Part 18

The Spruce Fir has two enemies that do it great harm. These are the crossbill and the squirrel. They break off the young shoots close to the end, and so stop the growth of the branches. You will often find the ground strewn with these fresh green twigs; but you require to sit very still for a long time if you wish to see the enemies at work.

The wood of the Spruce Fir is valuable for many purposes. The tall, smooth tree trunks are used for the masts of ships, for scaffolding poles, and telegraph posts; and many boat-loads of Fir planks are brought from Norway and from the shores of the Baltic Sea, to be manufactured into flooring boards for our houses. In some places the fibre of the Spruce Fir is reduced to pulp, and from this a common kind of paper is produced which is used for newspapers or cheap magazines.

From the sap we get resin and turpentine, and the bark is used in the tanning of leather.

Some people say that the name Fir wood is just a mistake for fire-wood, because in the old days torches were made of the young fir branches, whose gummy twigs burnt easily with a clear, strong light.

PLATE XXII

THE SILVER FIR

Many people find it difficult to distinguish between the Spruce Fir and the Silver Fir, and they are often called by each other’s names; yet they are unlike in many points, and a little trouble would prevent such mistakes.

The Silver Fir (1) is not one of our native trees; it was brought from Central or Southern Europe to this country in 1603, and has taken kindly to our moist climate. It does not grow on such lofty mountains as the Spruce, but it will thrive at a level of six thousand feet above the sea, higher than the highest mountain in Great Britain.

It is a tall, stately tree, but it is bushier and less regular than the Spruce Fir. The trunk is covered with greyish brown bark, which is smooth when the tree is young; but as the tree grows old--and the Silver Fir will live for four hundred years--this bark cracks into many rugged fissures. You remember that the Spruce tree has a sharp spear-like point rising from the very top of the trunk. In the Silver Fir the tree is only pointed when very young, and by the time it is full grown the top is bushy, with many small unequal branches standing out from the main stem.

THE SILVER FIR

1. Silver Fir Tree 2. Leaf Spray 3. Stamen Flowers 4. Cone Flower 5. Ripe Cone 6. Seed Scale]

These branches do not grow in whorls or circles, like the spokes of a wheel; they are often irregular, and there may be gaps in the tree where a branch has fallen off, and only a scar is left to show where the branch should have been. The Silver Fir is a firmly-rooted tree; it sends a long tap-shaped root, ending in two forks, deep into the soil, so that there is little danger of the wind uprooting it during the wintry gales.

Now look at the leaves (2) which grow on the Silver Fir. Like those of the Spruce, and unlike those of the Pine, they grow singly, each little leaf standing by itself on the rough twig. Although they are placed all round this twig, these leaves have a tendency to grow to right or left of the twig, and look as if they had been parted down the centre and carefully combed to each side.

Each leaf is flat and slender, and on the upper side it is a dark glossy green; the edges are rolled back on to the under-side of the leaf, which is much paler in colour. The centre rib of the leaf is much raised, and looks like a slender cord, and on each side of this cord, between it and the curled-back leaf edge, there runs a silvery white line; it is from this silvery line that the tree gets its name.

Notice that the leaf twigs of the Silver Fir do not droop in the feathery way they do in the Spruce; they are much stiffer, and stand out all round the branch; also, there is not nearly such a marked upward curve at the tip of the branch as you find in the Spruce Fir. The leaves of the Silver Fir remain on the tree eight or nine years, but each year the tree lengthens its sprays, and the young leaves are a beautiful pale yellowish green colour, almost as pale as the young leaves of the primrose.

The stamen flowers (3) grow at the ends of the young sprays. They consist of a few overlapping scales with a cluster of stamens inside. The seed flowers or cones (4) grow on the same tree, sometimes on the same branch, and they become cones in the same way as the seed flowers of the Pine and the Spruce. But you will at once notice a difference. The cones of the Silver Fir grow upright; they sit on the branches with their tops looking up to the sky, whereas the cones of the Spruce and the Scotch Pine when full grown hang down from the ends of the spray with their tips pointing to the ground. If there are any cones visible you will never mistake the Silver Fir for the Spruce.

The ripe cones (5) are made up of many thin, soft scales which overlap each other closely, and each scale ends in a sharp point which turns backward; this gives the cone a hairy appearance. At first the cones are green, like those of the Scotch Pine, but soon they turn purple, and when quite ripe they are a rich red-brown.

If the tree is old enough--that means if it is forty years of age--you will find small angular seeds (6), with a long filmy wing attached, nestling behind each scale. But if the tree is still young, the cones are seedless. It takes eighteen months for the cone to ripen, and when the seeds are ready and they and the red-brown scales fall from the cone, a bare brown stick is left standing upright on the branch.

The wood of the Silver Fir is very valuable, and it is used for many purposes; doors and window-frames and floors are constantly made of it, and for ship-building it is in great demand. In Switzerland there are great forests of Silver Fir, but they grow high on the mountain sides, where there are no roads and no means of getting the trees brought down after they are felled.

But at Lucerne, a town on the shores of a large lake, with great forests on the mountains above, the people invented an excellent way of overcoming this difficulty.

A narrow avenue was cut in the forest among the trees, and this was floored with trunks of Fir and Spruce. Snow and water were poured down this avenue, which the cold air quickly froze, and the avenue became a gigantic ice-slide eight miles long. The Fir trees were felled, and all their branches lopped off, the bare trunks were placed on this slide, and in six minutes they shot into the waters of the lake eight miles below. There they floated till the wood merchant was ready for them.

The Silver Fir tree is rich in gummy juice, which is made into turpentine and resin. Have you ever seen necklaces of pale cloudy beads, and of clear dark brown made of amber? People tell us this amber is found on the shores of the Baltic Sea, and that it is just the gummy juice which dropped long ago from some kind of Fir tree and has hardened in a mysterious way of which we know nothing.

PLATE XXIII

THE HOLLY

“Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen, wrinkled and keen. No grazing cattle through their prickly round can reach to wound; But as they grow where nothing is to fear, Smooth and unarmed the pointless leaves appear.”

--Southey.

The Holly (1) is our most important evergreen, and is so well known that it scarcely needs any description. It has flourished in this country as long as the Oak, and is often found growing under tall trees in the crowded forests, as well as in the open glades, where lawns of fine grass are to be found.

THE HOLLY