Chapter 5

The poplars and the willows are properly considered together, for together they form the botanical world family of the _Salicaceæ_. Many characteristics of bloom and growth, of sap and bark, unite the two, and surely both, though alike common to the world, are common and familiar trees to the dwellers in North America.

One of my earliest tree remembrances has to do with a spreading light-leaved growth passed under every day on the way to school--and, like most school-boys, I was not unwilling to stop for anything of interest that might put off arrival at the seat of learning. This great tree had large and peculiar winter buds, that always seemed to have advance information as to the coming of spring, for they would swell out and become exceedingly shiny at the first touch of warm sun. Soon the sun-caressing would be responded to by the bursting of the buds, or the falling away of their ingenious outer protecting scales, which dropped to the ground, where, sticky and shining, and extraordinarily aromatic in odor, they were just what a curious school-boy enjoyed investigating. "Balm of Gilead" was the name that inquiry brought for this tree, and the resinous and sweet-smelling buds which preceded the rather inconspicuous catkins or aments of bloom seemed to justify the Biblical designation.

Nearly a world tree is this poplar, which in some one of its variable forms is called also tacamahac, and balsam poplar as well. Its cheerful upright habit, really fine leaves and generally pleasing air commend it, but there is one trouble--it is almost too vigorous and anxious to spread, which it does by means of shoots or "suckers," upspringing from its wide area of root-growth, thus starting a little forest of its own that gives other trees but small chance. But on a street, where the repression of pavements and sidewalks interferes with this exuberance, the balsam poplar is well worth planting.

The poplars as a family are pushing and energetic growers, and serve a great purpose in the reforestation of American acres that have been carelessly denuded of their tree cover. Here the trembling aspen particularly, as the commonest form of all is named, comes in to quickly cover and shade the ground, and give aid to the hard woods and the conifers that form the value of the forest growth.

This same American aspen, a consideration of the lightly hung leaves of which has been useful to many poets, is a well-known tree of graceful habit, particularly abundant in the forests north of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and occupying clearings plentifully and quickly. Its flowers are in catkins, as with the rest of the family, and, like other poplars, they are in two kinds, male and female, or staminate and pistillate, which accounts for some troubles the inexperienced investigator has in locating them.

There is another aspen, the large-toothed form, that is a distinct botanical species; but I have never been able to separate it, wherefore I do not try to tell of it here, lest I fall under condemnation as a blind leader, not of the blind, but of those who would see!

In many cities, especially in cities that have experienced real-estate booms, and have had "extensions" laid out "complete with all improvements," there is to be seen a poplar that has the merit of quick and pleasing growth and considerable elegance as well. Alas, it is like the children of the tropics in quick beauty and quick decadence! The Carolina poplar, it is called, being a variety of the wide-spread cottonwood. Grow? All that is needed is to cut a lusty branch of it, point it, and drive it into the earth--it will do the rest!

This means cheap trees and quick growth, and that is why whole new streets in West Philadelphia, for instance, are given up to the Carolina poplar. Its clear, green, shining leaves, of good size, coming early in spring; its easily guided habit, either upright or spreading; its very rapid growth, all commend it. But its coarseness and lack of real strength, and its continual invitation to the tree-butcher and the electric lineman, indicate the undesirability of giving it more than a temporary position, to shade while better trees are growing.

But I must not get into the economics of street-tree planting. I started to tell of the blossoms of this same Carolina poplar, which are decidedly interesting. Just when the sun has thoroughly warmed up the air of spring there is a sudden, rapid thickening of buds over one's head on this poplar. One year the tree under my observation swelled and swelled its buds, which were shining more and more in the sun, until I was sure the next day would bring a burst of leaves. But the weather was dry, and it was not until that wonderful solvent and accelerator of growing things, a warm spring rain, fell softly upon the tree, that the pent-up life force was given vent. Then came, not leaves, but these long catkins, springing out with great rapidity, until in a few hours the tree glowed with their redness. A second edition of the shower, falling sharply, brought many of the catkins to the ground, where they lay about like large caterpillars.

The whole process of this blooming was interesting, curious, but hardly beautiful, and it seemed to fit in with the restless character of the poplar family--a family of trees with more vigor than dignity, more sprightliness than grace. As Professor Bailey says of the cottonwood, "It is cheerful and restive. One is not moved to lie under it as he is under a maple or an oak." Yet there are not wanting some poplars of impressive character.

One occurs to me, growing on a wide street of my home town, opposite a church with a graceful spire. This white or silver-leaved poplar has for many years been a regular prey of the gang of tree-trimmers, utterly without knowledge of or regard for trees, that infests this town. They hack it shamefully, and I look at it and say, "Well, the old poplar is ruined now, surely!" But a season passes, and I look again, to see that the tremendous vigor of the tree has triumphed over the butchers; its sores have been concealed, new limbs have pushed out, and it has again, in its unusual height, assumed a dignity not a whit inferior to that of the church spire opposite.

This white poplar is at its best on the bank of a stream, where its small forest of "suckers" most efficiently protects the slope against the destructive action of floods. One such tree with its family and friends I saw in full bloom along the Susquehanna, and it gave an impression of solidity and size, as well as of lusty vigor, and I have always liked it since. The cheerful bark is not the least of its attractions--but it is a tree for its own place, and not for every place, by reason of the tremendous colonizing power of its root-sprouts.

I wonder, by the way, if many realize the persistence and vigor of the roots of a tree of the "suckering" habit? Some years ago an ailanthus, a tree of vigor and beauty of foliage but nastiness of flower odor, was cut away from its home when excavation was being made for a building, which gave me opportunity to follow a few of its roots. One of them traveled in search of food, and toward the opportunity of sending up a shoot, over a hundred feet!

The impending scarcity of spruce logs to feed the hungry maws of the machines that make paper for our daily journals has turned attention to several forms of the rapid-growing poplar for this use. The aspen is acceptable, and also the Carolina poplar, and these trees are being planted in large quantities for the eventual making of wood-pulp. Even today, many newspapers are printed on poplar, and exposure to the rays of the truth-searching sun for a few hours will disclose the yellowness of the paper, if not of the tree from which it has been ground.

Few whose eyes are turned upward toward the trees have failed to note that exclamation-point of growth, the Lombardy poplar. Originating in that portion of Europe indicated by its common name, and, indeed, a botanical form of the European black poplar, it is nevertheless widely distributed in America. When it has been properly placed, it introduces truly a note of distinction into the landscape. Towering high in the air, and carrying the eye along its narrowly oval contour to a skyward point, it is lofty and pleasing in a park. It agreeably breaks the sky-line in many places, and is emphatic in dignified groups. To plant it in rows is wrong; and I say this as an innocent offender myself. In boyhood I lived along the banks of the broad but shallow Susquehanna, and enjoyed the boating possible upon that stream when it was not reduced, as graphically described by a disgusted riverman, to merely a heavy dew. Many times I lost my way returning to the steep bluff near my home after the sun had gone to rest, and a hard pull against the swift current would ensue as I skirted the bank, straining eyes for landmarks in the dusk. It occurred to me to plant six Lombardy poplars on the top of the bluff, which might serve as easily recognized landmarks. Four of them grew, and are now large trees, somewhat offensive to a quickened sense of appropriateness. Long since the old home has been swallowed up by the city's advance, and I suppose none who now see those four spires of green on the river-bank even guess at the reason for their existence.

The poplar family, as a whole, is exuberant with vigor, and interesting more on that account than by reason of its general dignity or strength or elegance. It is well worth a little attention and study, and the consideration particularly of its bloom periods, to which I commend the tree-sense of my readers as they take the tree walks that ought to punctuate these chapters.

The Elm and the Tulip

America has much that is unique in plant and tree growth, as one learns who sees first the collections of American plants shown with pride by acute gardeners and estate owners in England and on the European Continent. Many a citizen of our country must needs confess with some shame that his first estimation of the singular beauty of the American laurel has been born in England, where the imported plants are carefully nurtured; and the European to whom the rhododendrons of his own country and of the Himalayas are familiar is ready to exclaim in rapture at the superb effect and tropical richness of our American species, far more lusty and more truly beautiful here than the introductions which must be heavily paid for and constantly coddled.

For no trees, however, may Americans feel more pride than for our American elms and our no less American tulip, the latter miscalled tulip "poplar." Both are trees practically unique to the country, both are widespread over Eastern North America, both are thoroughly trees of the people, both attain majestic proportions, both are long-lived and able to endure much hardship without a full giving up of either beauty or dignity.

The American elm--how shall I properly speak of its exceeding grace and beauty! In any landscape it introduces an element of distinction and elegance not given by any other tree. Looking across a field at a cluster of trees, there may be a doubt as to the identity of an oak, a chestnut, a maple, an ash, but no mistake can be made in regard to an elm--it stands alone in the simple elegance of its vase-like form, while its feathery branchlets, waving in the lightest breeze, add to the refined and classic effect. I use the word "classic" advisedly, because, although apparently out of place in describing a tree, it nevertheless seems needed for the form of the American elm.

The elm is never rugged as is the oak, but it gives no impression of effeminacy or weakness. Its uprightness is forceful and strong, and its clean and shapely bole impresses the beholder as a joining of gently outcurving columns, ample in strength and of an elegance belonging to itself alone. If I may dare to compare man-made architectural forms with the trees that graced the garden of Eden, I would liken the American elm (it is also the water elm and the white elm, and botanically _Ulmus Americana_) to the Grecian types, combining stability with elegance, rather than to the more rugged works of the Goths. Yet the free swing of the elm's wide-spreading branches inevitably suggests the pointed Gothic arch in simplicity and obvious strength.

It is difficult to say when the American elm is most worthy of admiration. In summer those same arching branches are clothed and tipped with foliage of such elegance and delicacy as the form of the tree would seem to predicate. The leaf itself is ornate, its straight ribs making up a serrated and pointed oval form of the most interesting character. These leaves hang by slender stems, inviting the gentlest zephyr to start them to singing of comfort in days of summer heat. The elm is fully clothed down to the drooping tips of the branchlets with foliage, which, though deepest green above, reflects, under its dense shade, a soft light from the paler green of the lower side. It is no wonder that New England claims fame for her elms, which, loved and cared for, arch over the long village streets that give character to the homes of the descendants of the Puritan fathers. The fully grown elm presents to the sun a darkly absorbent hue, and to the passer-by who rests beneath its shade the most grateful and restful color in all the rainbow's palette.

Then, too, the evaporative power of these same leaves is simply enormous, and generally undreamed of. Who would think that a great, spreading elm, reaching into the air of August a hundred feet, and shading a circle of nearly as great diameter, was daily cooling the atmosphere with tons of water, silently drawn from the bosom of Mother Earth!

Like many other common trees, the American elm blooms almost unnoticed. When the silver maple bravely pushes out its hardy buds in earliest spring--or often in what might be called latest winter--the elm is ready, and the sudden swelling of the twigs, away above our heads in March or April, is not caused by the springing leaves, but is the flowering effort of this noble tree. The bloom sets curiously about the yet bare branches, and the little brownish yellow or reddish flowers are seemingly only a bunch of stamens. They do their work promptly, and the little flat fruits, or "samaras," are ripened and dropped before most of us realize that the spring is fully upon us. These seeds germinate readily, and I recall the great pleasure with which a noted horticultural professor showed me what he called his "elm lawn," one summer. It seemed that almost every one of the thousands of seeds that, just about the time his preparations for sowing a lawn were completed, had softly fallen from the great elm which guards and shades his dooryard, had found good ground, and the result was a miniature forest of tiny trees, giving an effect of solid green which was truly a tree lawn.

But, after all, I think it is in winter that the American elm is at its finest, for then stand forth most fully revealed the wonderful symmetry of its structure and the elegance of its lines. It has one advantage in its great size, which is well above the average, for it lifts its graceful head a hundred feet or more above the earth. The stem is usually clean and regular, and the branches spread out in closely symmetrical relation, so that, as seen against the cold sky of winter, leafless and bare, they seem all related parts of a most harmonious whole. Other great trees are notable for the general effect of strength or massiveness, individual branches departing much from the average line of the whole structure; but the American elm is regular in all its parts, as well as of general stateliness.

As I have noted, the people of the New England States value and cherish their great elms, and they are accustomed to think themselves the only possessors of this unique tree. We have, however, as good elms in Pennsylvania as there are in New England, and I hope the day is not far distant when we shall esteem them as highly. The old elm monarch which stands at the gingerbread brownstone entrance of the Capitol Park in Pennsylvania's seat of government has had a hard battle, defenseless as it is, against the indifference of those whom it has shaded for generations, and who carelessly permitted the telegraph and telephone linemen to use it or chop it at their will. But latterly there has been an awakening which means protection, I think, for this fine old landmark.

The two superb elms, known as "Paul and Virginia," that make notable the north shore of the Susquehanna at Wilkesbarre, are subjects of local pride; which seems, however, not strong enough to prevent the erection of a couple of nasty little shanties against their great trunks. There can be no doubt, however, that the sentiment of reverence for great trees, and of justice to them for their beneficent influence, is spreading westward and southward from New England. It gives me keen pleasure to learn of instances where paths, pavements or roadways have been changed, to avoid doing violence to good trees; and a recent account of the creation of a trust fund for the care of a great oak, as well as a unique instance in Georgia, where a deed has been recorded giving a fine elm a quasi-legal title to its own ground, show that the rights of trees are coming to be recognized.

I have said little of the habitat, as the botanist puts it, of the American elm. It graces all North America east of the Rockies, and the specimens one sees in Michigan or Canada are as happy, apparently, as if they grew in Connecticut or in Virginia. Our increasingly beautiful national Capital, the one city with an intelligent and controlled system of tree-planting, shows magnificent avenues of flourishing elms.

But I must not forget some other elms, beautiful and satisfactory in many places. It is no discredit to our own American elm to say that the English elm is a superb tree in America. It seems to be characteristically British in its sturdy habit, and forms a grand trunk.

The juicy inner bark of the red or "slippery" elm was always acceptable, in lieu of the chewing-gum which had not then become so common, to a certain ever-hungry boy who used to think as much of what a tree would furnish that was eatable as he now does of its beauty. Later, the other uses of the bark of this tree became known to the same boy, but it was many years before he came really to know the slippery elm. One day a tree branch overhead showed what seemed to be remarkable little green flowers, which on examination proved to be, instead, the very interesting fruit of this elm, each little seed securely held inside a very neat and small flat bag. Looking at it earlier the next spring, the conspicuous reddish brown color of the bud-scales was noted.

I have never seen the "wahoo," or winged elm of the South, and there are several other native elms, as well as a number of introductions from the Eastern Hemisphere, with which acquaintance is yet to be made. All of them together, I will maintain with the quixotic enthusiasm of lack of knowledge, are not worth as much as one-half hour spent in looking up under the leafy canopy of our own preëminent American elm--a tree surely among those given by the Creator for the healing of the nations.

The tulip-tree, so called obviously because of the shape of its flowers, has a most mellifluous and pleasing botanical name, _Liriodendron Tulipifera_--is not that euphonious? Just plain "liriodendron"--how much better that sounds as a designation for one of the noblest of American forest trees than the misleading "common" names! "Tulip-tree," for a resemblance of the form only of its extraordinary blooms; "yellow poplar," probably because it is not yellow, and is in no way related to the poplars; and "whitewood," the Western name, because its wood is whiter than that of some other native trees. "Liriodendron" translated means "lily-tree," says my learned friend who knows Greek, and that is a fitting designation for this tree, which proudly holds forth its flowers, as notable and beautiful as any lily, and far more dignified and refined than the gaudy tulip. I like to repeat this smooth-sounding, truly descriptive and dignified name for a tree worthy all admiration. Liriodendron! Away with the "common" names, when there is such a pleasing scientific cognomen available!

By the way, why should people who will twist their American tongues all awry in an attempt to pronounce French words in which the necessary snort is unexpressed visually and half the characters are "silent," mostly exclaim at the alleged difficulty of calling trees and plants by their world names, current among educated people everywhere, while preferring some misleading "common" name? Very few scientific plant names are as difficult to pronounce as is the word "chrysanthemum," and yet the latter comes as glibly from the tongue as do "geranium," "rhododendron," and the like. Let us, then, at least when we have as good a name as liriodendron for so good a tree, use it in preference to the most decidedly "common" names that belie and mislead.

I have said that this same tulip-tree--which I will call liriodendron hereafter, at a venture--is a notable American tree, peculiar to this country. So believed the botanists for many years, until an inquiring investigator found that China, too, had the same tree, in a limited way. We will still claim it as an American native, and tell the Chinamen they are fortunate to have such a superb tree in their little-known forests. They have undoubtedly taken advantage, in their art forms, of its peculiarly shaped leaves, if not of the flowers and the curious "candlesticks" that succeed them.

Let us consider this liriodendron first as a forest tree, as an inhabitant of the "great woods" that awed the first intelligent observers from Europe, many generations back. Few of our native trees reach such a majestic height, here on the eastern side of the continent, its habitat. Ordinarily it builds its harmonious structure to a height of seventy or a hundred feet; but occasional individuals double this altitude, and reach a trunk diameter of ten feet. While in the close forest it towers up with a smooth, clean bole, in open places it assumes its naturally somewhat conical form very promptly. Utterly dissimilar in form from the American elm, it seems to stand for dignity, solidity and vigor, and yet to yield nothing in the way of true elegance. The botanists tell us it prefers deep and moist soil, but I know that it lives and seems happy in many soils and in many places. Always and everywhere it shows a clean, distinct trunk, its brown bark uniformly furrowed, but in such a manner as to give a nearly smooth appearance at a little distance. The branches do not leave the stem so imperceptibly as do those which give the elm its very distinct form, but rather start at a right angle, leaving the distinct central column of solid strength unimpaired. The winter tracery of these branches, and the whole effect of the liriodendron without foliage, is extremely distinct and pleasing. I have in mind a noble group of great liriodendrons which I first saw against an early April sky of blue and white. The trees had grown close, and had interlaced their somewhat twisty branches, so that the general impression was that of one great tree supported on several stems. The pure beauty of these very tall and very stately trees, thus grouped and with every twig sharply outlined, I shall always remember.