Trees Worth Knowing Part 22

=The Persimmon=

_Diospyros Virginiana_, Linn.

The persimmon will never be forgotten by the Northerner who chances to visit his Virginia cousins in the early autumn. Strolling through the woods he notes among other unfamiliar trees a tall shaft covered with black bark, deeply checked into squarish plates. The handsome round head, held well aloft, bears a shock of angular twigs and among the glossy, orange-red leaves hang fruits the size and shape of his Northern crabapples. The rich orange-red makes it extremely attractive, and the enthusiasm with which the entire population regards the approaching persimmon harvest focuses his interest likewise upon this unknown Southern fruit. He is eager to taste it without delay, and usually there is no one to object. Forthwith he climbs the tree, or beats a branch with a long pole until a good specimen is obtained. Its thin skin covers the mellow flesh--but the first bite is not followed by a second. The fruit is so puckery that it almost strangles one.

But after the frosts and well on into the winter the persimmons grow more sweet, juicy, and delicious, and lose all their bitterness and astringency. To find a few of these sugary morsels in the depths of the woods at the end of a long day's hunting is a reward that offsets all disappointments of an empty bag. No fruit could be more utterly satisfying to a dry-mouthed, leg-weary, hungry boy.

The opossum is the chief compet.i.tor of the local negro in harvesting the persimmon crop. Individual trees differ in the excellence of their fruit. These special trees are "spotted" months before the crop is fit to eat. It would seem as if the opossums camp under the best persimmon trees and take an unfair advantage, because they are nocturnal beasts and have nothing to do but watch and wait. One thing solaces the negro, when he sees the harvest diminish through the unusual industry and appet.i.te of his bright-eyed, rat-tailed rival. He knows what brush-pile or hollow tree shelters the opossum, while he sleeps by day. Every persimmon the opossum steals helps to make him fat and tender for the darkey's Thanksgiving feast, so it is only a question of patience and strategy to recoup his losses by feasting on his fat 'possum neighbor, and to boast to the friends who join him at the feast, of the contest of wits at which he came off victorious.

In summer time a persimmon tree is handsome in its oval pointed leaves, often six inches long, with pale linings. The flowers that appear in axillary cl.u.s.ters on the sterile trees are small, yellowish green and inconspicuous. On the fertile trees the flowers are solitary and axillary. The fruit is technically a berry, containing one to eight seeds.

The following first impressions of persimmons in Virginia woods are from the pen of a traveler in the early part of the seventeenth century, whom Pocahontas might have introduced to a fruit well known to the Indians:

"They have a plumb which they call pessemmins, like to a medler, in England, but of a deeper tawnie cullour; they grow on a most high tree. When they are not fully ripe, they are harsh and choakie, and furre in a man's mouth like allam, howbeit, being taken fully ripe, yt is a reasonable pleasant fruiet, somewhat lushious. I have seen our people put them into their baked and sodden puddings; there be whose tast allows them to be as pretious as the English apric.o.c.k; I confess it is a good kind of horse plumb."

"'Simmon beer" and brandy are made from the fruit, and its seeds are roasted to use when coffee is scarce. The inner bark of the tree has tonic properties, and the country folk use it for the allaying of intermittent fevers. The wood is used in turnery, for shoe lasts, plane stocks and shuttles. It is a peculiarity of the persimmon tree that almost one hundred layers of pale sap-wood, the growth of as many years, lie outside of the black heart-wood, upon which the reputation of ebony rests.

The j.a.panese Persimmon

Kaki

The native persimmon of j.a.pan has been developed into an important horticultural fruit. China also has species that are fruit trees of merit. In the fruit stalls of all American cities, the j.a.panese persimmon is found in its season, the smooth, orange-red skin, easily mistaken for that of a tomato as the fruits lie in their boxes. The pointed cones differ in form, however, and the soft mellow flesh, with its melon-like seeds and leathery calyx at base, mark this fruit as still a novelty in the East.

In southern California no garden is complete without a j.a.panese persimmon tree to give beauty by its cheerful, leathery, green leaves and its rich-colored fruits. But the beginner will establish a grave personal prejudice against this fruit unless he wait until it is dead ripe, for it has the astringent qualities of its genus. No fruit is more delicate in flavor than a thoroughly ripe kaki, so soft that it must be eaten with a spoon.

The Department of Agriculture at Washington has established a number of varieties of these oriental fruit trees in the warmer parts of the United States. Our native persimmons are being used as stock upon which to graft the exotics. A distinct addition to the fruits of this country has thus been made and the public is fast learning to enjoy the luscious, wholesome j.a.panese persimmons.

PART VI

THE POD-BEARING TREES

The Locusts--The Acacias or Wattles--Other Pod-bearers

Whenever we see blossoms of the sweet-pea type on a tree or pods of the same type as the pea's swinging from the twigs, we may be sure that we are looking at a member of the pod-bearing family, _leguminosae_, to which herbaceous and woody plants both belong. The family is one of the largest and most important in the plant kingdom, and its representatives are distributed to the uttermost parts of the earth. Four hundred and fifty genera contain the seven thousand species already described by botanists. Varieties without number belong to the cultivated members of the family, and new forms are being produced by horticulturists all the time. This great group of plants has fed the human race, directly and indirectly, since the First Man appeared on earth. Clovers, alfalfas, lentils, peas, beans yield foodstuffs rich in all the elements that build flesh and bone and nerve tissues. They take the place of meat in vegetarian dietaries.

Besides foods, the pod-bearers yield rubber, dyestuffs, balsams, oils, medicinal substances, and valuable timber. A long list of ornamental plants, beautiful in foliage and flowers, occurs among them, chiefly of shrub and tree form.

Last, but not least, among their merits stands the fact that leguminous plants are the only ones that actually enrich the soil they grow in, whereas the rest of the plant creation feed upon the soil, and so rob it of its plant food and leave it poorer than before.

Pod-bearers have the power to take the nitrogen out of the air, and store it in their roots and stems. The decay of these parts restores to the soil the particular plant food that is most commonly lacking and most costly to replace. Farmers know that after wheat and corn have robbed the soil of nitrogen, a crop of clover or cow peas, plowed under when green and luxuriant, is the best restorer of fertility. It enriches by adding valuable chemical elements, and also improves the texture of the soil, increasing its moisture-holding properties, which commercial fertilizers do not.

Seventeen genera of leguminous plants have tree representatives within the United States. These include about thirty species. Valuable timber trees are in this group. All but one, the yellow-wood, have compound leaves, of many leaflets, often fern-like in their delicacy of structure, and intricacy of pattern. With few exceptions the flowers are pretty and fragrant in showy cl.u.s.ters. The ripening pods of many species add a striking, decorative quality to the tree from midsummer on through the season. Thorns give distinction and usefulness to certain of these trees, making them available for ornamental hedges.

THE LOCUSTS

Three representatives of the genus _robinia_ are among our native forest trees. They are known in early summer by their showy, pea-like blossoms in full cl.u.s.ters, and their compound leaves, that have the habit of drooping and folding shut their paired leaflets when night comes on, or when rain begins to fall. The pods are thin and small, splitting early, but hanging late on the twigs.

=The Black Locust=

_Robinia Pseudacacia_, Linn.

The black or yellow locust is a beautiful tree in its youth, with smooth dark rind and slender trunk, holding up a loose roundish head of dark green foliage. Each leaf is eight to fourteen inches long, of nine to nineteen leaflets, silvery when they unfold, and always paler beneath. In late May, the tree-top bursts into bloom that is often so profuse as to whiten the whole ma.s.s of the dainty foliage.

The nectar-laden, white flowers have the characteristic "b.u.t.terfly"

form, the banner, wings, and keel of the type pease-blossom. (_See ill.u.s.tration, page 198_). The bees lead the insect host that swarms about them as long as a locust flower remains to offer sweets to the probing tongues. Cross-fertilization is the advantage the tree gains for all it gives. The crop of seeds is sure.

The angled twigs of the black locust break easily in windy weather.

The rapid growth of the limbs spreads the narrow head, and its symmetry is soon destroyed, unless the tree grows in a sheltered situation. An old locust is usually an ugly, broken specimen, ragged-looking for three-fourths of the year. The twigs look dead, because their winter buds are buried out of sight! The bark is dull, deeply cut into irregular, interlacing furrows, roughened by scales and shreds on the ridges. In winter the pods chatter querulously, as the wind plays among the tree tops.

The black locust is found from Pennsylvania to Iowa, and south from Georgia to Oklahoma. The lumber is coa.r.s.e-grained, heavy, hard, and exceptionally durable in contact with the soil or water. This makes it especially adaptable for fence posts and boat bottoms. Crystals, called _raphides_, in the wood cells, take the edges off tools used in working locust lumber. Yet it is sought by manufacturers of mill cogs and wheel hubs, and railroad companies plant the trees for ties.

The locust-borer has ruined plantations of this tree of late years, and trees in the woods have become infested except in mountainous regions not yet reached by the pest. Trees become distorted with warty excrescences and the lumber is riddled with burrows made by the larvae. Until the entomologist finds a remedy in some natural parasite of the locust-borer, the outlook for locust culture seems dark enough. No insecticide can reach an enemy that hides in the trunk of the tree it destroys.

=The Clammy Locust=

_R. viscosa_, Vent.

The clammy locust has beautifully shaded pink flowers in cl.u.s.ters, each blossom accented by the dark red, shiny calyx, and the glandular exudation of wax, that covers all new growth. A favorite ornamental locust, this little tree has been widely distributed in this and other temperate countries of the globe. Its leaves are delicately feathery, with the dew-like gum brightening them, as it does also the hairy, curling pods that flush as they ripen. In winter the twigs are ruddy. The trees grow wild on the mountains of the Carolinas and nowhere else.

=The Honey Locust=

_Gleditsia triacanthos_, Linn.

The honey locust is a tall handsome flat-topped tree, with stiff horizontal, often drooping branches, ending in slim brown polished twigs, with three-branched thorns, stout and very sharp, set a little distance above the leaf scar of the previous season.

Occasionally a thornless tree occurs.

Inconspicuous greenish flowers, regular, bell-shaped, appear in elongated cl.u.s.ters, the fertile and sterile cl.u.s.ters distinct, but on the same tree. The leaves are almost full-grown when the blossoms appear. Their feathery, fern-like aspect is the tree's greatest charm in early June. When the pods replace the flowers they attract attention and admiration as their velvety surfaces change from pale green to rose and they curve, as they lengthen, into all sorts of graceful and fantastic forms. The sweet, gummy pulp of the honey locust pods is considered edible by boys, who brave the thorns to get them. As the autumn approaches, the pulp turns bitter, and dries around the shiny black seeds. The purple pods cling and rattle in the wind long after the yellow leaves have fallen. One by one, they are torn off, their S-curves tempting every vagrant breeze to give them a lift. On the crusty surface of s...o...b..nks and icy ponds, they are whirled along, and finally lodge, to rot and liberate the seeds.

It takes much soaking to prepare the adamantine seeds for sprouting.

The planter scalds his seed to hasten the process. Nature soaks, freezes, and thaws them, and thus the range of the honey locust is extended.

In the wild, this tree is found from Ontario to Nebraska, and south to Alabama and Texas. It chooses rich bottom lands, but is found also on dry gravelly slopes of the Alleghany Mountains. Trunks six feet in diameter are still in existence, preserved from the early forests of the Wabash Basin in Indiana. They tower nearly one hundred and fifty feet above the ground, and their branches are a formidable array of thorns (_see ill.u.s.tration, page 198_), that have grown into proportions unmatched in trees of slender build and fewer years. Such a veteran honey locust is one of the most picturesque figures in a winter landscape.

Honey locust wood is hard, coa.r.s.e-grained, heavy, and durable in contact with water and soil. It is made into wheel-hubs, fence-posts, and fuel. In all temperate countries this species has been used as a shade and ornamental tree and as a hedge plant.