Trees Worth Knowing Part 18

_R. glabra_, Linn.

The smooth sumach (_see ill.u.s.trations, pages 150-151_) is quite as familiar as the staghorn, as a roadside shrub. It forms thickets in exactly the same way, and its foliage, flowers and fruit make it most desirable for decorative planting, especially for glorious autumnal effects. The stems are smooth and coated with a pale bluish bloom.

This is the distinguishing mark, at any season, of the sumach that often equals the other species in height, but does not belong in this book, for the reason that it never attains the stature of a tree.

THE SMOKE TREE

A favorite tree in American and European gardens is the smoke tree (_Cotinus_), a genus which has native representatives in both continents. The European _C. Cotinus_, Sarg., was brought to this country by early horticulturists and in some respects it is superior to our native_ C. America.n.u.s_, Nutt. Cultivation for centuries has given the immigrant species greater vigor and hardiness, which produces more exuberant growth throughout. Bring in a sapling of the native tree and it looks a starveling by comparison.

The glory of the smoke tree is the utter failure of its cl.u.s.tered flowers to set seed. Branching terminal panicles of minute flowers are held high above the dark green simple leaves. As they change in autumn to brilliant shades of orange and scarlet, the seed cl.u.s.ters are held aloft. The seeds are few but the panicles have expanded and show a peculiar feathery development of the bracts that take the place of the fruits. The cl.u.s.ters take on tones of pink and lavender and in the aggregate they form a great cloud made up of graceful, delicate plumes. At a little distance the tree appears as if a great cloud of rosy smoke rested upon its gorgeous foliage. Or the haze may be so pale as to look like mist. This wonderful development of the flower cl.u.s.ter is unique among garden shrubs and it places _Cotinus_ in a cla.s.s by itself. No garden with a shrubbery border is complete without a smoke tree, which is interesting and beautiful at any season.

In its native haunts our American smoke tree is found in small isolated groves or thickets, along the sides of rocky ravines or dry barren hillsides in Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas, and in eastern Tennessee and northern Alabama.

THE HOLLIES

The holly family, of five genera, is distributed from the north to the south temperate zones, with representation in every continent. It includes trees and shrubs of one hundred and seventy-five species, seventy of which grow in northern Brazil. The dried and powdered leaves of two holly trees of Paraguay are commercially known as mate, or Paraguay tea, to which the people of South America are addicted, as we are to the tea of China. "Yerba mate" has a remarkable, stimulating effect upon the human system, fortifying it for incredible exertions and endurance. Indulged in to excess, it has much the effect of alcohol.

China and j.a.pan have thirty different species of holly. America has fourteen, four of which a.s.sume tree form; the rest are shrubby "winterberries."

=European Holly=

_Ilex aquifolium_, Linn.

The holly of Europe is perhaps the most popular ornamental tree in the world, cultivated in Europe through centuries, and now coming to be a favorite garden plant wherever hardy in the United States. Some indication of its popularity abroad is found in the fact that one hundred and fifty-three distinct horticultural varieties are in cultivation. The Englishman makes hedges of it, and depends upon it to give life and color to his lawn and flower borders in the winter. The fellfare or fieldfare, a little thrush, feeds upon the tempting red berries in winter; but even when these dashes of color are all gone, the brilliance of the spiny-margined leaves enlivens any landscape.

Americans know the European holly chiefly through importations of the cut branches offered in the markets for Christmas decoration. The leaf is small, brilliantly polished, and very deeply indented between long, spiny tips, giving it a far more decorative quality than the native evergreen holly of the South.

Many varieties of the European holly are found in American gardens, particularly near eastern cities. North of Washington they must be tied up in straw for the winter, and in the lat.i.tude of Boston it is a struggle to keep them alive. From southern California to Vancouver, no such precautions are necessary, and the little trees deserve a much wider popularity than they yet enjoy. Grown commercially, they are the finest of Christmas greens.

=American Holly=

_I. Opaca_, Ait.

The American holly also yields its branches for Christmas greens. In the remotest village in the North one may now buy at any grocery store a sprig of red-berried holly to usher in the holiday season. The tree is a small one at best, slow-growing, pyramidal, twenty to forty feet in height, with short, horizontal branches and tough, close-grained white wood. It is rare to find so close an imitation of ivory, in color and texture, as holly wood supplies. It is the delight of the wood engraver, who uses it for his blocks. Scroll work and turnery employ it. It is used for tool handles, walking-sticks, and whip-stocks. Veneer of holly is used in inlay work.

In southern woods and barren fallow fields where hollies grow, collectors, without discrimination, cut many trees each autumn, strip them of their branches, and leave the trunks to rot upon the ground.

The increasing demand for Christmas holly seriously threatens the present supply, for no methods are being practised for its renewal. It will not be long before the wood engraver will have to buy his blocks by the pound, as he does the eastern boxwood.

The range of this holly tree extends from southern Maine to Florida, throughout the Gulf states, and north into Indiana and Missouri.

=The Yaupon=

_I. vomitoria_, Ait.

The yaupon is a shrubby tree of spreading habit, with very small, oval, evergreen leaves and red berries. It grows from Virginia to Florida and west to Texas and Arkansas. A nauseating beverage, made by boiling its leaves, was the famous "black drink" of the Indians. A yearly ceremonial, in which the whole tribe took part, was the persistent drinking of this tea for several days, the object being a thorough cleansing of the system.

PART V

WILD RELATIVES OF OUR ORCHARD TREES

The Apples??The Plums??The Cherries??The Hawthorns??The Service-berries??The Hackberries??The Mulberries??The Figs??The Papaws??The Pond Apples??The Persimmons

THE APPLES

The chance apple tree beside the road, with fruit too gnarly to eat, is common on roadsides throughout New England. Occasionally one of these trees bears edible fruit, but this is not the rule. Perhaps the seed thus planted was from the core of a very delicious apple, nibbled close, and thrown away with regret. But trees thus planted are seedlings and seedling apple trees "revert" to the ancient parent of the race, the wild apple of eastern Asia. Horticulture began long ago to improve these wild trees, and through the centuries improvement and variation have stocked the orchards of all temperate countries with the mult.i.tude of varieties we know. A visit in October to Nova Scotia or to the Yakima Valley in Washington, is an eye-opener. Thousands of acres of the choicest varieties of this most satisfying of all fruits show the debt we owe to patient scientists, whose work has so enriched the food supply of the world.

The pear, the quince, and the curious medlar, with its core exposed at the blossom end--all relatives of the apple--trace their lineage to European and Asiatic wild ancestors. The Siberian crab, native of northern Asia, is the parent of our hard-fleshed, slender-stemmed garden crabapples. j.a.pan has given us some wonderful apple trees, with fruit no larger than cherries, cultivated solely for their flowers.

The ornamental flora of America has been greatly enriched by these varieties.

Four native apples are found in American woods. Horticulturists have produced new varieties by crossing some of these st.u.r.dy natives with cultivated apples, or their seedling offspring.

=The Prairie Crab=

_Malus Ioensis_, Britt.

The prairie crabapple is the woolly twigged, pink-blossomed wild crab of the woods, from Minnesota and Wisconsin to Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana. It has crossed with the roadside "wilding" trees and produced a hybrid known to horticulture as the Soulard apple, from its discoverer. These wild trees bear fruit that is distinctly an improvement upon that of either parent. It is regarded as a distinctly promising apple for the coldest of the prairie states, and has already become the parent of several improved varieties.

=The Wild Crab=

_M. coronaria_. Mill.

Throughout the wooded regions, from the Great Lakes to Texas and Alabama, the wild crabapple brightens the spring landscape with its rose-colored, spicy-scented blossoms. The little trees huddle together, their flat tops often matted and reaching out sidewise from under the shade of the other forest trees. The twigs are crabbed indeed in winter, but they silver over with the young foliage in April. The coral flower buds sprinkle the new leaves, and through May a great burst of rose-colored bloom overspreads the tree-tops. It is not sweetness merely that these flowers exhale, but an exquisite, spicy, stimulating fragrance, by which one always remembers them.

The pioneers made jellies and preserves out of the little green apples (_see ill.u.s.trations, pages 150-151_), which lost some of their acrid quality by hanging on until after a good frost. There are those who still gather these fruits as their parents and grandparents did. In their opinion the wild tang and the indescribable piquancy of flavor in jellies made from this fruit are unmatched by those of any other fruit that grows.

THE PLUMS

The genus _prunus_ belongs to the rose family and includes shrubs and trees with stone fruits. Of the over one hundred species, thirty are native to North America; but ten of them a.s.sume tree form, and all but one are small trees. Related to them are the garden cherries and plums, native to other countries, and the peach, the apricot, and the almond, found in this country only in horticultural varieties. The wood of _prunus_ is close-grained, solid, and durable, and a few of the species are important timber trees. The simplest way to identify a member of the genus is to break a twig at any season of the year and taste the sap. If it is bitter and astringent with hydrocyanic acid (the flavor we get in fresh peach-pits and bitter almonds), we may be sure we have run the tree down to the genus _prunus_.

=The Wild Red Plum=

_Prunus America.n.u.s_, Marsh.

The wild red or yellow plum forms dense thickets in moist woods and along river banks from New York to Texas and Colorado. Its leafless, gnarled, and th.o.r.n.y twigs are covered in spring with dense cl.u.s.ters of white bloom, honey-sweet in fragrance, a carnival of pleasure and profit to bees and other insects. In hot weather this nectar often ferments and sours before the blossoms fall. The abundant dry pollen is scattered by the wind. The plum crop depends more upon wind than upon insects, for the pollination period is very brief.

After the frost in early autumn, the pioneers of the prairie used always to make a holiday in the woods and bring home by wagon-loads the spicy, acid plums which crowded the branches and fairly lit up the thicket with the orange and red color of their puckery, thick skins.

In a land where fruit orchards were newly planted, "plum b.u.t.ter" made from the fruit of nature's orchards was gratefully acceptable through the long winters. Even when home-grown sorghum mola.s.ses was the only available sweetening, the healthy appet.i.tes of prairie boys and girls accepted this "spread" on the bread and b.u.t.ter of noon-day school lunches, as a matter of course.