Trees Worth Knowing Part 23

=The Kentucky Coffee Tree=

_Gymnocladus dioicus_, K. Koch

The Kentucky coffee tree is the one clumsy, coa.r.s.e member of a family that abounds in graceful, dainty species. Its head is small and unsymmetrical, above a trunk that often rises free from limbs for fifty feet above ground. The branches are stiff and large, bare until late spring, when the buds expand and the shoots are thrown out. The leaves are twice compound, often a yard in length and half as wide; the leaflets, six to fourteen on each of the five to nine divisions of the main rib. No other locust can boast a leaf numbering more than one hundred leaflets, each averaging two inches in length. When the tree turns to gold in autumn, it is a sight to draw all eyes.

The flower spray is large, but the flowers are small, imperfect, salver-form, purplish green--the fertile ones forming thick, clumsy pods that dangle in cl.u.s.ters, and seem to weigh down the stiff branchlets. The fresh pulp used to be made into a decoction used in homeopathic practice. The ripe seeds were used in Revolutionary times as a subst.i.tute for coffee. How the pioneer ever crushed them is a puzzle to all who have tried to break one with a nut-cracker.

In China the fresh pulp of the pods of a sister species is used as we use soap.

The wood is not hard, but in other respects it resembles other locust lumber. It is sometimes used in cabinet work, being a rich, reddish brown, with pale sap-wood.

The range of the coffee tree extends from New York to Nebraska, and south through Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Oklahoma, with bottom lands as the tree's preference. Nowhere is this species common.

Occasionally, it is planted as a street tree, in this country and abroad.

=The Redbud=

_Cercis Canadensis_, Linn.

The redbud covers its delicate angled, thornless branchlets with a profusion of rosy-purple blossoms, typically pea-like, before the leaves appear. The unusual color, so abundant where little redbuds form thickets on the outskirts of a woodland, leads to a very general recognition of this tree among people who go into the April woods for early violets. It vies with the white banner of the shad-bush, in doing honor to the spring. Later, the broad heart-shaped leaves cover and adorn the tree, concealing the dainty tapering pods that turn to purple as the polished leaf blades, unmarred by insect or wind, change from green to clear yellow before falling.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _See page 159_

SERVICE-BERRY IN BLOSSOM

The flowers appear in April, before the leaves]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _See page 161_

THE HACKBERRY

Leaves, berries, and (A) pistillate and (B) staminate flowers]

Tradition has given this charming little locust tree the name, "Judas-tree," from its European cousin, rumored to have been the one upon which the choice of Judas fell when he went out and hanged himself. It is an unearned stigma, better forgotten, for it does prejudice the planter against a tree that should be on every lawn, preferably showing its rosy flowers against a bank of evergreens.

Its natural range extends from New Jersey to Florida and west from Ontario to Nebraska and southward. The largest specimens reach fifty feet in height in Texas and Arkansas, in river bottom lands, and in the Southwest the tree is an abundant undergrowth--making a beautiful woodland picture in early spring.

=The Yellow-wood=

_Cladrastis lutea_, K. Koch.

The yellow-wood was named by the wife of a pioneer, surely, for she soaked the chips and got from them a clear yellow dye, highly prized for the permanent color it gave to her homespun cotton and woolen cloth that must have gone colorless, but for dyestuffs discoverable in the woods.

The satiny grain of the wood, and its close hard texture, commended it to the woodsman, who used it for gun stocks. But the tree is too small to be important for the lumber it yields.

In winter the smooth pale bark of the "Virgilia," as the nurseryman calls it, reminds one of the rind of the beech. The broad rounded head, often borne on three or more spreading stems, is formed of drooping graceful branches, ending in brittle twigs. Summer clothes these twigs with a light airy covering of compound leaves, of seven to eleven broadly oval leaflets, on a stalk less than a foot in length. In autumn, the foliage turns yellow.

White flowers, pea-like, delicate, fragrant, in cl.u.s.ters a foot long, and so loose that the flowers seem to drip from the twig ends, drape the tree in white about the middle of June, when the young leaves show many tints of green to form a background for the blossoms.

This is the supreme moment of the year for one of the most charming of trees, in any park that cherishes one of these virgilias. In the wilds of eastern Tennessee, northern Alabama, and central Kentucky the species is found in scattered places. But the wild trees have scant food and they show it. The full beauty of the species is seen only in cultivation, as one sees it in the Arnold Arboretum, and in private gardens near Boston. Even the little pods, thin, satiny pointed, add a harmonious note of beauty; their silvery fawn color blending with the quiet Quaker drab worn by the tree all winter.

Fortunately, this hardy beautiful park tree is easily raised from seeds and from root cuttings. It thrives on soil of many different kinds. It has no bad habits, no superior, and few equals among flowering trees.

THE ACACIAS, OR WATTLES

Australia has contributed to southern California's tree flora a large number of forms of the acacia tribe, shrubs and trees of great variety and beauty of flowers and evergreen foliage. They are hardy and perfectly at home, and are planted in such profusion as to be the commonest of all street and ornamental trees. The leaves are set on a branching pinnate stem, making them "twice compound" of many tiny leaflets, fascicled on the sides of the twigs, alternate on the terminal shoots of the season. The lacy, fern-like foliage of most acacias would justify the planting of them for this trait alone. But the abundant ma.s.s of bloom usually overwhelms the tree-tops, obscuring the foliage with a veil of golden mesh.

Sometimes white, but oftenest yellow, the individual flowers are very small; but they crowd in b.u.t.ton-like heads or elongated spikes, set close in axillary cl.u.s.ters. In their native woods these trees flower much less freely than in the land of their adoption. The curling pods are in most species and varieties ornamental, as they pa.s.s through many color changes before they finally discharge their seeds.

Acacias compose a genus of four hundred species, and an untold and constantly increasing number of cultivated varieties. The continent of Australia has the greatest representation of native species.

Others belong to Africa--tropical, northern, and southern regions.

Asia, in its warmer southern territory, and in southwestern China, has many native acacias. Tropical and temperate South America, the West Indies, Central America, Mexico, the southwestern region of the United States, and the islands of the South Pacific, all have representatives of this wonderful and far-scattered genus. There is no country interested in horticulture that does not grow acacias as ornamental shrubs and trees, even if they must be grown under gla.s.s the year round. In southern England the acacias, grown in open ground, and known as "ta.s.sel trees," attain good size.

Valuable lumber, tanbarks, dyes, perfumes, and drugs are yielded by acacias. Gum Arabic is the dried sap of several oriental species, particularly, _Acacia Arabica_, Linn. of Egypt and southern Asia.

As a rule, acacias have slender branches armed with spines. Often these are too small to attract notice, or to make the species useful as a hedge plant. All spines are modifications of the stipules at the base of leaf or leaflet. Thorns, however, are modified twigs, strong, stiff and sharp, often branched. The honey locust shows true thorns, not spines or p.r.i.c.kles. The armament of canes of blackberry is only skin deep. This means of defence is best called "p.r.i.c.kles."

=The Black Acacia=

_Acacia melanoxylon_

The black acacia, called at home in Australian woods, the "blackwood-tree," for its black heart-wood, is a familiar street and shade tree in California. In narrow parkings it is likely to surprise the planter by outgrowing in a few years the s.p.a.ce allotted to it, and upheaving both cement walk and curb, by the irresistible force of its thick roots. It is one of the large timber acacias, and even in the cool climate of England reaches fifty feet.

In suitable situations in California it grows much higher, and its compact conical head of dense evergreen foliage, gives abundant shade at all seasons. The flowers are white or cream-colored, lightening the yellow-green of the new shoots and the dull, opaque of the older leaves, with abundant cl.u.s.ters in earliest spring. The succeeding fruits are curling thin pods that hang in brownish sheaves, giving the tree a rusty look. Each seed is rimmed with a frill of terra cotta hue that serves as a wing for its flight, when detached by the wind. The roots send up suckers and the seeds are quick to grow. So any one can have black acacias with little trouble or expense. Its shedding of leaves and pods makes much litter, however, a trait sometimes overlooked which seriously diminishes its desirability as a street and shade tree.

=The Silver Wattle=

_A. dealbata_

The silver wattle of nursery catalogues is named for its abundant, silvery-p.u.b.escent, feathery foliage. Its flowers--fluffy golden b.a.l.l.s, small but abundant--make this a wonderfully showy tree.

Sea-green and turquoise-blue leaves, with abundant canary-yellow bloom, are traits of many different acacias in cultivation, all of which are rapid growers, and soon repay the planter who wants quick results. From being mere ornaments they rise to the stature of shade trees, and merely multiply the charms that made them admired when young. Varieties with sharp spines are employed as hedge plants.

Curious leaf forms and unusual, edgewise position of the foliage, make us wonder at some of the glorious "golden wattles" and "knife-leaved acacias," that bring us glimpses of the forests of Australia and other strange far countries.

OTHER POD-BEARERS

=The Mesquite=

_Prosopis juliflora_, DC.

The mesquite or honey pod is one of the wonderful plants of the arid and semi-arid regions from Colorado and Utah to Texas and southern California. At best it is a tree sixty feet high along the rivers of Arizona. In the higher and more desert stretches it is stunted to a sprawling shrub, with numerous stems but a few feet high. Its leaves are like those of our honey locust but very much smaller, and the tree furnishes little shade. The bark of the trunk is thick, dark reddish brown, shallowly fissured between scaly ridges. In winter the tree looks dead enough, but the young shoots clothed with tender green bring it to life in early spring, and the greenish fragrant flowers, thickly set in finger-like cl.u.s.ters, appear in successive crops from May to July. These are succeeded by pods four to nine inches long in drooping cl.u.s.ters, each containing ten to twenty beans.

Not its beauty of leaf and blossom but its usefulness is what makes this tree almost an object of wors.h.i.+p to desert dwellers, red men and white. The long fat pods supply Mexicans and Indians with a nutritious food, green or ripe. Cattle feed upon the young shoots and thrive, when other forage is scant or utterly lacking. The fuel problem of the desert is solved by the mesquite in a way that is a great surprise to the newcomer. His sophisticated neighbor takes him on a wood-gathering expedition. Stopping where a shrubby mesquite sprawls, he hitches his team to a chain or rope that lays hold of the trunk, and hauls the plant out by its roots. And what roots the mesquite has developed in its search for water! There is a central tap root that goes down, down, sometimes sixty feet or more.

Secondary roots branch out in all directions, interlock, thicken, and form a labyrinth of woody substance, in quant.i.ty and quality that makes the timber above ground a negligible quant.i.ty. This wood is cut into building and fencing materials--two great needs in the desert. The waste makes good fuel, and every sc.r.a.p is precious.

Posts, railroad ties, frames for the adobe houses, furniture, fellies of wheels, paving blocks, and charcoal are made of this wonderful tree's root system. A gum resembling gum-arabic exudes from the stems.