Chapter 4

The curious story of "Johnny Appleseed" is given us by historians, who tell us of this semi-religious enthusiast who roamed barefoot over the wilds of Ohio and Indiana a century ago, sowing apple-seeds in the scattered clearings, and living to see the trees bearing fruit, selections from which probably are interwoven among the varieties of today. New varieties of apples, by the way, come from seeds sown, and trees grown from them, with a bare chance that one in ten thousand may be worth keeping. When a variety seems thus worthy, "buds" or "scions" from the original tree are "budded" or "grafted" by the nurseryman into young seedling trees, which are thus changed into the selected sort. To sow the seeds of your favorite Baldwin does not imply that you will get Baldwin trees, by any means; you will more likely have a partial reversion to the acid and bitter original species.

It is not only for the fruit that we are indebted to the Old World, but also for some distinctively beautiful and most ornamental varieties of the apple, not by any means as well known among us as they ought to be. The nurserymen sell as an ornamental small tree a form known as "Parkman's double-flowering crab," which produces blooms of much beauty, like delicate little roses. Few of them, however, know of the glorious show that the spring brings where there is a proper planting of the Chinese and Japanese crab-apples, with some other hybrids and varieties. To readers in New England a pilgrimage to Boston is always in order. In the Public Gardens are superb specimens of these crab-apples from the Orient, as well as those native to this continent, and for several weeks in May they may be enjoyed. They _are_ enjoyed by the Bostonians, who are in this, as in many things, better served by their authorities than is any other American city. What other city, for instance, gives its people such a magnificent spring show of hyacinths, tulips, daffodils and the like?

It is at the wonderful Arnold Arboretum, that Mecca of tree-lovers just outside of Boston and really within its superbly managed park system, that the greatest show of the "pyrus family," as the apples and pears are botanically called, may be found. Here have been gathered the lovely blooming trees of all the hardy world, to the delight of the eye and the nose, and the education of the mind. To me the most impressive of all was a wonderful Siberian crab (one must look for _Pyrus baccata_ on the label, as the Arboretum folks are not in love with "common" names) close by the little greenhouses. Its round head was purely white, with no hint of pink, and the mass of bloom that covered it was only punctuated by the green of the expanding leaves. The especial elegance of this crab was in its whiteness, and that elegance was not diminished by the later masses of little yellow and red, almost translucent, fruits.

A somewhat smaller tree is commonly called the Chinese flowering apple, and its early flowers remind one strongly of the beauty of our own wild crab, as they are deeper in color than most of the crabs, being almost coral-red in bud. This "spectabilis," as it is familiarly called, is a gem, as it opens the season of the apple blooms with its burst of pink richness.

The beauty-loving Japanese have a festival at the time of the cherry-blooming--and it is altogether a festival of beauty, not connected with the food that follows the flowers. They actually dare to cut the blossoms, too, for adornment, and all the populace take time to drink in the message of the spring. Will we workaday Americans ever dare to "waste" so much time, and go afield to absorb God's provision of soul and sense refreshment in the spring, forgetting for the time our shops and desks, our stores and marts?

Professor Sargent, that deep student of trees who has built himself a monument, which is also a beneficence to all mankind, in the great volumes of his "Silva of North America," lives not far from Boston, and he loves especially that jewel of the apple family which, for want of a common name, I must designate scientifically as _Pyrus floribunda_. On his own magnificent estate, as well as at the Arboretum, this superb shrub or small tree riots in rosy beauty in early spring. While the leaves do come with these flowers, they are actually crowded back out of apparent sight by the straight wands of rose-red blooms, held by the twisty little tree at every angle and in indescribable beauty. If the visitor saw nothing but this Floribunda apple--"abundant flowering" sure enough--on his pilgrimage, he might well be satisfied, especially if he then and there resolved to see it again, either as he planted it at home or journeyed hither another spring for the enlargement of his soul.

There are other of these delightful crabs or apples to be enjoyed--Ringo, Kaido, Toringo--nearly all of Japanese origin, all of distinct beauty, and all continuing that beauty in handsome but inedible fruits that hang most of the summer. My tree-loving friends can well study these, and, I hope, plant them, instead of repeating continually the monotonously familiar shrubs and trees of ordinary commerce.

But I have not spoken enough of one notable feature of the every-day apple tree that we may see without a journey to the East. The fully set fruiting branch of an apple tree in health and vigor, properly nurtured and protected against fungous disease by modern "spraying," is a thing of beauty in its form and color. See those deep red Baldwins shine overhead in the frosty air of early fall; note the elegance of form and striping on the leathery-skinned Ben Davis; appreciate true apples of gold set in green enamel on a tree of the sunny Bellefleur! These in the fall; but it is hardly full summer before the closely set branches of Early Harvest are as beautiful as any orange-tree, or the more upright Red Astrachan is ablaze with fruit of red and yellow. Truly, an apple orchard might be arranged to give a series of pictures of changing beauty of color and growth from early spring until fall frost, and then to follow with a daily panorama of form and line against snow and sky until the blossoms peeped forth again. Let us learn, if we do not already love the apple tree, to love it for its beauty all the year!

Willows and Poplars

"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. Upon the willows in the midst thereof we hanged our harps." Thus sang the Psalmist of the sorrows of the exiles in Babylon, and his song has fastened the name of the great and wicked city upon one of the most familiar willows, while also making it "weep"; for the common weeping willow is botanically named _Salix Babylonica_.

It may be that the forlorn Jews did hang their harps upon the tree we know as the weeping willow, that species being credited to Asia as a place of origin; but it is open to doubt, for the very obvious reason that the weeping willow is distinctly unadapted to use as a harp-rack, and one is at a loss to know just how the instruments in question would have been hung thereon. It is probable that the willows along the rivers of Babylon were of other species, and that the connection of the city of the captivity and the tears of the exiles with the long, drooping branches of the noble tree which has thus been sorrowfully named was a purely sentimental one. Indeed, the weeping willow is also called Napoleon's willow, because the great Corsican found much pleasure in a superb willow of the same species which stood on the lonely prison isle of St. Helena, and from twigs of which many trees in the United States have been grown.

The willow family presents great contrasts, both physical and sentimental. It is a symbol both of grief and of grace. The former characterization is undoubtedly because of the allusion of the one hundred and thirty-seventh Psalm, as quoted above, thoughtlessly extended through the centuries; and the latter, as when a beautiful and slender woman is said to be of "willowy" form, obviously because of the real grace of the long, swinging wands of the same tree. I might hint that a better reason for making the willow symbolize grief is because charcoal made from its twigs and branches is an important and almost essential ingredient of gunpowder, through which a sufficiency of grief has undoubtedly entered the world!

Willow twigs seem the very essence of fragility, as they break from the parent tree at a touch; and yet one of the willows furnishes the tough, pliable and enduring withes from which are woven the baskets of the world. The willows, usually thin in branch, sparse of somewhat pale foliage, of so-called mournful mien, are yet bursting with vigor and life; indeed, the spread and the value of the family is by reason of this tenacity and virility, which makes a broken twig, floating on the surface of a turbid stream, take root and grow on a sandy bank where nothing else can maintain itself, wresting existence and drawing strength and beauty from the very element whose ravages of flood and current it bravely withstands.

Apparently ephemeral in wood, growing quickly and perishing as quickly, the willows nevertheless supply us with an important preservative element, extracted from their bitter juices. Salicylic acid, made from willow bark, prevents change and arrests decay, and it is an important medical agent as well.

Flexible and seemingly delicate as the little tree is when but just established, there is small promise of the rugged and sturdy trunk that in a few years may stand where the chance twig lodged. And the color of the willows--ah! there's a point for full enthusiasm, for this family of grief furnishes a cheerful note for every month in the year, and runs the whole scale of greens, grays, yellows and browns, and even adds to the winter landscape touches of blazing orange and bright red across the snow. Before ever one has thought seriously of the coming of spring, the long branchlets of the weeping willow have quickened into a hint of lovely yellowish green, and those same branchlets will be holding their green leaves against a wintry blast when most other trees have given up their foliage under the frost's urgency. Often have the orange-yellow twigs of the golden osier illumined a somber countryside for me as I looked from the car window; and close by may be seen other willow bushes of brown, green, gray, and even purple, to add to the color compensation of the season. Then may come into the view, as one flies past, a great old weeping willow rattling its bare twigs in the wind; and, if a stream is passed, there are sure to be seen on its banks the sturdy trunks of the white and the black willows at least. Think of an average landscape with the willows eliminated, and there will appear a great vacancy not readily filled by another tree.

The weeping willow has always made a strong appeal to me, but never one of simple grief or sorrow. Its expression is rather of great dignity, and I remember watching in somewhat of awe one which grew near my childhood's home, as its branches writhed and twisted in a violent rain-storm, seeming then fairly to agonize, so tossed and buffeted were they by the wind. But soon the storm ceased, the sun shone on the rounded head of the willow, turning the raindrops to quickly vanishing diamonds, and the great tree breathed only a gentle and benignant peace. When, in later years, I came to know the moss-hung live-oak of the Southland, the weeping willow assumed to me a new dignity and value in the northern landscape, and I have strongly resented the attitude of a noted writer on "Art Out of Doors" who says of it: "I never once have seen it where it did not hurt the effect of its surroundings, or at least, if it stood apart from other trees, where some tree of another species would not have looked far better." One of the great merits of the tree, its difference of habit, its variation from the ordinary, is thus urged against it.

I have spoken of the basket willow, which is scientifically _Salix viminalis_, and an introduction from Europe, as indeed are many of the family. In my father's nursery grew a great patch of basket willows, annually cut to the ground to make a profusion of "sprouts," from which were cut the "tying willows" used to bind firmly together for shipment bundles of young trees. It was an achievement to be able to take a six-foot withe, and, deftly twisting the tip of it under the heel to a mass of flexible fiber, tie this twisted portion into a substantial loop; and to have this novel wooden rope then endure the utmost pull of a vigorous man, as he braced his feet against the bundle of trees in binding the withe upon it, gave an impression of anything but weakness on the part of the willow.

Who has not admired the soft gray silky buds of the "pussy" willow, swelling with the spring's impulse, and ripening quickly into a "catkin" loaded with golden pollen? Nowadays the shoots of this willow are "forced" into bud by the florists, and sold in the cities in great quantities; but really to see it one must find the low tree or bush by a stream in the woods, or along the roadside, with a chance to note its fullness of blossom. It is finest just when the hepaticas are at their bluest on the warm hillsides; and, one sunny afternoon of a spring journey along the north branch of the Susquehanna river, I did not know which of the two conspicuous ornaments of the deeply wooded bank made me most anxious to jump from the too swiftly moving train.

This pussy-willow has pleasing leaves, and is a truly ornamental shrub or small tree which will flourish quite well in a dry back yard, as I have reason to know. One bright day in February I found a pussy-willow tree, with its deep purple buds showing not a hint of the life within. The few twigs brought home quickly expanded when placed in water, and gave us their forecast of the spring. One twig was, out of curiosity, left in the water after the catkins had faded, merely to see what would happen. It bravely sent forth leaves, while at the base little white rootlets appeared. Its vigor appealing to us, it was planted in an arid spot in our back yard, and it is now, after a year and a half, a handsome, slender young tree that will give us a whole family of silken pussy-buds to stroke and admire another spring.

This same little tree is called also the glaucous willow, and it is botanically _Salix discolor_. It is more distinct than some others of the family, for the willow is a great mixer. The tree expert who will unerringly distinguish between the red oak and the scarlet oak by the precise angle of the spinose margins of the leaves (how I admire an accuracy I do not possess!) will balk at which is crack willow, or white willow, or yellow or blue willow. The abundant vigor and vitality and freedom of the family, and the fact that it is of what is known as the dioecious habit--that is, the flowers are not complete, fertile and infertile flowers being borne on separate trees--make it most ready to hybridize. The pollen of the black willow may fertilize the flower of the white willow, with a result that certainly tends to grayness on the worrying head of the botanist who, in after years, is trying to locate the result of the cross!

There is much variety in the willow flowers--and I wonder how many observers really notice any other willow "blossoms" than those of the showy pussy? A superb spring day afield took me along a fascinatingly crooked stream, the Conodoguinet, whose banks furnish a congenial and as yet protected (because concealed from the flower-hunting vandal) home for wild flowers innumerable and most beautiful, as well as trees that have ripened into maturity. An earlier visit at the time the bluebells were ringing out their silent message on the hillside, in exquisite beauty, with the lavender phlox fairly carpeting the woods, gave a glimpse of some promising willows on the other side of the stream. Twilight and letters to sign--how hateful the desk and its work seem in these days of springing life outside!--made a closer inspection impossible then, but a golden Saturday afternoon found three of us, of like ideals, hastening to this tree and plant paradise. A mass of soft yellow drew us from the highway across a field carpeted thickly with bluet or "quaker lady," to the edge of the stream, where a continuous hum showed that the bees were also attracted. It was one splendid willow in full bloom, and I could not and as yet cannot safely say whether it is the crack willow or the white willow; but I can affirm of a certainty that it was a delight to the eye, the mind and the nostrils. The extreme fragility of the smaller twigs, which broke away from the larger limbs at the lightest shake or jar, gave evidence of one of Nature's ways of distributing plant life; for it seems that these twigs, as I have previously said, part company with the parent tree most readily, float away on the stream, and easily establish themselves on banks and bars, where their tough, interlacing roots soon form an almost impregnable barrier to the onslaught of the flood. Only a stone's throw away there stood a great old black willow, with a sturdy trunk of ebon hue, crowned with a mass of soft green leafage, lighter where the breeze lifted up the under side to the sunlight. Many times, doubtless, the winds had shorn and the sleet had rudely trimmed this old veteran, but there remained full life and vigor, even more attractive than that of youth.

Most of the willows are shrubs rather than trees, and there are endless variations, as I have before remarked. Further, the species belonging at first in the Eastern Hemisphere have spread well over our own side of the globe, so that it seems odd to regard the white willow and the weeping willow as foreigners. At Niagara Falls, in the beautiful park on the American side, on the islands amid the toss of the waters, there are many willows, and those planted by man are no less beautiful than those resulting from Nature's gardening. In spring I have had pleasure in some splendid clumps of a form with lovely golden leaves and a small, furry catkin, found along the edge of the American rapids. I wonder, by the way, how many visitors to Niagara take note of the superb collection of plants and trees there to be seen, and which it is a grateful relief to consider when the mind is wearied with the majesty and the vastness of Nature's forces shown in the cataract? The birds are visitors to Goat Island and the other islets that divide the Niagara River, and they have brought there the plants of America in wonderful variety.

There is one willow that has been used by the nurserymen to produce a so-called weeping form, which, like most of these monstrosities, is not commendable. The goat willow is a vigorous tree introduced from Europe, having large and rather broad and coarse leaves, dark green above and whitish underneath. It is taken as a "stock," upon which, at a convenient height, the skilled juggler with trees grafts a drooping or pendulous form known as the Kilmarnock willow, thus changing the habit of the tree so that it then "weeps" to the ground. Fortunately, the original tree sometimes triumphs, the graft dies, and a lusty goat willow rears a rather shapely head to the sky.

This Kilmarnock willow is a favorite of the peripatetic tree agent, and I have enjoyed hugely one notable evidence of his persuasive eloquence to be seen in a Lebanon Valley town, inhabited by the quaint folk known as Pennsylvania Germans. All along the line of the railroad traversing this valley may be seen these distorted willows decorating the prim front yards, and they are not so offensive when used with other shrubs and trees. In this one instance, however, the tree agent evidently found a customer who was persuaded that if one Kilmarnock willow was a good thing to have, a dozen of them was twelve times better; wherefore his dooryard is grotesquely adorned with that many flourishing weepers, giving an aspect that is anything but decorous or solemn. Some time the vigilance of the citizen will be relaxed, it may be hoped; he will neglect to cut away the recurring shoots of the parent trees, and they will escape and destroy the weeping form which provides so much sarcastic hilarity for the passers-by.

The willow, with its blood relation, the poplar, is often "pollarded," or trimmed for wood, and its abundant vigor enables it to recover from this process of violent abbreviation more satisfactorily than do most trees. The result is usually a disproportionately large stem or bole, for the lopping off of great branches always tends to a thickening of the main stem. The abundant leafage of both willow and poplar soon covers the scars, and there is less cause to mourn than in the case of maples or other "hard-wooded" trees.

If my readers will only add a willow section to their mental observation outfit, there will be much more to see and appreciate. Look for and enjoy in the winter the variation in twig color and bark hue; notice how smoothly lies the covering on one stem, all rugged and marked on another. In the earliest spring examine the swelling buds, of widely differing color and character, from which shortly will spring forth the catkins or aments of bloom, followed by the leaves of varied colors in the varied species, and with shapes as varied. Vivid green, soft gray, greenish yellow; dull surface and shining surface above, pale green to almost pure white beneath; from the long and stringy leaf of the weeping willow to the comparatively broad and thick leaf of the pussy-willow--there is variety and interest in the foliage well worth the attention of the tree-lover. When winter comes, there will be another set of contrasts to see in the way the various species lose their leaves and get ready for the rest time during which the buds mature and ripen, and the winter colors again shine forth.

These observations may be made anywhere in America, practically, for the willow is almost indifferent to locality, growing everywhere that its far-reaching roots can find the moisture which it loves, and which it rapidly transpires to the thirsty air. As Miss Keeler well remarks, "The genus Salix is admirably fitted to go forth and inhabit the earth, for it is tolerant of all soils and asks only water. It creeps nearer to the North Pole than any other woody plant except its companion the birch. It trails upon the ground or rises one hundred feet in the air. In North America it follows the water-courses to the limit of the temperate zone, enters the tropics, crosses the equator, and appears in the mountains of Peru and Chili.... The books record one hundred and sixty species in the world, and these sport and hybridize to their own content and to the despair of botanists. Then, too, it comes of an ancient line; for impressions of leaves in the cretaceous rocks show that it is one of the oldest of plants."

Common it is, and therefore overlooked; but the reader may well resolve to watch the willow in spring and summer, with its bloom and fruit; to follow its refreshing color through winter's chill; to observe its cheer and dignity; and to see the wind toss its slender wands and turn its graceful leaves.