The Apple-Tree Part 1

The Apple-Tree.

by L. H. Bailey.

I

WHERE THERE IS NO APPLE-TREE

The wind is snapping in the bamboos, knocking together the resonant canes and weaving the myriad flexile wreaths above them. The palm heads rustle with a brisk crinkling music. Great ferns stand in the edge of the forest, and giant arums cling their arms about the trunks of trees and rear their dim jacks-in-the-pulpit far in the branches; and in the greater distance I know that green parrots are flying in twos from tree to tree. The plant forms are strange and various, making mosaic of contrasting range of leaf-size and leaf-shape, palm and gra.s.s and fern, epiphyte and liana and clumpy mistletoe, of grace and clumsiness and even misproportion, a tall thick landscape all mingled into a symmetry of disorder that charms the attention and fascinates the eye.

It is a soft and delicious air wherein I sit. A torrid drowse is in the receding landscape. The people move leisurely, as befits the world where there is no preparation for frost and no urgent need of laborious apparel. There are tardy bullock-carts, unconscious donkeys, and men pushing vehicles. There are odd products and unaccustomed cakes and cookies on little stands by the roadside, where the turbaned vendor sits on the ground unconcernedly.

There are strange fruits in the carts, on the donkeys that move down the hillsides from distant plantations in the heart of the jungle, on the trees by winding road and thatched cottage, in the great crowded markets in the city. I recognize coconuts and mangoes, star-apples and custard-apples and cherimoyas, papayas, guavas, mamones, pomegranates, figs, christophines, and the varied range of citrus fruits. There are also great polished apples in the markets, coming from cooler regions, tied by their stems, good to look at but impossible to relish; and I understand how these people of the tropics think the apple an inferior fruit, so successfully do the poor varieties stop the desire for more.

There are vegetables I have never seen before.

I am conscious of a slowly moving landscape with people and birds and beasts of burden and windy vegetation, of prospects in which there are no broad smooth farm fields with fences dividing them, of scenery full of herbage, in which every lineament and action incite me and stimulate my desire for more, of days that end suddenly in the blackness of night.

Yet, somehow, I look forward to the time when I may go to a more accustomed place. Either from long a.s.sociation with other scenes or because of some inexpressible deficiency in this tropic splendor, I am not satisfied even though I am exuberantly entertained. Something I miss. For weeks I wondered what single element I missed most. Out of the numberless a.s.sociations of childhood and youth and eager manhood it is difficult to choose one that is missed more than another. Yet one day it came over me startlingly that I missed the apple-tree,--the apple-tree, the sheep, and the milch cattle!

The farm home with its commodious house, its greensward, its great barn and soft fields and distant woods, and the apple-tree by the wood-shed; the good home at the end of the village with its sward and shrubbery, and apple roof-tree; the orchard, well kept, trim and apple-green, yielding its wagon-loads of fruits; the old tree on the hillside, in the pasture where generations of men have come and gone and where houses have fallen to decay; the odor of the apples in the cellar in the cold winter night; the feasts around the fireside,--I think all these pictures conjure themselves in my mind to tantalize me of home.

And often in my wanderings I promise myself that when I reach home I shall see the apple-tree as I had never seen it before. Even its bark and its gnarly trunk will hold converse with me, and its first tiny leaves of the budding spring will herald me a welcome. Once again I shall be a youth with the apple-tree, but feeling more than the turbulent affection of transient youth can understand. Life does not seem regular and established when there is no apple-tree in the yard and about the buildings, no orchards blooming in the May and laden in the September, no baskets heaped with the crisp smooth fruits; without all these I am still a foreigner, sojourning in a strange land.

II

THE APPLE-TREE IN THE LANDSCAPE

The April sun is soft on the broad open fenced fields, waking them gently from the long deep sleep of winter. Little rills are running full. The gra.s.s is newly coolly green. Fresh sprouts are in the sod.

By copse and highway the shad-bushes salute with their handkerchiefs.

Apple-trees show tips of verdure. It is good to see the early greens of changing spring. It is good to look abroad on an apple-tree landscape.

As to its vegetation, the landscape is low and flat, not tall. There is a vast uniformity in plant forms, a subdued and constrained humility. A month later the leaf.a.ge will be in glory, but that also will have an aspect of sameness and moderation. Perhaps the actual variety of species will be greater than in many parts of the abounding tropics, and to the careful observer the luxuriance will be as great, although not so big; but as I look abroad I am impressed with the economy of the prospect. It comes nearer to my powers of a.s.similation, quiets me with a deep satisfaction; the contrasts are subdued, the processes grade into each other imperceptibly in the land of the lingering twilight.

In this prospect are maples and elms and apple-trees. The maples and elms are of the fields and roadsides. The apple-trees are of human habitations and human labor; they cl.u.s.ter about the buildings, or stand guard at a gate; they are in plantations made by hands. As I see them again, I wonder whether any other plant is so characteristically a home-tree.

So is the apple-tree, even when full grown, within the reach of children. It can be climbed. Little swings are hung from the branches.

Its shade is low and familiar. It bestows its fruit liberally to all alike.

The apple is a st.u.r.dy tree. Short of trunk and short of continuous limb, it is yet a stout and rugged object, the indirectness of its branching branches adding to its picturesque quality. It is a tree of good structure. Although its limbs eventually arch to the ground, if left to themselves, they yet have great strength. The angularity of the branching, the frequent forking, the big healing or hollow knots with rounding callus-lips, give the tree character. Anywhere it would be a marked tree, unlike any other.

The bark on the older surface sheds in short oblong irregular scales or plates that detach perhaps at both ends and often at the sides, clinging by the middle until the curl loosens them and they fall to the ground. These plates or chips are more or less rowed up and down the trunk and on the larger branches, yet the apple bark is not ridged and furrowed as on the elm. The bark is not checked in squares as on old pear-trees nor peeling as on cherries. In dry weather, the loose old bark is dark brown-gray, often supporting gray lichens, but in rain it is soft and nearly black, yielding pleasantly to the touch. In the forks, the bark is not so readily cast and there the chips may lie in heaps. On the young limbs and small trunks the bark is tight and close, not splitting into seams or furrows with the expansion of the cylinder but stretching and throwing off detached flakes and chips.

Under the chips various insects hide or make some of their transformations. There the codlin-moth pupates. The old remains of scale insects may be found on the exterior. In the furrows about the dormant buds the eggs of plant-lice pa.s.s the winter.

To destroy these breeding and hiding places, many careful apple-growers sc.r.a.pe away the loose bark, being careful not to expose the quick living tissue; and on the younger wood the eggs of aphis and other pests, as well as coc.o.o.ns and nymphs, are destroyed by vigorous winter spraying. The regular spraying of apple-trees, in the different seasons, more or less sterilizes the bark. Many forms of canker, due to fungi and bacteria, invade the bark, making sunken areas and scars, often so serious as to destroy the tree. All these features are discoverable in the apple-tree.

The trunk of the apple-tree is short and stout, usually not perfectly cylindrical and not prominently b.u.t.tressed at the base. In old trees it is usually ribbed or ridged, sometimes tortuous with spiral-like grooves, often showing the bulge where the graft was set. The wood is fine-grained and of good color, and lends itself well to certain kinds of cabinet work and to the turning-lathe for household objects; it should be better known.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 2. The apple-tree in the landscape]

If left to itself, the tree branches near the ground, making many strong secondary scaffold trunks; but the plant does not habitually have more than one bole, even though it may branch from the very base; it is a real tree, even though small, and not a huge shrub. In the natural condition, the trunk often rises only a foot or two before it is lost in the branches; at other times it may be four or six feet high. Under cultivation, the lowest branches are usually removed when the tree begins to grow, and an evident clean trunk is produced. In Europe and the Eastern States, it has been the practice to trim the trunk clean to the height of four or six feet; but in hotter and drier regions the trunk is kept short to insure against sun-scald; and with the better tillage implements of the present day it may not be necessary to train the heads so high.

In old hill pastures, in many parts of the North, one sees curious umbrella forms and other shapes of apple-trees, due to browsing by cattle. A little tree gets a start in the pasture. When cattle are turned in, they browse the tender terminal growth. The plant spreads at the base, in a horizontal direction. With the repeated browsing on top, the tree becomes a dense conical mound. Eventually, the leader may get a strong headway, and grows beyond the reach of the browsers.

As it rises out of grasp, it sends off its side shoots, forming a head. The cattle browse the under side of this head, as far as they are able to reach, causing the tree to a.s.sume a grotesque hour-gla.s.s shape, flat on the under part of the head, with a cone of green herbage at the ground. Sometimes pastures are full of little hummocks of trees that have not yet been able to overtop the grazers.

The winter apple-tree in the free is a rea.s.suring object. It has none of the sleekness of many horticultural forms, nor the fragility of peaches, sour cherries and plums. It stands boldly against the sky, with its elbows at all angles and its scaly bark holding the snow.

Against evergreens it shows its ruggedness specially well. It presents forms to attract the artist. Even when gnarly and broken, it does not convey an impression of decrepitude and decay but rather of a hardy old character bearing his burdens. In every winter landscape I look instinctively for the apple-tree.

We are so accustomed to the apple-tree as a part of an orchard, where it is trimmed into shape and its bolder irregularities controlled, that we do not think it has beauty when left to itself to grow as it will. An apple-tree that takes its own course, as does a pine-tree or an oak, is looked on as unkempt and unprofitable and as a sorry object in the landscape, advertizing the neglect of the owner. Yet if the apple-tree had never borne good fruit, we should plant it for its bloom and its picturesqueness as we plant a hawthorn or a locust-tree.

In winter and in summer, and in the months between, my apple-tree is a great fact. It is a character in the population of my scenery, standing for certain human emotions. The tree is a living thing, not merely a something that bears apples.

III

THE BUDS ON THE TWIGS

Now the buds begin to break. The firm winter-buds swell. Their scales part. Tips of green appear. Tiny leaves come forth, neatly rolled inward, growing as they expand, the stalks lengthening. Resurrection is astir in the tree.

Several leaves issue from every bud. From some buds arise only leaves; from others a flower-cl.u.s.ter emerges from the leaf-rosette, showing faint color even before it expands. Very close together and tight these unopened little flowers are packed as they emerge; if we had looked at them with a lens as they lay in the bud in the long winter we should understand why; now they escape their bonds and rapidly grow as they are delivered, yet at first pressed together by head and stem in their soft gray wool.

Thus are there two kinds of buds on the twig of the bearing apple-tree,--the leaf-buds (sending forth leaves only), and the flower-buds (bearing both leaves and flowers). And if we wish to a.n.a.lyze more closely, we discover two kinds of leaf-buds,--those that send forth a rapidly growing shoot bearing the leaves, and those from which the leaf-cl.u.s.ter remains practically sessile on the branch.

These latter, or the strongest and best of them, will probably give rise to short fruiting spurs and the others to elongated leafy branches.

Before me as I write is an apple limb more than three feet long. It has been a vigorous grower, for it is only three years old. The years can be readily made out; there are two sets of "rings" separating them. You may see these rings on all young apple limbs. They represent the scars of the scales of the past terminal buds.

Three years ago my shoot was sent off from its parent branch; that year it grew but four inches, bearing leaves on its sides, in the axils of which developed buds for the winter and at the end a larger terminal bud. Let us call this shoot 1918. Two years ago (1919), whilst I was in a distant land, the terminal bud gave rise to a shoot nineteen inches long; two buds near the end of the 1918 shoot pushed out cl.u.s.ters of leaves and made spurs about one-half inch long; all the other buds, five in number, remained dormant, and now they are dead and are rapidly becoming mere scars. Last year (1920) the terminal bud of 1919 gave rise to a shoot fifteen inches long; three buds at the base of this two-year (1919) shoot remained dormant; fourteen buds produced spurs. It is now the spring of 1921; the 1920 shoot has four dormant buds at its base, ten rosettes of leaves from the other buds, and a pushing terminal shoot.

On my branch this year, therefore, are 5 plus 3 plus 4, or 12 dormant buds of all the years; 2 plus 14 plus 10, or 26 spurs; 1 terminal bud continuing the onward growth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 3. The bloom of the apple-tree]

It is evident that the last two years were good ones for my apple limb, for the growths were long (19 and 15 inches) and most of the buds produced spurs. The result is evidenced also in the fact that the limb is this year laden with potential bloom. On 1918 the two spurs bear flowers, one of them only a single bloom and the other five blooms. On 1919 twelve of the fourteen spurs are bearing flowers in the following numbers: 5 flowers, 5, 5, 7, 5, 6, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 = 63 flowers. On 1920 are no spurs bearing flowers, but the terminal bud (as is frequent on vigorous young trees) bears five flowers. Here, therefore, on this yard of three-year-old twig are seventy-four blossoms.

But there will not be seventy-four fruits; some of the flowers are small and weak; others, as the petals fall, show unmistakable signs of failing. A few of them show the plump form of an embryo apple: I think there are a score of such promises. But I know that others will fail later from physiological causes, and others probably from onslaught of insects or disease or from accidents. If six fair fruits mature on a branch like this, the crop will be good; and probably the branch would not have vigor enough to set as many fruit-buds the following year or to bear as many fruits.

It is good to watch the opening of the apple bloom: pink buds swelling and puffing out each day, the woolly stems elongating, the five overlapping incurving petals spreading and growing big, the stamens, about twenty, straightening up and lengthening their filaments that are attached on the flower-rim; the big light yellow anthers shedding pollen; the five green styles in the center. In some flowers the styles do not develop, and we have one reason why many flowers are sterile.

The flower-cl.u.s.ters differ much among themselves, in size of parts, number of flowers, color; on some trees the flowers appear in advance of most of the leaf.a.ge, but usually they are coincident with the leaves. Sometimes the flower-stems or peduncles are branched, bearing two or three flowers, and in that case there may be a small green leaf or bract where the fork arises. The placing of the petals in the bud at the epoch of expansion may differ in two flowers on the same tree.

One petal may stand guard outside the others and free from them, both edges uncovered, while the remaining petals are spiral with one edge under and one edge over; or there may be two guard petals, one on either side; or sometimes all the petals may be spiral, one margin out, one margin in; in some cases all the petals stand free as the flower is expanding, with no margin interlapping. Sometimes one petal is missing, and again the petals may be six.

This infinite variety within the bonds of so great regularity lends a subtle charm to natural objects, that is wholly absent in man's perfected machine-work. Man aims at uniformity, two and two alike; nature aims at endless difference, every object or even every member of an object having its own character. Much of man's energy is expended in trying to overcome the diverseness of nature.