Trees Worth Knowing Part 17

Midsummer is the time to hunt for "mittens" and to note how many different forms of leaves belong on the same sa.s.safras tree. First, there is the simple ovate leaf; second, a larger blade oval in form but with one side extended and lobed to form a thumb, making the whole leaf look like the pattern of a mitten cut out by an unskilled hand; third, a symmetrical, three-lobed leaf, the pattern of a narrow mitten with a large thumb on each side. Not infrequently do all these forms occur on a single twig. Only the mulberry, among our native trees, shows such a variety of leaf forms as the sa.s.safras. There is quite as great variation in the size of the leaves. One law seems to prevail among sa.s.safras trees: more of the oval leaves than the lobed ones are found on mature trees. It is the roadside sapling, with its foliage within easy reach, that delights boys and girls with its wonderful variety of leaf patterns. Here the size of the leaves greatly surpa.s.ses that of the foliage on full-grown trees, and the autumnal colors are more glorious in the roadside thickets than in the tree-tops far above them.

Sa.s.safras trees grow readily from seed in any loose, moist soil. A single tree spreads by a mult.i.tude of fleshy root-stalks, and these natural root-cuttings bear transplanting as easily as a poplar. Every garden border should have one specimen at least to add its flame to the conflagration of autumn foliage and the charming contrast of its blue berries on their coral stalks.

THE WITCH HAZEL

Eighteen genera compose the sub-tropical family in which _hamamelis_ is the type. Two or three Asiatic species and one American are known.

The witch hazel (_Hamamelis Virginiana_, Linn.) is a stout, many-stemmed shrub or a small tree, with rough unsymmetrical leaves, strongly veined, coa.r.s.ely toothed, and roughly diamond-shaped. The twigs, when bare, are set with hairy sickle-shaped buds. Nowhere in summer would an undergrowth of witch hazel trees attract attention.

But in autumn, when other trees have reached a state of utter rest, the witch hazel wakes and bursts into bloom. Among the dead leaves which stubbornly cling as they yellow, and often persist until spring, the tiny buds, the size of a pin-head, open into starry blossoms with petals like gold threads. The witch hazel thicket is veiled with these gold-mesh flowers, as ethereal as the haunting perfume which they exhale. Frost crisps the delicate petals but they curl, up like shavings and stay till spring. At no time is the weather cold enough to destroy this November flower show.

Among the blossoms are the pods in cl.u.s.ters, gaping wide if the seeds are shed; closed tight, with little monkey faces, if not yet open. The harvest of witch hazel seeds is worth going far to see. Damp weather delays this most interesting little game. Dry frosty weather is ideal for it.

Go into a witch hazel thicket on some fine morning in early November and sit down on the drift of dead leaves that carpet the woods floor.

The silence is broken now and then by a sharp report like a bullet striking against the bark of a near-by trunk, or skipping among the leaves. Perhaps a twinge on the ear shows that you have been a target for some tiny projectile, sent to its mark with force enough to hurt.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _See page 111_

BARK, BLOSSOM, FRUIT, AND WINTER FLOWER BUDS OF THE FLOWERING DOGWOOD]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _See page 116_

THE MOUNTAIN ASH

The flat, crowded cl.u.s.ter of tiny white flowers is set in a whorl of dark-green leaves in May or June]

The fusillade comes from the ripened pods, which have a remarkable ability to throw their seeds, and thus do for the parent tree what the winged seeds of other trees accomplish. The lining of the two-celled pod is believed to shorten and produce a spring that drives the seeds forth with surprising force when they are loosened from their attachment. This occurs when the lips part. Frost and sun seem to decide just when to spring the trap and let fly the little black seeds.

A young botanist went into the woods to find out just how far a witch hazel tree can throw its seeds. She chose an isolated tree and spread white muslin under it for many yards in four directions. The most remote of the many seeds she caught that day fell eighteen feet from the base of the tree.

The Indians in America were the first people to use the bark of the witch hazel for curing inflammations. An infusion of the twigs and roots is now made by boiling them for twenty-four hours in water to which alcohol has been added. "Witch hazel extract," distilled from this mixture, is the most popular preparation to use for bruises and sprains, and to allay the pain of burns. Druggists and chemists have failed to discover any medicinal properties in bark or leaf, but the public has faith in it. The alcohol is probably the effective agent.

Witch hazel comes honestly by its name. The English "witch hazel" is a species of elm to which superst.i.tious miners went to get forked twigs to use as divining rods. No one in the countryside would dream of sinking a shaft for coal without the use of this forked twig. In any old and isolated country district in America there is usually a man whose reputation is based in his skilful use of a forked witch hazel twig. Sent for before a well is dug, he slowly walks over the ground, holding the twig erect by its two supple forks, one in each hand. When he pa.s.ses over the spot where the hidden springs of water are, the twig goes down, without any volition of the "water-witch." At least, so he says, and if water is struck by digging, his claims are vindicated and scoffers hide their heads.

THE BURNING BUSH

American gardeners cherish with regard that amounts almost to affection any shrub or tree which will lend color, especially brilliant color, to the winter landscape. Thus the holly, the j.a.panese barberry, many of the haws, the mountain ash, and the rugosa rose will be found in the shrubbery borders of many gardens, supplying the birds with food when the ground is covered with snow, and sprinkling the brightness of their red berries against the monotony of dull green conifers.

The burning bush (_Euonymus atropurpureus_, Jacq.) lends its scarlet fruits to the vivid colors that paint any winter landscape. They hang on slender stalks, cl.u.s.tered where the leaves were attached. Four flattish lobes, deeply separated by constrictions, form each of these strange-looking fruits. In October each is pale purplish in color and one half an inch across. Now the husk parts and curls back, revealing the seeds, each of the four enveloped in a loose scarlet wrinkled coat. Until midwinter the little tree is indeed a burning bush, glowing brighter as the advancing season opens wider the purple husks, and the little swinging Maltese cross, made by the four scarlet berries, is the only thing one sees, looking up from below. Birds take the berries, though they are bitter and poisonous.

In spring the slender branchlets of this little tree are covered with opposite, pointed leaves, two to five inches long, and in their axils are borne purplish flowers, with four spreading recurving petals. In the centre of each is supported a square platform upon which are the spreading anthers and styles. It does not require much botanical knowledge to see a family relations.h.i.+p between this tree and the woody vine we call "bitter-sweet"; the flowers and fruits are alike in many features.

In Oklahoma and Arkansas and eastern Texas the burning bush becomes a good-sized tree and its hard, close-grained wood is peculiarly adapted to making spindles, knitting needles, skewers, and toothpicks.

"p.r.i.c.kwood" is the English name. Chinese and j.a.panese species have been added to our list of flowering trees and vines. Two shrubby species of _Euonymus_ belong to the flora of North America, but the bulk of the large family is tropical.

Our dainty little American tree skirts the edges of deep woods from New York to Montana, and southward to the Gulf. In cultivation it extends throughout New England. "Wahoo," the common name in the South, is probably of Indian origin.

THE SUMACHS

The sumach family contains more than fifty genera, confined for the most part to the warmer regions of the globe. Two fruit trees within this family are the mango and the pistachio nut tree. Commercially important also is the turpentine tree of southern Europe. The j.a.panese lacquer tree yields the black varnish used in all lacquered wares.

The cultivated sumachs of southern Europe are important in the tanning industry, their leaves containing from twenty-five to thirty per cent.

of tannic acid.

In the flora of the United States three genera of the family have tree representatives. The genus _Rhus_, with a total of one hundred and twenty species, stands first. Most of these belong to South Africa; sixteen to North America where their distribution covers practically the entire continent. Of these, four attain the habit of small trees.

Fleshy roots, pithy branchlets, and milky, or sometimes caustic or watery juice, belong to the sumachs, which are oftenest seen as roadside thickets or fringing the borders of woods. The foliage is fern-like, odd-pinnate, rarely simple. The flowers are conspicuous by their crowding into terminal or axillary panicles, followed by bony fruits, densely crowded like the flowers.

=The Staghorn Sumach=

_Rhus hirta_, Sudw.

The staghorn sumach is named for the densely hairy, forking branchlets, which look much like the horns of a stag "in the velvet."

The foliage and fruit are also densely clothed with stiff pale hairs, usually red or bright yellow.

The leaves reach two feet in length, with twenty or thirty oblong, often sickle-shaped leaflets, set opposite on the stem, and terminating in a single odd leaflet. Bright yellow-green until half grown, dark green and dull above when mature, often nearly white on the under surface, these leaves turn in autumn to bright scarlet, shading into purple, crimson, and orange. No sunset was ever more changeful and glorious than a patch of staghorn sumach that covers the ugliness of a railroad siding in October. After the leaves have fallen, the dull red fuzzy fruits persist, offering food to belated bird migrants and gradually fading to browns before spring.

The maximum height of this largest of northern sumachs is thirty-five feet. The wood of such large specimens is sometimes used for walking-sticks and for tabourets and such fancy work as inlaying.

Coa.r.s.e, soft, and brittle, it is satiny when polished, and attractively streaked with orange and green. The young shoots are cut and their pith contents removed to make pipes for drawing maple sap from the trees in sugaring time.

But the best use of the tree is for ornamental planting. In summer, the ugliness of the most unsightly bank is covered where this tree is allowed to run wild and throw up its root suckers unchecked. The ma.s.s effect of its fern-like foliage in spring is superb, when the green is lightened by the fine cl.u.s.ters of pink blossoms. No tree carries its autumn foliage longer nor blazes with greater splendor in the soft suns.h.i.+ne of the late year. The hairy staghorn branches, bared of leaves, hold aloft their fruits like lighted candelabra far into the waning winter. For screens and border shrubs this sumach may become objectionable, by reason of its habit of spreading by suckers as well as seed.

Its choice of situations is broken uplands and dry, gravelly banks.

Its range extends from New Brunswick to Minnesota and southward through the Northern states, and along the mountains to the Gulf states. In cultivation, it is found in the Middle West and on the Atlantic seaboard, and is a favorite in central and northern Europe.

=The Dwarf Sumach=

_R. copallina_, Linn.

The black dwarf, or mountain sumach, is smaller, with softer, closer velvet coating its twigs and lining its leaves, than the burly staghorn sumach wears. It grows all over the eastern half of the United States, even to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and rises to thirty feet in height above a short, stout trunk in the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina. Its leaves are the most beautiful in the sumach family. They are six to eight inches long, the central stalk bearing nine to twenty-one dark green leaflets, l.u.s.trous above, lined with silvery p.u.b.escence. A striking peculiarity is that the central leaf-stem is winged on each side with a leafy frill between the pairs of leaflets. In autumn, the foliage ma.s.s changes to varying shades of scarlet and crimson. The flower cl.u.s.ters are copious and loose, and the heavy fruits nod from their great weight and show the most beautiful shades, ranging from yellow to dull red. Sterile soil is often covered by extensive growths of this charming shrubby tree which spreads by underground root-stocks. It is the latest of all the sumachs to bloom.

In the South the leaves are sometimes gathered in summer to be dried and pulverized for use in tanning leather. A yellow dyestuff is also extracted from them. It is a favorite sumach for ornamental planting in this country and in Europe.

=The Poison Sumach=

_R. Vernix_, Linn.

The poison sumach is a small tree with slender drooping branches, smooth, reddish brown, dotted on the twigs with orange-colored breathing holes, becoming orange-brown and gray as the bark thickens.

The trunk is often somewhat fluted under a smooth gray rind. This is one of the most brilliant and beautiful of all the sumachs, but _unfortunately it is deadly poisonous, more to be dreaded than the poison ivy of our woods_, and the poisonwood of Florida, both of which are near relatives. By certain traits we may always know, with absolute certainty, a poison sumach when we find it. _Look at the berries. If they droop and are grayish white, avoid touching the tree_, no matter how alluring the wonderful scarlet foliage is.

_Poison sumachs grow only in the swamps. We should suspect any sumach that stands with its feet in the water_, whether it bears flowers and fruit or not. The temptation is strongest when one is in the woods gathering brilliant foliage for decoration of the home for the holidays. The bitter poisonous juice that exudes from broken stems turns black almost at once. This warning comes late, however, for as it dries upon the hands it poisons the skin. Handled with care, this juice becomes a black, l.u.s.trous, durable varnish, but it is not in general use.

=The Smooth Sumach=