Wayside and Woodland Trees Part 3

The Wych Elm (_Ulmus montana_).

Of the two species of Elms commonly grown in these islands this alone is a native, though the Common or Small-leaved Elm (_Ulmus campestris_) was introduced from the Continent by the Romans, so that it has had time to get itself widely distributed over our country. Other names for the Wych Elm are Mountain Elm, Scots Elm, and Witch Hazel--the last-named being now more generally applied to an American plant, the _Hamamelis_. The philologists appear to be uncertain as to the origin and meaning of Wych, but it seems most probably a form of Witch. Just as a Hazel-rod is used by water-finders, who declare that its movements indicate the presence of hidden springs, so a wand of _Ulmus montana_ may have furnished the Witch-finder with a Witch Hazel for the detection of witches!

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 32._ Wych Elm--summer.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 33._ Fruits of Wych Elm.]

The names _montana_, _campestris_, and Mountain Elm must not be allowed to mislead us as to the habits of the two species, for though the Wych Elm is known to reach an alt.i.tude of 3300 feet in the Alps, here it ascends only to 1300 feet (Yorks.), whilst _Ulmus campestris_, which might be understood to be less a hill-climber, grows at an elevation of 1500 feet in Derbyshire. As a matter of fact, both species are much fonder of valleys than of mountains.

The Wych Elm forms a trunk of large size, from 80 to 120 feet or more in height, with a girth of 50 feet, and covered with rough bark that is often corky. Its long slender branches spread widely with a downward tendency, the downy forking twigs bearing their leaves in a straight row along each side. The leaves are somewhat oval in general form, but the two sides of the midrib are unequal in size and shape. Their edges are doubly or trebly toothed, and the surfaces are rough and harsh to the touch. The hairs that cover the strong ribs on the under surface serve for the protection of the breathing pores from dust. On leaves of the pendulous form of this tree, grown in the London parks and gardens, these hairs will be found to be quite black with the soot particles gathered from the air. Trees need carbon, but in this gross form they are too often suffocated by it.

In March or April the brownish flowers are produced in bunches from the sides of the branches. They are a quarter of an inch long, bell-shaped, their edges cut into lobes, and finely fringed. The ovary, with its two awl-shaped styles, is surrounded by four or five stamens with purple anthers. They appear in March or April, before the leaf-buds have opened, and are dependent on the wind for the transfer of pollen. The fruit is an oblong _samara_, about an inch long. This consists of a single seed in the centre, invested by a thin envelope, which is extended all round as a light membranous wing, which gives it buoyancy and enables it to float through the air to a little distance. These seeds are not produced until about the thirtieth year of the tree's life, and though they are ripened almost annually thereafter, good crops are biennial or triennial only. It has often been stated that the Wych Elm does not send up suckers, but it does, though not invariably; it does so chiefly as the result of root-pruning or some other check to the extension of the root-system.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Wych Elm.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 34._ Bole of Wych Elm.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 35._ Wych Elm--winter.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 36._ Common Elm--summer.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 37._ Bole of Common Elm.]

The Elm most frequently seen is the Small-leaved Elm (_Ulmus campestris_), which is therefore ent.i.tled to its alternative name of Common Elm. Constantly grown as a hedgerow tree, it meets us at every turn, though it is much less plentiful in Scotland than in other parts of the United Kingdom. It is in all respects very similar to the Wych Elm, but its leaves are smaller--usually from two to three inches long, the twigs often covered with a corky bark, and the seed, instead of being in the centre of the samara, is much nearer to the notched end.

The leaves are proportionately narrower than those of _montana_, and it will be found that the hairs which cover the midrib below possess in minor degree the irritating qualities of the Nettle's stings. This is a fact not generally known, but I became painfully aware of it a few years ago when clearing away the suckers of an Elm that were encroaching too much upon my garden border. Examination of these hairs shows that they are constructed much on the same plan as those of the Nettle--a member of the same Natural Order, by the way. The fact that these leaves are browsed by cattle and deer may explain this development of the hairs, which, whilst they may serve to keep off sheep, have not yet reached a degree of acridity sufficient to protect them from the larger beasts.

Both flowers and samaras are about a third smaller than those of _montana_; but seed is very seldom produced in this country, and the tree seeks to reproduce itself by throwing up abundant suckers round the base of the bole, and even from root-branches at a considerable distance from the trunk. These, of course, if allowed to grow, would soon surround the tree with copse.

_Campestris_ often attains a greater height with its straighter trunk than _montana_, but its girth is not so great, seldom being more than twenty feet. Its dark wood is harder and finer grained than that produced by the native tree. Its favour as a hedgerow tree is probably due to the fact that it gives shade which is not obnoxious to the growth of gra.s.s. Both species are subject to a great amount of variation, and in nurserymen's catalogues these forms have appropriate names, but they are not regarded as of sufficient permanence to merit scientific distinction. In point of age--Elms are known to exceed five hundred years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Common Elm.]

Among the insects that feed upon the Elm's foliage, the most noteworthy is the caterpillar of the fine Large Tortoisesh.e.l.l b.u.t.terfly (_Vanessa polychloros_). I have already mentioned the relationship subsisting between Elms and Nettles, and it is a point worth noting that nearly all our native species of _Vanessa_ feed in the larval state upon the leaves of the Nettle. In London parks and squares the Elms are much infested by the caterpillars of the Vapourer-moth, whose wingless females may be seen like short-legged spiders on the bark, whilst the male flutters in an apparently aimless way on wings of rich brown with central white spots.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 38._ Common Elm--winter.]

In October the leaves, which have for some time a.s.sumed a very dull dark-green tint, suddenly turn to orange, then fade to pale yellow, and fall in showers.

The name Elm was derived from the Latin _Ulmus_, and appears to indicate an instrument of punishment--probably from its rods having been used to belabour slaves. Prior remarks that the word is "nearly identical in all the Germanic and Scandinavian dialects, but does not find its root in any of them. It plays through all the vowels ... but stands isolated as a foreign word which they have adopted." This "playing through the vowels" may be thus ill.u.s.trated--Alm, aelm, and Elm (Anglo-Saxon and English); Ilme, Olm, and Ulme, in various German dialects.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 39._ Ash--summer.]

The Ash (_Fraxinus excelsior_).

So commanding, yet at the same time so light and graceful, does a well-grown Ash appear, that Gilpin called it the "Venus of the Woods."

This may appear to some to be rather too close an approach to the "Lady of the Woods" (Birch), but in our opinion it well expresses the characteristics of the two. They are both exceedingly graceful, but the beauty of the Birch is that of the nymph, whilst that of the Ash is the combined grace and strength of the G.o.ddess. I have said "a well-grown"

Ash, a phrase by which the timberman would understand a tree that had been hemmed in so closely by other trees that it has had no chance of developing as a tree, but only as a straight stout stick of wood, from eighty to one hundred feet long. _My_ well-grown Ash is in a meadow, where both soil and atmosphere are moist and cool; where it has had elbow-room to reach its long graceful arms upwards and outwards, and to cover them with the plumy circlets of long leaves. It is there, or on the outskirts of the wood, or in the hedgerow, that the Ash is able to do credit to Gilpin's name for it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ash.]

Before the reign of iron and steel was quite so universal, Ash timber was in demand for many uses where the metals have now supplanted it. It was then far more widely grown as a hedgerow tree than is now the case.

Selby laments the neglect of this former custom, which kept up a supply of tough and elastic timber, useful in all agricultural operations, and added much to the beauty of the country. No doubt the noxious drip and shade of the Ash have had much to do with this abandonment of it, for few things can live beneath it--a condition helped by its numerous fibrous roots, which quickly exhaust and drain the soil, and so starve out other plants. Although it thus drains the surface soil, it is not dependent upon these upper layers for food, for its much-branched roots extend very deeply in the porous soils it prefers.

It must not be supposed from the foregoing remarks that the Ash is confined to the lowlands. In Yorkshire it is found growing at an elevation of 1350 feet; in Mid-Germany it grows as far up as 3500 feet, and in the Alpine districts 500 feet higher still. It has a preference for the northern and eastern sides of hills, where the atmosphere is moist and cool, and the soil deep and porous, for it loves free and not stagnant moisture for its roots.

The bark of both trunk and branches is pale grey, and some look to this as the origin of the tree's English name. On examining the leafless branches in early spring, two things strike the observer--the blackness of the big opposite leaf-buds, and the stoutness of the twigs. This latter fact is due to the great size of the leaves they have to support, which implies a considerable strain in wind or rain. What are generally regarded as the leaves of the Ash are only leaflets, though they are equal in size to the leaves of most of our trees. The largest of the leaflets are about three inches in length, and there are from four to seven--mostly six--pairs, and an odd terminal one, to each leaf. They are lance-shaped, with toothed edges. The leaves are late in appearing, but, like Charles Lamb and his office-hours, they make up for it by an early departure.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 40._ Flowers of Ash.]

The flowers of the Ash are very poor affairs, for they have neither calyx nor corolla, though their a.s.sociation in large cl.u.s.ters makes them fairly conspicuous as they droop from the sides of the branches in April or May. Stamens and pistils are borne by the same or separate flowers, and both kinds or one only may be found on the same tree. The pistil is a greenish yellow pear-shaped body, and the stamens are very dark purple. The flowers are succeeded by bunches of "keys"--each one, when ripe, a narrow-oblong scale, with a notch at one end and a seed lying within at the other. The correct name for these is samaras. In looking at a bunch of these "keys"--they are something like the keys to the primitive locks of the ancients--one is struck by the fact that they all have a little twist in the wing or sail, which causes the "key" to spin steadily on the wind and reach the earth seed-end first. They are, therefore, sometimes known as "spinners." These are ripe in October; but though the trees produce seed nearly every year after the fortieth, one may chance to look at a dozen Ashes before he comes upon one that bears a seed. The reason for this lies in the fact that some trees have no female blossoms. The seeds do not germinate until the second spring after they are sown.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 41._ Bole of Ash.]

Much of the Ash-wood in use for carriage-poles, oars, axe and hammer shafts, and similar purposes where only small diameters are needed, are obtained from Ash-coppice, which rapidly produces well-developed poles.

So strong and elastic is the Ash timber when taken from young trees, that it is claimed it will bear a greater strain than any other European timber of equal thickness. The Ash is not one of the long-lived trees, its natural span being about two hundred years, but its wood is regarded as best between the ages of thirty and sixty years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 42._ Ash--winter.]

Cattle and horses are fond of Ash leaves, which were formerly much used for fodder, and still are in some districts; but it is said that to indulge cows in this food is fatal to the production of good b.u.t.ter from their milk. In some country places there is still extant a "Shrew-Ash"--a tree into which a hole has been bored sufficiently large to admit a living shrew-mouse, which has then been plugged in, to die of suffocation. A touch of a leaf from this tree was reputed to cure cramp, but especially that form of it supposed to be caused by a shrew pa.s.sing over man or beast. Then there was the Ash whose bole had been cleft that it might be a "sovran" remedy for infantile hernia. It is difficult to account for the origin of these ideas, but they are deep-rooted and die hard. John Evelyn remarks of this latter superst.i.tion: "I have heard it affirmed, with great confidence and upon experience, that the rupture, to which many children are obnoxious, is healed by pa.s.sing the infant through a wide cleft in the bole or stem of a growing Ash-tree; it is then carried a second time round the Ash, and caused to repa.s.s the same aperture as before. The rupture of the child being bound up, it is supposed to heal as the cleft of the tree closes and coalesces."

The origin of the name Ash is uncertain, though many fanciful suggestions have been made in explanation of its meaning. Its Anglo-Saxon form was aesc, a word used by the same people for spear, but that was because their spear-shafts were made of Ash-wood.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 43._ Field Maple.]

The Maple (_Acer campestre_).

There are a number of Maples in cultivation, but only three of them are commonly met with in the open, and of these one alone is a native. This is the Small-leaved, Common, or Field Maple (_Acer campestre_), a small tree that attains a height of twenty or thirty feet in the tall hedgerow or in the wood, but is most familiar as a mere bush or as a const.i.tuent of the low field-hedge. It does not grow to any considerable thickness of bole, so has no importance as timber, but the turner, the cabinet-maker, and the artist in fancy pipes and snuff-boxes, are glad to make use of its fine-grained, pale-brown wood. This is often beautifully veined, especially the wood from the roots, and as it will take a high polish, which brings out these markings plainly, it is a very desirable wood for such purposes. The brown bark gives little clue to the character of the wood it covers, for in young trees it is rough and deeply fissured, though with age it becomes smooth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Field Maple.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 44._ Fruits of Sycamore.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 45._ Sycamore--summer.]

The leaves vary greatly in size, those growing on a tree being much larger than those produced by a bush. They range from two to four inches in diameter, and are always in pairs--springing from the sides of the branch exactly opposite to each other. The general form of the leaf is kidney-shaped, but it is cut up into five lobes, which are more or less toothed. They are downy when young, of a deep green colour, but too frequently this is disguised by a thick layer of road-dust. In October they turn to a rich yellow, and the Maple is then prominent even in a distant view, for the bright colour of the foliage makes the tree stand out prominently, in strong contrast with the still deep green of the Oaks or Firs beyond.

The Maples are among the trees that have complete flowers, although in this case they happen to be greenish yellow. They are about a quarter of an inch across, have narrow sepals and narrower petals, eight stamens, and a two-lobed flattened ovary, that develops into the pair of broad-winged "keys," or samaras. These are individually much like those of the Ash, but unsymmetrical and curved, half an inch long, with their bases joined together. Sometimes in late summer these "keys" take on a colouring of deep crimson, previous to turning brown as they ripen. As a rule the contained seeds take eighteen months to germinate, though a few may start growth the first spring.

The Common Maple is thought to be indigenous only from the county of Durham to the southern coast, and in Ireland. In Scotland it is only an introduced plant that has become naturalized.

The Great Maple, Sycamore, or False Plane (_Acer pseudo-plata.n.u.s_) is not a native tree, but it appears to have been introduced from the Continent as far back as the fifteenth century, so that it has had time during the intervening centuries to get well established among us, and by means of its winged seeds to distribute itself to remote corners of our islands. It appears to be fond of exposed situations, growing to a large size even near the sea, where the salt-laden gales destroy all other deciduous trees. Recently in Ireland we ascended a hill where the planting of pines and other trees had resulted in comparative failure, and found that the wind-borne seeds of the Sycamore had produced a large number of young trees, which will probably serve later as nurses for more desirable timber-producers. The close-grained, firm wood, which can be worked with ease, is not highly esteemed.