Notice that the little brackets are angled at the top. Pick up a dead leaf and notice the shape of its base. The leaf itself has angled sides. Roll it between your thumb and finger. It has three or four sides, and at least three sharp angles.
This is a spruce, and the signs by which we know it are the brackets on the twig, the thick, sharp, three- or four-angled leaf, and the stout twigs, to match the stout leaves.
The next needle-leaved evergreen with cones we meet we may hope will turn out to be a fir or hemlock, but the chances are that its twigs will show two, three, or five needles in a bundle. What shall we call the tree? A pine, of course, and pass it by. We need ask no further ques tion.
The next tree has stiff twigs with brackets, and stout, stiff, angled and pointed leaves. Cones hang down upon its branches. We recognise a spruce, and go on.
Over yonder is an evergreen which waves a featherly spray of very slender twigs. There is scarcely a breeze stirring, and yet the tree is all a-tremble, and its drooping branches carry a load of pretty little brown cones. Turn up a branch, and you notice that the leaves are all silvery underneath. They are single on the twigs, so this is not a pine. They part and lie flat, a row on each side of the twig. This is very different from a spruce whose leaves stand out all around the twigs. These sprays are flat, each like a feather. The leaves are soft, not stiff. They are blunt, flat, and each has a tiny stem. The twigs are like fine wire, they are so slender. The leaves are mounted on brackets, just as the spruce leaves are, but the brackets are much smaller, to match the daintier twigs and leaves.
It is a hemlock tree. The tiny leaf stem is the thing which sets it apart from all other needle leaved evergreens. Take a good look before you go, at the leaf itself, at the slender twigs, with their little brackets, at the shining upper surface of the flat leaf and the silvery lining that makes this tree so lovely as the wind lifts the flexible branches. Pick up a handful of dead leaves, and notice that though dead and brown, they show the flat surface with a middle ridge on the under side, prolonged into the short leaf stem. The pale lining is not so distinct now.
One tree family remains of the needle-leaved, cone-bearing evergreen. That is the fir, the
Christmas tree, and its close relatives. Not often do we plant our native fir, because the trees are not as handsome, nor as useful as pines, spruces, and hemlocks. We may walk far before we find an evergreen which does not turn out to be a pine, a spruce, or a hemlock. However, it is near Christmas time. The little firs will be brought into market in sufficient numbers to sup ply a Christmas tree to every house. This is our chance. We will go to market, and look at these little trees that stand together, with their limbs trussed like fowls, ready to be baked. This is for economy of space in shipping.
The clean, pungent odour of balsam comes from the bleeding stub, and we see tears of the whitish wax wherever the bark of a twig or branch is bruised. These are balsam firs. They have their name from this fragrant, sticky resin that leaks from their veins.
First, as to the leaves. We find them single and spirally arranged, as in the spruce, but there are no brackets on the twigs. Pull off a leaf and the twig is smooth. The leaves are blunt, but flattened, and on most of the twigs they spread, feather-like, on two sides. There are of them, however, than on the hemlock spray. They are white-lined, like the hemlock leaves, but there are no little leaf stems. The twigs are stouter than those of the hemlock, re sembling the spruce twigs in size, but they lack horny little leaf brackets which are so prominent on spruce twigs.
One reason that spruce trees make poor Christ mas trees is that the leaves fall so soon. Almost the day after Christmas the floor is scattered with them. The fir trees keep their leaves for weeks. This little bracket makes all the differ ence. Fir leaves seem to be fastened right into the twig itself, and made thus more secure.
If it chances that you find a fir old enough to bear cones, you will see another very distinct trait of this family. The cones are held erect on the twigs; the cones of pines, and spruces, and hemlocks hang down. If you are fortunate enough to find a fir tree growing, and old enough to bear its fruit, these upright cones will tell you the tree's name before you come near enough to look at the leaves, and to see if the twigs are smooth.