THE NEEDLE-LEAVED EVERGREENS In our town and in our neighbourhood most of the trees drop their leaves before winter comes, and stand with bare limbs for several months. Here and there, however, a single tree stands, wearing the same green leaves it wore all summer. Everybody knows this tree as an evergreen. It belongs to a group of trees strangely different from those around it which have shed their leaves. Let us see how it dif fers from them..
Take the one that is nearest to you, and pull down one of its leafy, green branches. The leaves are like green needles, stiff, sharp-pointed, with waxy resin on the brown twigs, that makes your fingers sticky. Up in the tree tops strange oval, brown cones are hanging. Underfoot, a carpet of dead needles lies thick upon the grass, and cones, with their overlapping scales spread much wider than those upon the tree, lie about. Squirrels have gnawed some of these scales away, leaving a central spike like a cob from which the corn has been shelled. Little green cones, fat and waxy, no larger than your thumb, are seen near the tips of some branches. You can see the scales overlapping each other in these, even though they seem to be grown solidly to gether.
If we walk through the village or the city in which we live, and stop under each evergreen tree we come to, we shall find nearly all alike in these two points : they have needle-like leaves, and they have cones. The evergreens with needle-like leaves, and cones on and under them, belong to four evergreen tree families, whose names every one would like to know. These four evergreen families are named pine, spruce, fir, and hemlock, and they are planted everywhere. But few people are very sure they know one from another. It is perfectly right to call them all ever greens, or conifers, which means cone-bearers. These names include all the four families. But it is common for people to call a spruce, a pine, or a hemlock, a spruce, when the truth is that one may very easily know these trees apart.
Let us begin with the first needle-leaved cone bearing evergreen we meet. To find out whether this tree is a pine, a spruce, a fir, or a hemlock, we must ask the tree some questions. It will
answer them. First : " Are your needles set one in a place on the twig, or are they in groups, or bundles, of more than one at a place? " Pull down a twig and look sharply for the answer. Suppose there are the leaves in pairs, or in threes, or in fives, each bundle or group growing out of a single point on the twig. The answer is : " Not single, but in bundles, more than one at a place." Towards the end of the shoot you will find a brownish or silvery sheath binding the leaves into bundles. Further back, this sheath may be missing, but the number of leaves in the bundle remains the same for some distance back from the end of the shoot. The leaves begin to fall from the bundles farthest from the tips, and therefore old. If two leaves is the number in a bundle, there are never more than two, young and old. If three is the number, you will find only threes. If five is the number, then you will rarely find fewer than this in any bundle.
All the trees with more than one leaf in a bundle are pines. All of the rest of the needle leaved evergreens have a single leaf at a place upon the twig. They are the spruces, firs, and hemlocks. Let us go and look for them.
The very next evergreen we come to we must put the same question to : " Are your leaves single, or are there more than one in a bundle? " Suppose " three in a bundle " is the answer; we recognise the tree as a pine, and pass it by.
Across the street is a tree of different shape, though an evergreen and a conifer. We see the long cones hanging from its drooping branches, especially near the top of the tree. Cross over and examine a twig; the needles are short and sharp-pointed, and they are set singly in spiral lines on the twigs. Every leaf sits on a little shelf, or bracket, that stands out from the twig. Pick up a dead twig under the tree. The leaves are gone, but these little brackets in spiral rows wind around the twig. They are horny and sharp, and would tear your fingers if you drew the twig quickly between them.