HOW TO KNOW THE TREES "And surely nobody can find anything hard in this; even the blind must enjoy these woods, drinking in their fragrance, listening to the music of the winds in their groves, and fingering their flowers and plumes and cones and richly furrowed boles. The kind of study required is as easy and natural as breathing." —John Muir.
Occasionaly I meet a person who says : "1 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: "Every body 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 shag bark, 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 grey, 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 be gin 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 for eign, 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 tc 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 every where. The acquaintance of trees is within the reach of all.
First make a plus of the yard, locating and naming the trees you actually know. Extend it to include the street, and the neighbours' yards, as you get ready for them. Be very care ful 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 promi nent. 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 arrange ment may be made out at any season, for leaf scars tell this story after the leaves fall.