Part 15

The small branches are greenish, striated with longitudinal and irregular white lines. The leaves are two or three inches long, oval, and of middle size. The flowers appear on the ends of the branches, included in an involucre consisting of four divisions. The head of florets thus enclosed ripens into a bunch of bright scarlet berries, surrounded by a dark purple calyx. In the autumn all the species turn to different shades of red and purple.

The little dwarf Cornel, though an herbaceous plant, deserves mention in connection with the other species. It may be compared to a flower cut off with a single whorl of leaves, and then inserted into the ground. You might suppose that the large tree Cornel was buried, and that these little whorls, with their flowers, were peeping up through the ground from the branches beneath. At some distance they are easily mistaken for wood-anemones, though on examination no resemblance is apparent. The flowers are very showy and attractive in the wild pastures and woods, and produce in the autumn a round and compact cluster of scarlet berries, which are said to be pleasant and wholesome, but rather insipid. In winter they are the food of many species of birds.

THE SUMACH.

The Sumachs are not the objects of any special admiration. They are not the favorites of nature or of art, neither adding dignity to the landscape nor expression to the canvas of the painter. But they blend their fine pinnate foliage with the wayside shrubbery, varying its appearance by their original habit of growth; and they are seen springing in little groups upon sandy plains, where they relieve the eye that might otherwise be wearied with the monotonous waste of sorrel and tufted andropogons. They display many of the characters of the tropical plants in their long compound leaves, and in the exuberant growth of their recent branches. They are distinguished by their milky, resinous, and in some cases poisonous sap.

THE VELVET SUMACH.

The most common and conspicuous species in New England is the Staghorn, or Velvet Sumach, the largest of the genus. Its name is derived from a certain likeness of its crooked branches, when deprived of their leaves, to a stag’s horn. This Sumach rises to the dignity of a tree in favorable situations, and soon becomes a handsome standard, if the suckers about the roots have no chance to grow. Though its branches are crooked and irregular, and form a spray that is absolutely ugly, the tree is very comely when wearing its leafy garniture and decked with conical bunches of crimson fruit.

The Sumach is sometimes very ornamental in situations that permit the whole ground to be occupied by it. Its natural habit of growth is in clumps, gradually spreading over a wide extent of surface. So prone is this tree to throw up suckers from its long roots, that if it meets with no opposition it is apt to monopolize the whole ground. The most appropriate places for it are the banks of railroads and other similar slopes, which are rendered firm by the network of its numerous roots. There is no other plant that would in so short a time cover a gravelly bank with wood and foliage.

The Smooth Sumach is a smaller shrub, averaging only three or four feet in height. It affects similar localities, being common on the borders of dry fields and the sides of old roads that pass over a sandy and gravelly plain. It is not readily distinguished from the larger species; but its fruit and flowers are borne in loose panicles, and its bunches have none of that downy substance that characterizes the Velvet Sumach.

THE POISON SUMACH, OR DOGWOOD.

I come now to speak of the Bohon Upas of our land,—the Poison Sumach. This is confessedly a dangerous plant, and is allied to the shrub from which the celebrated Wourali poison is made by the natives of Guiana. The poisonous properties of the sap are said to be dissipated by boiling. Hence the varnish prepared by the Chinese from the sap of this plant is free from its injurious properties. Hence also the danger of being exposed to its fumes, when its branches are burned with other brush.

The Poison Sumach is a very elegant shrub. It is prim and slender, and draws attention by its want of resemblance to other trees and shrubs in our woods. The main stems and principal branches are of an ashen-gray color, though the recent shoots, before they harden into wood, and the leaf-stems are of a fine crimson or purple. The leaves are beautifully pinnate, of a light green hue with purple veins. The flowers and fruit are greenish, inconspicuous, and without any beauty. This plant, unlike the other species, is found only in low boggy situations.

There are some unaccountable facts connected with the poisonous qualities of this tree. While some persons are affected with dangerous swellings and inflammation on the least exposure to it, others handle it, breathe its burning fumes, and even chew its leaves and branches with impunity. Some are rendered more susceptible by having been once poisoned; others, who were often injuriously affected by it in their youth, outgrow their susceptibility, and may afterwards handle the plant without danger. As certain persons are exempt from the malignant effects of this plant, there is occasionally an instance of similar effects suffered by individuals from other plants. I am acquainted with a lady who has been frequently poisoned by handling the branches of the black wild cherry. Such isolated facts serve to increase the mystery attending the subject.

A notion prevails in the country, that the recent shoots of the pitch-pine, if frequently chewed, will render any one safe from the effects of this poison. The forest undoubtedly abounds in antidotes to the injurious action of the Poison Sumach and other similar plants; and I have often thought that the impunity with which the goat browses upon narcotic herbs may be caused by the counteracting effects of other plants among the many species which he devours in the field and pasture. It is admitted that persons who spend much of their time in the woods are not liable to be affected by this poison. They may, in some way or other, become inoculated with its antidotes. I have never suffered in the least degree from it, though I have passed a considerable part of my lifetime in the forest. Catesby mentions a fact, which he says was well attested, of an Indian who daubed himself with the juice of the purple bindweed, and then handled a rattlesnake with his naked hands with impunity. Some high authority may be quoted to sustain any similar improbable fact or absurd opinion.

THE ELDER.

Everybody is familiar with the Elder, with its large corymbs of white flowers, hanging over ditches and watercourses, rivalling the linden in sweetness and equalling the balm in its healing virtues. It is common in all wet fallows, flowering in the latter part of June. No shrub is so generally known, both as a tenant of the fields and as an ingredient in the packages of the simpler. We have seen its dried flowers in nice paper bags, neatly done up by some benevolent hands for the benefit of the sick, and we breathed their odors as they were wafted from the vessel in which they were steeped, before we ever saw them in the fields. The Elder is one of the flowering shrubs that first attracts our attention after the blossoms of the orchard have faded. The bee is seen to hunt for it before the vine is in blossom, leaving the flowers of the garden for these abundant stores of native sweets. In autumn we have seen the fences and brooksides laden with its fruit, while the purple clusters were stripped day after day by the robin and catbird, until not one was left to fall to the ground. When the leaves are gone, the branches are sought by children, who use its hollow wood for making various juvenile implements.

“The Elder,” says Barnard, speaking of the English plant, “is common, almost universal, in cottage gardens, hedge-rows, and ruins. It is in fact a thoroughly domesticated tree, and seldom is it found in England far from human habitation, although I have seen it in the wildest valleys of the Pyrenees, when it appeared to have the richest scarlet berries, instead of black.” The species seen in the Pyrenees is probably identical with the American panicled Elder, a rare species in New England, bearing its flowers in spikes, and producing scarlet berries.

The Elder has not much beauty when unadorned either with flowers or fruit. Its pinnate leaves are of a dull green, and seldom add any tints to the glory of autumn. Its flowers, borne in large flat cymes, are very showy, and emit a peculiar though agreeable odor, and are used in Europe to give to wine the flavor of Frontignac. The berries of the European Elder, which is believed by Michaux to be the same as the American common Elder, differing only in its superior size, are said to be poisonous to poultry. But the fruit of the American shrub possesses no such properties. It is eagerly devoured by the insectivorous birds, and is used in the manufacture of a harmless dietetic wine, whose benefits have been very generally appreciated by nostrum venders.

THE HEATH.

There are no heaths in New England, or on the American Continent. We know them only as they are described in books, or as they are displayed in greenhouses. We are strangers to those immense assemblages that furnish an uninterrupted vegetable covering to the earth’s surface, from the plains of Germany to Lapland on the north, and to the Ural Mountains on the east. These plains, called heaths or heathlands, are a kind of sandy bogs, which are favorable to the growth of the Heath, while other plants with these disadvantages of soil cannot compete with them. The tenacity with which they maintain their ground renders them a great obstacle to agricultural improvement. They overspread large districts to the almost entire exclusion of other vegetation, rendering the lands unfit to be pastured, and useless for any purpose except to furnish bees with an ample repast but an inferior honey.

It is often lamented by the lovers of nature that the Heath, the poetical favorite of the people, the humble flower of solitude, the friend of the bird and the bee, affording them a bower of foliage and a garden of sweets, and furnishing a bulwark to larks and nightingales against the progress of agriculture,—it is often lamented that this plant should be unknown as an indigenous inhabitant of the New World. But if its absence be a cause for regret to those who have learned to admire it as the poetic symbol of melancholy, and as a beautiful ornament of the wilds, the husbandman may rejoice in its absence. We have in America the whortleberry, whose numerous species and varieties occupy, like the heaths of Europe, those lands which have not been reduced to tillage, without depriving them of their usefulness to man. They become in their beneficent products a source of profit to thousands of indigent gleaners of the pastures, and of simple luxury to all our inhabitants. Though Nature has denied us the barren flower, and left the imagination unrequited, she has given us, in the place of it, a simple fruit that furnishes annual occasions for many a delightful excursion to the youths and children of our land, and is a simple blessing to the poor.

The farmers of Eastern Massachusetts, who have seen the dyer’s broom spread itself over the hills, occupying the whole ground, and entirely displacing all valuable herbs and grasses, may form some idea of the mischiefs attending the spread of the Heath in Europe. The heaths might be described as tree-mosses, bearing a multitude of minute campanulate flowers of various colors. They are not exceeded by any other plants, except mosses, in the uniform delicacy of their structure. Hence they are admired by florists, who find among them those multitudinous varieties which, in other plants, are produced by culture.

THE ANDROMEDA.

The plants of New England which are most nearly allied to the heath are the different species of Andromeda. These plants vary in height from one foot to seven or eight feet. They resemble the whortleberry in their general appearance, and in their leaves and flowers, but their fruit is a dry capsule, not a berry, and their foliage is not tinted in the autumn. They are, I believe, without an English name. Several species are indigenous in New England, but only two or three of them are common. One of the most beautiful, though extremely rare, is the Water Andromeda, which is found near the edges of ponds. This is the species which suggested to Linnæus the name given by him to the genus. He describes it in his “Tour of Lapland” as “decorating the marshy grounds in a most agreeable manner. The flowers are quite blood-red before they expand; but when full-grown the corolla is of a flesh-color. Scarcely any painter’s art can so happily imitate the beauty of a fine female complexion; still less could any artificial color upon the face itself bear a comparison with this lovely blossom.” He thought of Andromeda as described by the poets, and traced a fancied resemblance between the virgin and the plant, to which it seemed to him her name might be appropriately given.

One of the most common of our small water shrubs, very homely when viewed from a distance, but neat and elegant under close inspection, is the Dwarf Andromeda. It covers in some parts of the country wide tracts of swampy land, after the manner of the heath, and is not very unlike it in botanical characters, with its slender branches and myrtle-like foliage. It opens its flowers very early in spring, arranged in a long row, like those of the great Solomon’s-seal, extending almost from the roots to the extremities of the branches. The flowers all lean one way, each flower proceeding from the axil of a small leaf. Though an evergreen, the verdure of its foliage is so dull and rusty that it is hardly distinguished in the meadows which are occupied by it.

Another remarkable species is the panicled Andromeda, a tall and very common shrub in Eastern Massachusetts, distinguished from the whortleberry by its large compound clusters of densely crowded white flowers of a nearly globular shape. These flowers are much neater and more beautiful on examination than those of the blueberry, and resemble clusters of white beads. They are succeeded by a dry capsular fruit, bearing a superficial resemblance to white peppercorns. The fishermen of our coast have always employed the branches of this shrub, with those of the clethra, on account of their firmness and durability, as coverings to the “flakes” which are used for the spreading and drying of codfish. These two shrubs were formerly distinguished by them as the “black and the white pepper-bush,” one having berries of a lighter color than the other.

THE ROSE.

In my description of flowering trees and shrubs, I must not omit the Rose, the most celebrated and the most beautiful of flowers: the delight of mankind in all ages and in every country; the pride of all gardens, and the chief ornament of the field and woodside; the poetic emblem of love and the symbol of truth, inasmuch as its beauty is accompanied by the virtues of sweetness and purity. In every language have its praises been sung, and poets have bestowed upon it all the epithets that could be applied to a direct gift from Heaven. From its graces, too, they borrow those images they would bestow upon the living objects of their idolatry. The modest blush of innocence is but the tint of the Rose; its hues are the flush of morning and the “purple light of love.” The nightingale is supposed to have become the chief of singing birds by warbling the praises of the Rose, inspired by the beauty of this flower with that divine ecstasy which characterizes his lay. In all ages the Rose has had part in the principal festivities of the people, the offering of love and the token of favor; the crown of the bride at bridal feasts, and the emblem of all virtue and all delight.

So important a shrub as the Rose cannot be an inconspicuous feature either in our wild or our domestic scenery. Every wood contains one or two species in their wild state, and every enclosure in our villages some beautiful foreign roses, which are equally familiar to our sight. I have nothing to say of the multitude of improved varieties lately introduced by florists. There is a point of perfection that cannot be surpassed in the improvement of any species of plant. An additional number of petals does not always increase the beauty of a flower. In the scale of all kinds of perfection, both physical and moral, there is a degree beyond which improvement is only the addition of insipidity.

THE EGLANTINE, OR SWEETBRIER.

The Eglantine is the poetical name of one of the most charming species of rose, generally known in this country as the Sweetbrier, noted for its scented foliage and its multitude of thorns. This species seems to occupy a mean between the tree-roses and the climbers. It often mounts to a considerable height, supporting its position by its thorns. I have seen a Sweetbrier growing wild upon a juniper to the height of fifteen feet, and covering the whole tree. The flowers are small and of a pale crimson, having less sweetness than the common rose. The American Sweetbrier has paler flowers and a smaller leaf; the English plant has larger flowers of a deeper color, and more luxuriant foliage. The American species, however, attains the greater height; it is more fragrant, and more abundant in flowers.

THE SWAMP ROSE.

There is not a sweeter or more beautiful plant, in its native fields, than the common Wild Rose of our meadows. It flowers early in June, clustering in all wild pastures and in all neglected fields, forming beautiful spontaneous hedge-rows by the sides of fences, and groups and beds of shrubbery in all wild lands. The Swamp Rose varies in height, according to the quality of the soil it occupies. I have seen it from four to five feet in height on the alluvial borders of streams, while in uplands it seldom exceeds two feet. This shrub has a fine glossy pinnate foliage, and flowers of a deep crimson, somewhat larger than those of the sweetbrier. Occasionally a variety is seen with white flowers. The Wild Rose is very common near footpaths through the fields, forming natural clumps, often extending into the enclosures of some rustic cottage. In winter it is easily recognized by the fine purple hue of its smaller branches.

But this shrub finds no favor except from the lovers of nature. I have seen men employed in “grubbing up” the Wild Rose-bushes that skirted the lanes extending from their enclosures to an adjoining wood. A similar vandalism causes them to whitewash their stone-walls and the trunks of shade-trees, as if beauty consisted in a gloss of art spread over all the works of nature. If we were to carry out the idea of these improvers, we should destroy every wilding in the borders of our fields, and plant florists’ flowers in spots of spaded earth cut out of the turf. It is fashion alone that causes the florists’ roses to be admired more than the wild roses of the fields and brooksides. They are, it is true, more splendid and full. But who would be pleased to find these petted favorites of gardeners in the rustic lane or the solitary wood-path? Let them continue to be admired in the parterre; but let not our admiration of their artificial beauty cause us to neglect or despise the simple denizens of the field and forest.

THE MAPLE.

In New England and the adjoining States, the maples are among the most conspicuous and important families of our indigenous trees. Their wood is used for various purposes in the arts, and their product of sugar is of incalculable value. Two of the European maples are cultivated here, distinguished from the American species by their larger leaves and flowers and their darker verdure. I prefer the latter, because they have a smaller leaf, and consequently a more lively and airy appearance, and because they are more beautiful in autumn.

Besides the three most remarkable species in our native woods, there are several smaller maples in New England, not rising much above the height of shrubs, but distinguished by their elegance and beauty. One of the most common of these is the Striped Maple, sometimes called Moosewood. It is a tree of singular grace and beauty, and in Maine and New Hampshire it is abundant, intermixed with the undergrowth of the forest. It is one of the earliest trees in putting forth its flowers. The leaves are large, broad, not deeply cleft, and finely variegated in their tints in autumn. The protection of the forest seems needful to this tree, for it is seldom found among the border shrubbery of fields and waysides. Mr. Emerson thinks it deserving of cultivation. “I have found it,” he remarks, “growing naturally twenty-five feet high, and nineteen or twenty inches in circumference; and Mr. Brown, of Richmond, tells me he has known it to attain the height of twenty-five feet. It well deserves careful cultivation. The striking, striated appearance of the trunk at all times, the delicate rose-color of the buds and leaves on opening, and the beauty of the ample foliage afterwards, the graceful pendulous racemes of flowers, succeeded by large showy keys not unlike a cluster of insects, will sufficiently recommend it. In France, Michaux says it has been increased to four times its natural size by grafting on the sycamore.”

The Mountain Maple is another small and elegant species of similar habits to those of the Moosewood, being almost entirely confined to the forest, variegated with red and purple tints in autumn. If it is ever seen by the roadside, it is only when the road is bordered by the forest.

THE SUGAR MAPLE.

The Rock Maple is distinguished from the red maple by its larger leaves, which are entire at the margin, and not serrate, having generally three lobes, sometimes five, separated by a smooth sinus instead of a notch. The flowers are greenish, and come out at the same time with the foliage. This tree is larger than any of the other species, it has a more vigorous growth, and affords a denser shade, but it is difficult to distinguish them when divested of their leaves. It is the most abundant species in all the North-eastern States, including the British Provinces, where it serves more than any other tree, except the white pine, to give character to the wood-scenery. It is rare in Eastern Massachusetts, and is not found below this latitude, except among the Alleghanies.

Dr. Rush, speaking of this tree, remarks: “These trees are generally found mixed with the beech, hemlock, ash, linden, aspen, butternut, and wild cherry-trees. They sometimes appear in groves, covering five or six acres in a body; but they are more commonly interspersed with some or all of the forest trees above mentioned. From thirty to fifty trees are generally found upon an acre of land.” Major Strickland says of it: “The Sugar Maple is probably the most common tree among the hard-wood species of Canada West. It is found generally in groves of from five to twenty acres; these are called by the settlers sugar-bushes, and few farms are without them.”

Though I consider the red maple a more beautiful tree, having more variety in its ramification, and a greater range of hues in its autumnal dress, than the Rock Maple, it must be confessed that the latter surpasses it in some important qualities. The Rock Maple has a deeper green foliage in summer, and is generally more brilliant in its autumnal tints, which, on account of the tenacity of its foliage, last from a week to ten days after the red maple has dropped all its leaves.

THE RIVER MAPLE.