone days large tracts of Scotland were clothed with vast forests of Scotch Pine, under whose gloomy branches many wolves roamed and the wild deer wandered in herds. But the owners of these noble forests cut down the trees to get money for the timber, and the wolves have disappeared. There is now only a scanty remnant of the great army of Pine trees which once clothed the northern lands of Britain.

Those vast forests were not planted by man. The young trees sprang from seeds which had fallen from the woody fruit cones, and were carried by rooks or other birds to places where human beings rarely trod. There the young seeds grew and sent out their greedy roots. If the soil was good and plentiful they produced a strong carrot-shaped root, which bored deep into the ground and gave the tree such a firm hold that no storm could tear it up. But if the ground had only a little earth on the surface and there were hard rocks beneath, then the roots crept like serpents near the surface of the soil, clasping the rocks with a tight grip to steady the tree.

THE SCOTCH PINE

1. Scotch Pine Tree 2. Leaf Needles 3. Stamen Flower 4. Seed Flower (pink cones) 5. Green Cones 6. Grey Cone 7. Seed with Wing]

How the wind roars in the Pine branches on the high mountain lands! It is like the sound of the sea. If the Pine tree had broad leaves, such as the Sycamore or the Lime tree, it would soon be blown down; but the storm gusts pass through its fine needle-leaves, and no harm is done.

The trunk of the Scotch Pine is very rough, and it is covered with rugged pieces of reddish bark, separated from each other by deep furrows. It rises to a great height, throwing out many large branches on each side, and there is always a bushy rounded tree-top looking up to the sky. In a Pine forest the lower part of the tree is usually bare. This is because the trees are planted so close together there is little air except near the top of the tree, and the lower branches are stifled.

Beneath the branches the ground is always carpeted with fallen Pine leaves, and very curious these Pine leaves (2) are. They look like green needles with soft blunt points, and the edges of each needle are rolled back so that the leaf appears round above and is boat-shaped below. The under-side of the needle is much lighter in colour than the dark green surface.

These needle-leaves usually grow in pairs, though you may find a bunch containing three or even four needles; they are held together by a thin grey sheath, which looks like paper and clasps the end of the bunch. These needle-bunches are placed all round the twig, close together, so as to form a dense brush. They remain on the tree for two or three years, then they fall; but their work is not done. Very often the Pine tree seed has been carried to some sandy sea-shore upon which nothing is willing to grow. There it takes root and flourishes, and in course of time it throws down handfuls of withered needle-leaves on the loose sandy ground. These needles decay and form a bed of soil which binds the sand together, and when the wind and the birds bring other seeds, they find a place in which they can take root and grow. In France great tracts of waste land have become valuable in this way through the planting of Pine trees.

The Pine tree has its flowers in catkins and its fruit in cones. The catkins are of two kinds, and they grow on the same tree, sometimes on the same branch. The stamen flowers (3) are found in dense spikes at the end of last year’s bushy twig. They look like a cluster of bunches of small yellow grains from which a tuft of fine green spears rises in the centre. These grains are the stamen heads, and in May and June they send out clouds of fine yellow powder, which floats in the air and settles on the leaves and on the grass and on the margins of lakes and rivers, where you can see little patches of it lying. Country peasants sometimes tell you that this yellow powder is sulphur which has fallen from the sky during a thunder-storm!

The seed flowers (4) of the Pine tree are very different. They grow either singly or in pairs at the end of this year’s new twig, and at first they are tiny pale pink cones. These cones are egg-shaped, and are made up of scales tightly pressed together, with little hard dots showing at the tip of each scale. The seeds are behind the scales, but you will not see them for a long time, as the cone takes eighteen months to grow up. At the end of the first summer you find that the pink cone has become a rich green colour (5) and is still soft, but when the second summer comes round, the cone is ash-grey in colour (6) and is hard and woody.

When the seeds are ripe the tightly-pressed scales unclose and curl up, showing thick wooden lips; at the base of each scale lie two white seeds, and each seed (7) has a thin filmy wing. When the seeds fall from the cone they are blown long distances, floating on the air by their filmy wings.

There is a bird called the crossbill which is very fond of Pine seeds, and very clever at picking them out of the half-opened cones.

You will occasionally find a tree, very similar to the Scotch Pine, in which the cones grow in groups of three or four together at the end of the twigs. This tree is called the Cluster Pine, and you will notice that its bunches of leaves are different in colour: they are a bluey green, and the tips of the needles are yellowish, as if they had begun to wither.

The wood of the Pine tree is very valuable. Thousands of pounds were paid for the trees in the old Scotch forests, and many stout ships were built from their sturdy trunks. Besides the good timber, the Pine tree gives us turpentine and resin from its juice. If you cut a hole in a Pine tree stem a thick juice will soon be seen oozing from this hole, and it quickly hardens into a clear gum.

PLATE XVIII

THE YEW

Once upon a time a discontented Yew tree grew in a country graveyard. Other trees, it thought, had larger and more beautiful leaves which fluttered in the breeze and became red and brown and yellow in the sunshine, and the Yew tree pined because the fairies had given it such an unattractive dress. One morning the sunshine disclosed that all its green leaves had changed into leaves made of gold, and the heart of the Yew tree danced with happiness. But some robbers, as they stole through the forest, were attracted by the glitter, and they stripped off every golden leaf. Again the tree bemoaned its fate, and next day the sun shone on leaves of purest crystal. “How beautiful!” thought the tree; “see how I sparkle!” But a hailstorm burst from the clouds, and the sparkling leaves lay shivered on the grass. Once more the good fairies tried to comfort the unhappy tree. Smooth broad leaves covered its branches, and the Yew tree flaunted these gay banners in the wind. But, alas, a flock of goats came by and ate of the fresh young leaves “a million and ten.” “Give me back again my old dress,” sobbed the Yew, “for I see that it was best.” And ever since its leaves remain unchanging, and it wears the sombre dress which covered its boughs in the days when King William landed from Normandy on our shores, and the swineherd tended his pigs in the great forests which covered so much of Merry England.

THE YEW

1. Yew Tree 2. Leaf Spray 3. Stamen Flower 4. Seed Flower 5. Spray with Fruit]

In history books we read how important the Yew tree once was. Long before the invention of guns and gunpowder, many of our soldiers carried bows made of Yew tree wood, and from these they shot deadly arrows with tremendous force. Three of England’s Kings--Harold, William Rufus, and Richard Cœur de Lion--were slain by such arrows, and it was from a Yew tree bow that Tell sent the arrow that halved the apple placed on his son’s head.

The Yew tree (1) grows very, very slowly; it never becomes a tall tree, not even when it has lived hundreds and hundreds of years, because, instead of sending up one thick trunk, it has the strange habit of dividing into a cluster of trunks, three or four or more of equal thickness, which rise from one root. These trunks are covered with browny red bark and are very smooth; the red bark peels off in thin flakes, and you can see that the wood beneath it is a deep orange red.

From the clustered trunks many branches stretch out to form a densely bushy tree; these branches are closely covered with small twigs, on which grow short narrow leaves (2), ending in blunt points, and with the edges slightly curved backwards. These leaves grow alternately all round the twig, and they are dark and glossy above but much paler beneath. They do not fall from the tree in winter, as the Yew, like the Holly, is one of our evergreen trees. Yew tree leaves are very poisonous, and many tales are told of cattle and horses which have died from eating them.