Part 22

THE BOX

1. Box Tree 2. Leaf Spray with Flowers 3. Single Flower 4. Fruit]

The best gardener then was the one who clipped best, and a very difficult art it was, to clip the tree into a certain shape and yet not to kill it. Nowadays these quaint Box tree curiosities are scarcely ever made, but a Box tree hedge is often planted, and its masses of closely-crowded evergreen leaves afford good protection to young plants in a windy garden.

The Box tree (1) has a dark grey-green bark, and the young shoots are four-sided. It grows very slowly--only a few inches each year--and because of this the wood is very hard and fine, as fine as ebony.

The leaves (2) are placed opposite each other, and are small and egg-shaped, with smooth edges. Above they are dark green and very glossy, but underneath the colour is paler. They are very poisonous these Box leaves, and fowls are known to have died from eating them.

The poet Wordsworth tells us that at country funerals it was usual to have a basin filled with sprays of Box standing at the door, and every friend who came to the funeral took a spray, which he carried to the churchyard and laid on the new grave. Rosemary or Yew sprays were often used in the same way.

The flowers are very tiny; you will scarcely be able to see how they are shaped without a magnifying-glass. They grow in crowded yellow clusters at the foot of the leaves, where they join the stem. In each cluster there is usually one seed flower (3) with a tiny green pea in the centre, from which rise three curved horns. All the other flowers will be stamen flowers, which shed plenty of pollen dust over this single green pea. The fruit (4) is a green berry, enclosing a tiny black seed, which you cannot see.

Box-wood is very valuable and is scarce in this country. Most of what we use comes from other lands. In France there is a large Box-wood forest near the village of St. Claude, and all the people in that village spend their days making the Box-wood into small articles, such as forks and spoons, and rosaries and snuff-boxes, for which they get a good deal of money. The wood is pale yellow, and may be cut into the finest pattern without breaking. For many years Box-wood has been used by engravers for making the blocks from which pictures and patterns are printed; the wood is so hard that these blocks can be used many, many times without the edges becoming worn.

Near London there grew a famous wood called Boxhill, and when the trees in that wood were cut down they were sold for ten thousand pounds.

PLATE XXIX

THE WALNUT

The Walnut tree (1) comes to us from sunny Italy and France, where it has grown for many centuries and is greatly prized. Its Latin name, Juglans, means the nut of Jove, and the Romans called it so because they thought the fruit was worthy to be set before their chief god Jove. It was brought to this country about five hundred years ago, and seems to have been grown in many districts until the beginning of last century, when there came a great demand for its wood. As much as six hundred pounds was given for a single Walnut tree, and at once all the people who had Walnut trees cut them down and sold them. This greatly reduced the number.

THE WALNUT

1. Walnut Tree 2. Leaf Spray 3. Bud 4. Scar 5. Stamen Flower 6. Seed Flowers 7. Fruit]

It is a large, handsome tree, which grows to a considerable height, and has a very thick trunk covered with grey bark. This trunk is smooth when the tree is young, but turns rugged as it grows older. The Walnut branches are large and spreading; they are sometimes twisted, but the tips of each branch always turn to the sky. For long it was thought to be dangerous to sleep beneath the shade of a Walnut tree, but for what reason I have not been able to discover.

The leaves (2) are very handsome; each leaf is made up of several pairs of leaflets placed opposite each other on a central stalk, with a single leaflet at the end. When they first come out these leaflets are dull red, but the colour soon changes to a pale olive green, and each leaf is smooth and soft and has a delicious scent if crushed ever so slightly. The twigs which carry these leaves are very stout, even to the tips, but they break easily, and you will find many lying on the ground after a windy night. The bark on these young twigs is very smooth and glossy.

The Walnut tree produces two kinds of flowers, which are both found on the same tree, and one kind, the stamen flowers (5), requires a whole year to ripen. If you look at the twigs which support the leaves you will see several tiny cone-shaped buds (3) dotted here and there on either side, close to the scars (4) left by last year’s leaf stalk. These are the beginnings of next year’s stamen flowers, and they remain like that all summer and all winter until the following spring. Then the bud lengthens and becomes a slender, drooping catkin (5). This catkin is covered with small flowers, each made up of five green sepals enclosing many stamens. These stamen catkins drop from the tree when the pollen dust is scattered.

The Walnut seed flowers (6) are so small that they require to be looked for carefully. They grow among the leaves at the end of the twig, and their small seed-vessels, each with a closely-fitting calyx covering, are ready before the leaves come out. Very soon the small seeds develop into smooth green fruits, which continue to grow all summer, and in July they are the size of a small plum. This fruit is a nut (7), the famous Walnut, and at first you will not see in it any likeness to the Walnut which we eat at dessert after cracking the pale brown shell. But look more closely. The green fruit is a soft juicy envelope which conceals a large nut. This green envelope turns brown when it is ripe and splits open, showing the nut inside, a nut with a crinkled skin, which is soft and green at first, but which becomes a hard, pale brown shell when the fruit dries. It is the kernel of this nut which we eat with salt as a dessert fruit.

The Walnuts usually ripen in October, but often they are gathered in July before the juicy green covering has turned brown, and they are preserved in vinegar and used as a pickle. Ripe Walnuts contain a great deal of oil, and the oil is much valued by artists, who mix it with their paints. It is the most liquid of all the oils, and it dries very quickly.

If you look at your fingers after gathering Walnuts you will find that they are stained a dark brown. The Walnut tree contains a juice which leaves a dark stain. It is said that with this juice the gipsies dye their skin brown; and it is also used to stain floors.

Walnut wood is very valuable. It is light in weight and dark in colour, with beautiful veins and streaks throughout. Much fine furniture is made of Walnut wood, and it can be polished till it shines like satin. To-day it is largely used in the manufacture of guns and rifles.

You will now understand what an important tree the Walnut is, as it yields fruit and oil and wood, which are all valuable.

PLATE XXX

THE SWEET CHESTNUT OR SPANISH CHESTNUT

The Sweet Chestnut is a cousin of the Oak, and belongs with it to the great family of cup-bearing trees, or those that bear their fruit sitting in a cup. Like the Oak, it is a tree with a great and ancient history, although nowadays we are apt to take little notice of this tree, which was once well known and grew abundantly in many parts of England.

The largest Chestnut in the world grows in Sicily, in the great forest which covers the slopes of Mount Etna. It is said that a Spanish Queen was once overtaken in this forest by a tremendous storm, and that she and a hundred soldiers and horses were all able to find shelter beneath the wide-spreading branches of this one tree.

In this country we have a famous big Chestnut tree in Gloucestershire which is believed to be a thousand years old; it is written about in old books, which tell us that this tree belonged to a certain house in the time of King Stephen.

THE SWEET CHESTNUT