Trees Worth Knowing Part 14

=The Cuc.u.mber Tree=

_M. ac.u.minata_, Linn.

The cuc.u.mber tree is the hardiest of our native magnolias, tropical-looking by reason of its heart-shaped leaves, six to ten inches long. Its chosen habitat is rocky uplands, where the fleshy roots can find moist soil. It ranges from western New York to Illinois, Kentucky, and Arkansas, and follows the mountain foothills through Pennsylvania and Tennessee into Alabama and Mississippi.

The flowers are like tulips, and though large can scarcely be seen among the new leaves, because they are all yellowish green in color.

The petals are leaf-like and the flowers have no fragrance to make up for their lack of beauty. Imperfect pollination results in distorted, fleshy cones that resemble cuc.u.mbers that have twisted and shrunken in spots as they grew. These fruits turn from pink to red as they mature, redeeming their ugly shape by their vivid color as the leaves turn yellow. In September, the scarlet seeds hang out and the wind whips them until they dangle several inches below the fruit. One by one they drop and new cuc.u.mber trees come up from this planting.

The wood of the cuc.u.mber tree is light, close-textured, weak, and pale brown in color. It has only local use in cabinet-making and for flooring. The tree is far more valuable in horticulture. It is a splendid stock on which to graft less hardy magnolias. It is a superb avenue and shade tree for Northern cities, and in this capacity it is as yet little known. It grows vigorously from seed, and stands transplanting, if care is used that the brittle roots are not mutilated nor dried.

=The Umbrella Tree=

_M. tripetala_, Linn.

The umbrella tree has an umbrella-like whorl of leaves surrounding the flower whose white cup stands above three recurving white sepals. The whole tree suggests an umbrella, so closely thatched is its dome of thin, bright green leaves.

The stout contorted branches and twigs lack symmetry, from the forking habit. Side twigs strike out at right angles from an erect branch, then turn up into a position parallel with the parent branch, and bear terminal flowers, which induce another branching system the following year. Despite its angularity this is the trimmest and one of the handsomest of our native magnolias, and it has the merit of hardiness even in New England, where it attains large size. Its native range extends from Pennsylvania near the coast, along the Atlantic seaboard, and westward to southern Alabama and Arkansas. It loves swamp borders and the banks of mountain streams, but behaves well in the moderately rich soil of parks and gardens.

=The Tulip Tree=

_Liriodendron tulipifera_, Linn.

The tulip tree is a cousin, rather than a sister, to the foregoing magnolias. It stands alone in its genus in America, but has a sister species that grows in the Chinese interior. A tall, stately forest tree, it reached two hundred feet in height, and a trunk diameter of ten feet, in the lower Ohio Valley, when it was covered with virgin forest. This species still holds its own as a valuable lumber tree on mountain slopes of North Carolina and Tennessee. Smaller, but still stately and beautiful, it is found in woods from Vermont to Florida and west to Illinois, Arkansas, and Mississippi.

In Europe the tulip tree has been a favorite since its discovery and exportation by the American colonists. More and more it is coming to be appreciated at home as a lawn and shade tree, for there is no time in the year when it is not full of interest and beauty, and no time in its life when it is not a distinct and beautiful addition to any plantation.

In the dead of winter young tulip trees are singularly straight and symmetrical compared with saplings of other trees. There is usually a grove of them, planted by some older tree that towers overhead, and still holds up its s.h.i.+ny cones, that take months to give up their winged seeds. The close, thick, intricately furrowed bark of the parent tree contrasts sharply with the smooth rind of its branches and the stems of the saplings. Tulip trees are trim as beeches until the trunks are old.

The winter twigs are set with oblong blunt leaf-buds. The terminal one contains the flower, when the tree is old enough to bloom. (_See ill.u.s.tration, page 103._) In spring the terminal buds of saplings best show the peculiarity of the tree's vernation. Two green leaves with palms together form a flat bag that encloses the new shoot. Hold this bag up to the light and you see, as a shadow within, a curved petiole and leaf. The bag opens along its edge seam, the leaf-stem straightens, lifting the blade which is folded on the midrib. At the base of the petiole stands a smaller flat green bag. As the leaf grows to maturity the basal palms of its protecting bag shrivel and fall away, leaving the ring scar around the leaf base.

Now the growing shoot has carried up the second bag, which opens and another leaf expands, sheds its leafy stipules, and a third follows.

The studies of this unique vernation delight children and grown-ups.

It is absolutely unmatched in the world of trees.

The leathery blades of the tulip tree are from four to six inches broad and long, with basal lobes, like those of a maple leaf, and the end chopped off square. Occasionally there is a notch, made by the two end lobes projecting a trifle beyond the midrib. The leaves are singularly free from damage, keeping their dark l.u.s.trous beauty through the summer, and turning to clear yellow before they fall.

The winged seeds fall first from the top of the erect cones, the wind whirling them far, because the flat blades are long and the seed-cases light--many of them empty in fact. Far into winter a tulip tree seems to be blossoming, because its bare branches are tipped with the remnants of the seed cones, faded and s.h.i.+ning almost white against the dark branches.

Tulip wood is soft and weak, pale brown, and light in weight. It is easily worked and is used locally for house and boat-building. Wood pulp consumes much of the yearly harvest. It is known as "poplar,"

whose wood it resembles. Ordinary postal cards are made of it. The bark yields a drug used as a heart stimulant.

THE DOGWOODS

Foliage of exceptional beauty is the distinguis.h.i.+ng trait of the trees in the cornel family, from the standpoint of the landscape gardener and the lover of the woods. Showy flowers and fruit belong to some of the species; extremely hard, close-textured wood belongs to all; and this means slow growth, which is a limitation in the eyes of the planter who wishes quick results. But he who plants a cornel tree and watches it season after season, finds it one of the most interesting of nature studies through the whole round of the year.

The dogwoods are slender-twigged trees of small size, with simple, entire leaves, strongly ribbed, and with one exception, set opposite upon the twigs. Fifty species are distributed over the Northern Hemisphere; one crosses the equator into Peru. Four of the seventeen species found in the United States are trees; the rest are shrubs, one of them the low-growing bunchberry of our Northern woods.

=The Flowering Dogwood=

_Cornus florida_, Linn.

The flowering dogwood (_see ill.u.s.tration, page 134_) is a little tree whose round, bushy, flat-topped head is made of short, horizontal branches. The twigs hold erect in the winter a mult.i.tude of buds, large, squat, enclosed in four scales, like the husk of a hickory nut.

All the delicate tints that the water-colorist delights in are found in these buds and the twigs that bear them. When spring comes, these scales loosen, expand, turn green, then fade into pure white--forming the four banners, ordinarily called petals--of the bloom of the dogwood. The true flowers are small and cl.u.s.tered in the centre. These white expanses are merely modified bud scales, the botanist will tell you, and the notch at the end is where the h.o.r.n.y winter scale broke away, while its base was growing into the large white palm.

From March till May one finds the dogwood clothed in white (_see ill.u.s.tration, page 118_), and the glossy leaves pa.s.sing through changing hues from rose to green. The wayward arrangement of the blossoms on the branch is the delight of artists. Lured by the white signals, bees and other nectar-loving insects come to the flowers, cross-fertilizing them while they supply their own needs. In midsummer the pale green cl.u.s.ters of berries replace the flowers, and when in autumn the foliage, still glossy and smooth, changes to crimson and scarlet, the berries are brighter still, until the birds have taken every one.

The bark of the dogwood is checkered like alligator skin but with deep furrows that make it very rough. The wood is used for wood engraving blocks, for tool handles, hubs, and cogs. But it is becoming very scarce. The deplorable destruction of the dogwoods comes not so much from the lumberman as from the irresponsible people who tear the trees to pieces in blossoming time. The wanton mutilation of the dogwoods in natural woodlands belonging to cities can be curbed only by policing the tracts. The saving of every flowering dogwood tree is a duty owed to his community by every wood-lot owner within the range of this hardy, handsome tree. Though exterminated over much of its range, it is able and willing to grow in any state east of the Mississippi River. It is one of the most deservedly popular trees planted for ornament in this country and in Europe.

=Western Dogwood=

_C. Nuttallii_, Aud.

The Pacific Coast outdoes the rest of the country in the size of its forest trees. Superlatives in vegetation abound where the breath of the j.a.pan current tempers the air. The Western dogwood often reaches one hundred feet in height in the forests near Seattle. Its flowers have six, instead of four, of the petal-like, white bracts, each narrower and pointed, and without the terminal notch. The tree in blossom is more magnificent than the eastern species, for the flowers are often twice as large, and the spectacle of one of these trees, after the leaves turn to scarlet in autumn, and it leans against the sombre evergreens that cover the mountain-side, is always startling, even in a country where surprises are the rule.

=European Dogwood=

_C. mas._

The European dogwood or cornel is often planted in the Eastern states as an ornamental tree, but not for its flowers alone, though these tiny, b.u.t.ton-like cl.u.s.ters cover the bare branches in earliest spring.

The showy fruits look like scarlet olives hanging among the glossy foliage in late summer. These fruits are edible, and in Europe are used in preserves and cordials.

THE VIBURNUMS

The honeysuckle family, which includes a mult.i.tude of ornamental shrubs, furnishes two genera with three representatives. Handsome foliage, showy flowers, and attractive fruits justify the popularity of this family in gardens and parks.

The viburnums are distributed over the Northern Hemisphere and extend into the tropics. There are about one hundred species, including the old-fas.h.i.+oned s...o...b..ll bush, perhaps the best-known species in this country. Discriminating gardeners have replaced it by the j.a.panese s...o...b..ll, because the latter has much more handsome foliage and perfect flowers, instead of the barren flower cl.u.s.ter that has nothing to show for itself once the bloom is past. This new species wears the autumn decoration of bright red berries well into the winter.

=The Sheepberry=

_Viburnum lentago_, Linn.

In our native woods the sheepberry is a small round-headed tree, with slim, drooping branches and oval leaves, finely cut-toothed and tapering to wavy-winged petioles. In autumn these leathery leaves change to orange and red, their s.h.i.+ny surfaces contrasting with the dull lining, pitted with black dots. The fruit, a loose cl.u.s.ter of dark blue berries, on branching red stems, is an attractive color contrast, and the birds flutter in the trees until they have eaten the last one. The fragrant white flowers light up the tree from April to June with their flat cl.u.s.ters three to five inches across. The opposite arrangement of the leaves and that short-winged petiole identify the little tree, whether it grows by the swamp borders, along the streams, or in parks and gardens. At any season it is good to look upon. Its range covers the eastern half of the country, extending almost to the Gulf of Mexico and west into Wyoming.

=The Rusty Nannyberry=

_V. rufidulum_, Raff.

The rusty nannyberry is easily distinguished by the rusty hairs that clothe its new shoots and the stems and veins of the leaves. White flower cl.u.s.ters are succeeded by bright blue berries of unusual size and brilliance, ripe in October, on red-stemmed pedicles. The handsome polished leaves are rounded at the tips. The wood of this little tree has a very unpleasant odor, but this trait has no bearing upon its merits as a garden ornament. It is found wild from Virginia to Illinois and southward. In cultivation it is hardy in the lat.i.tude of Boston.