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  TREES WORTH KNOWING




    [Illustration: A BEND IN THE TRAIL]




  _LITTLE NATURE LIBRARY_

  TREES
  WORTH KNOWING

  BY JULIA ELLEN ROGERS

  (_Author of_ _The Tree Book_, _The Tree Guide_, _Trees
  Every Child Should Know_, _The Book of Useful
  Plants_, _The Shell Book_, _etc., etc._)

   [Illustration: "Fructus Quam Folia"]

  _With forty-eight illustrations, sixteen being in color_

  PUBLISHED BY
  DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
         FOR
  NELSON DOUBLEDAY, INC.
        1923




  _Copyright, 1917, by_

  DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

  _All rights reserved, including that of
  translation into foreign languages,
  including the Scandinavian_

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
              AT
  THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS. GARDEN CITY, N. Y.




CONTENTS


                                                                PAGE

  INTRODUCTION                                                    xi

                         PART I

  THE LIFE OF THE TREES                                            3

                         PART II

  THE NUT TREES                                                   28

   The Walnuts; The Hickories; The Beech; The Chestnuts;
   The Oaks; The Horse-chestnuts; The Lindens

                         PART III

  WATER-LOVING TREES                                              75

   The Poplars; The Willows; The Hornbeams; The Birches;
   The Alders; The Sycamores; The Gum Trees; The Osage Orange

                         PART IV

  TREES WITH SHOWY FLOWERS AND FRUITS                            101

   The Magnolias; The Dogwoods; The Viburnums; The Mountain
   Ashes; The Rhododendron; The Mountain Laurel; The MadroA+-a;
   The Sorrel Tree; The Silver Bell Trees; The Sweet Leaf;
   The Fringe Tree; The Laurel Family; The Witch  Hazel;
   The Burning Bush; The Sumachs; The Smoke Tree; The Hollies

                         PART V

  WILD RELATIVES OF OUR ORCHARD TREES                            147

   The Apples; The Plums; The Cherries; The Hawthorns; The
   Service-berries; The Hackberries; The Mulberries; The Figs;
   The Papaws; The Pond Apples; The Persimmons

                         PART VI

  THE POD-BEARING TREES                                          176

  The Locusts; The Acacias; Miscellaneous Species

                         PART VII

  DECIDUOUS TREES WITH WINGED SEEDS                              193

  The Maples; The Ashes; The Elms

                         PART VIII

  THE CONE-BEARING EVERGREENS                                    217

   The Pines; The Spruces; The Firs; The Douglas Spruce;
   The Hemlocks; The Sequoias; The Arbor-vitaes; The Incense
   Cedar; The Cypresses; The Junipers; The Larches

                         PART IX

  THE PALMS                                                      280

  GENERAL INDEX                                                  283




LIST OF  ILLUSTRATIONS


                                                                PAGE

  Canoe or Paper Birch                                    _On Cover_

  A Bend in the Trail                                 _Frontispiece_

  Shagbark Hickory                                                 6

  Mockernut Fruit and Leaves                                       7

  A Grove of Beeches                                              22

  Chestnut Tree                                                   23

  Weeping Beech                                                   30

  Black Walnut                                                    31

  White Oak                                                       38

  Bur or Mossy-cup Oak Leaves and Fruit                           39

  Horse-chestnut in Blossom                                       54

  Weeping Willow                                                  55

  Tulip Tree, Flower and Leaves                                  103

  Flowering Dogwood                                              118

  American Elm                                                   215

  Eastern Red Cedars and Hickory                                 230




LIST OF OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS

                                                                PAGE

  Black Walnut Shoots                                             70

  Shagbark Hickory                                                71

  American Linden Leaves and Fruit                                86

  Trembling Aspen Catkins and Leaves                           86-87

  Pussy Willow Flowers                                         86-87

  American Hornbeam--A Fruiting Branch                            87

  The Tattered, Silky Bark of the Birches                        102

  Sycamore Bark and Seed-balls                               102-103

  Bark, Seeds, and Seed-balls of the Sweet Gum               102-103

  Osage Orange Leaves, and Flowers                               119

  Dogwood Bark, Blossom, Fruit, and Buds                         134

  Mountain Ash Flowers and Leaves                                135

  Sassafras Flowers, Fruit, and Leaves                           150

  Foliage and Flowers of the Smooth Sumach                   150-151

  Buds, Leaves, and Fruit of the Wild Crabapple              150-151

  Canada Plum--Flowers and Trunk                                 151

  Wild Black Cherry--Flowers and Fruit                           166

  Fruiting Branch of Cockspur Thorn                              167

  Service-berry Tree in Blossom                                  182

  Hackberry--Flowers, Fruit, and Leaves                          183

  Honey Locust's Trunk, and Black Locust's Flowers and Leaves    198

  Sugar Maple                                                198-199

  Red Maple Flowers                                          198-199

  Seed Keys and New Leaves of Soft or Silver Maple               199

  White Ash Buds and Flowers                                     214

  A Group of White Pines                                     214-215

  Shortleaf Pine Cones and Needles                           214-215

  The Sugar Pine                                                 231

  Leaves and Cones of Hemlock and of Norway Spruce               246

  Black Spruce Cones and Needles                                 247

  Spray of Arbor-vitae                                           262

  American Larch Cones and Needles                               263




INTRODUCTION


Occasionally I meet a person who says: "I know nothing at all about
trees." This modest disclaimer is generally sincere, but it has always
turned out to be untrue. "Oh, well, that old sugar maple, I've always
known that tree. We used to tap all the sugar maples on the place
every spring." Or again: "Everybody knows a white birch by its bark."
"Of course, anybody who has ever been chestnutting knows a chestnut
tree." Most people know Lombardy poplars, those green exclamation
points so commonly planted in long soldierly rows on roadsides and
boundary lines in many parts of the country. Willows, too, everybody
knows are willows. The best nut trees, the shagbark, chestnut, and
butternut, need no formal introduction. The honey locust has its
striking three-pronged thorns, and its purple pods dangling in winter
and skating off over the snow. The beech has its smooth, close bark of
Quaker gray, and nobody needs to look for further evidence to
determine this tree's name.

So it is easily proved that each person has a good nucleus of tree
knowledge around which to accumulate more. If people have the love of
nature in their hearts--if things out of doors call irresistibly, at
any season--it will not really matter if their lives are pinched and
circumscribed. Ways and means of studying trees are easily found, even
if the scant ends of busy days spent indoors are all the time at
command. If there is energy to begin the undertaking it will soon
furnish its own motive power. Tree students, like bird students,
become enthusiasts. To understand their enthusiasm one must follow
their examples.

The beginner doesn't know exactly how and where to begin. There are
great collections of trees here and there. The Arnold Arboretum in
Boston is the great dendrological Noah's Ark in this country. It
contains almost all the trees, American and foreign, which will grow
in that region. The Shaw Botanical Garden at St. Louis is the largest
midland assemblage of trees. Parks in various cities bring together as
large a variety of trees as possible, and these are often labelled
with their English and botanical names for the benefit of the public.

Yet the places for the beginner are his own dooryard, the streets he
travels four times a day to his work, and woods for his holiday,
though they need not be forests. Arboreta are for his delight when he
has gained some acquaintance with the tree families. But not at first.
The trees may all be set out in tribes and families and labelled with
their scientific names. They will but confuse and discourage him.
There is not time to make their acquaintance. They overwhelm with the
mere number of kinds. Great arboreta and parks are very scarce. Trees
are everywhere. The acquaintance of trees is within the reach of all.

First make a plan of the yard, locating and naming the trees you
actually know. Extend it to include the street, and the neighbors'
yards, as you get ready for them. Be very careful about giving names
to trees. If you think you know a tree, ask yourself _how_ you know
it. Sift out all the guesses, and the hearsays, and begin on a solid
foundation, even if you are sure about only the sugar maple and the
white birch.

The characters to note in studying trees are: leaves, flowers, fruits,
bark, buds, bud arrangement, leaf scars, and tree form. The season of
the year determines which features are most prominent. Buds and leaf
scars are the most unvarying of tree characters. In winter these
traits and the tree frame are most plainly revealed. Winter often
exhibits tree fruits on or under the tree, and dead-leaf studies are
very satisfactory. Leaf arrangement may be made out at any season, for
leaf scars tell this story after the leaves fall.

Only three families of our large trees have opposite leaves. This fact
helps the beginner. Look first at the twigs. If the leaves, or (in
winter) the buds and leaf scars, stand opposite, the tree (if it is of
large size) belongs to the maple, ash, or horse-chestnut family. Our
native horse-chestnuts are buckeyes. If the leaves are simple the tree
is a maple; if pinnately compound, of several leaflets, it is an ash;
if palmately compound, of five to seven leaflets, it is a
horse-chestnut. In winter dead leaves under the trees furnish this
evidence. The winter buds of the horse-chestnut are large and waxy,
and the leaf scars look like prints of a horse's hoof. Maple buds are
small, and the leaf scar is a small, narrow crescent. Ash buds are
dull and blunt, with rough, leathery scales. Maple twigs are slender.
Ash and buckeye twigs are stout and clumsy.

Bark is a distinguishing character of many trees--of others it is
confusing. The sycamore, shedding bark in sheets from its limbs,
exposes pale, smooth under bark. The tree is recognizable by its
mottled appearance winter or summer. The corky ridges on limbs of
sweet gum and bur oak are easily remembered traits. The peculiar
horizontal peeling of bark on birches designates most of the genus.
The prussic-acid taste of a twig sets the cherry tribe apart. The
familiar aromatic taste of the green twigs of sassafras is its best
winter character; the mitten-shaped leaves distinguish it in summer.

It is necessary to get some book on the subject to discover the names
of trees one studies, and to act as teacher at times. A book makes a
good staff, but a poor crutch. The eyes and the judgment are the
dependable things. In spring the way in which the leaves open is
significant; so are the flowers. Every tree when it reaches proper age
bears flowers. Not all bear fruit, but blossoms come on every tree. In
summer the leaves and fruits are there to be examined. In autumn the
ripening fruits are the special features.

To know a tree's name is the beginning of acquaintance--not an end in
itself. There is all the rest of one's life in which to follow it up.
Tree friendships are very precious things. John Muir, writing among
his beloved trees of the Yosemite Valley, adjures his world-weary
fellow men to seek the companionship of trees.

       *       *       *       *       *

"To learn how they live and behave in pure wildness, to see them in
their varying aspects through the seasons and weather, rejoicing in
the great storms, putting forth their new leaves and flowers, when all
the streams are in flood, and the birds singing, and sending away
their seeds in the thoughtful Indian summer, when all the landscape is
glowing in deep, calm enthusiasm--for this you must love them and live
with them, as free from schemes and care and time as the trees
themselves."


_Tree Names_

Two Latin words, written in italics, with a cabalistic abbreviation
set after them, are a stumbling block on the page to the reader
unaccustomed to scientific lore. He resents botanical names, and
demands to know the tree's name in "plain English." Trees have both
common and scientific names, and each has its use. Common names were
applied to important trees by people, the world over, before science
was born. Many trees were never noticed by anybody until botanists
discovered and named them. They may never get common names at all.

A name is a description reduced to its lowest terms. It consists
usually of a surname and a descriptive adjective: Mary Jones, white
oak, _Quercus alba_. Take the oaks, for example, and let us consider
how they got their names, common and scientific. All acorn-bearing
trees are oaks. They are found in Europe, Asia