An old shagbark tree is a picturesque figure, as it lifts its bare arms up toward the wintry sky. The trunk is straight, but the branches are full of angles. Yet, with all their rigidity, these limbs have an expression of strength, if not of grace, and the tree's head is usually symmetrical, and always full of character.
A young hickory has smooth, close-knit bark like that on the branches of the older trees. Gradu ally the growing trunk becomes furrowed, and the peculiar splintering and splitting of the bark is seen only in trees six inches or more in diam eter. By the time the tree is old enough to bear nuts, it has built itself a formidable fence that boys must climb over with much hard work and many a scratch, to get up among the branches and shake down the nuts.
The tasteless pignuts grow on a smooth barked hickory tree, very easy to climb, but the bark of the little shellbark hickory is the guide post that leads to the trees where the sweet flavoured hickory nuts grow.
The close-knit, grey bark of beech trees hardly needs to be described. The temptation to cut initials on beech trunks is more than folks with pocket-knives can resist. No matter how many fine trees there are in a beech grove near town, they are scarred all over with letters and hiero glyphics as far as hand can reach. The tree never covers these wounds. Though they do not cripple it, they mar its beauty painfully.
A little further from the haunts of picnic par ties, we shall come upon beech woods that have not thus been abused by thoughtless jack-knives. From the ground, far up into the high tops, a close, beautiful garment of ashy grey bark clothes the tree. Saplings of all ages grow up among the big trees, for beeches grow in colonies. A soft radiance from these many pale tree trunks seems to lighten the woods paths, overshadowed by the dense foliage of the tree tops.
It is said that beech trees die when they come into contact with civilisation. Fine beech woods are included in additions to towns; you will see the great trees die when lawns and gardens are made about their roots. In the outskirts of In dianapolis there are noble beech trees, but they are dying, as the city grows around them.
The copper beeches and the cut-leaved and weeping beeches have the same close-knit bark as our native tree, but it is not grey, but dark brown. These fancy forms are varieties of the
European beech, one of the principal lumber trees of the Old World.
The bark of this tree played an interesting part in the early history of the human race. Long before the European tribes had written languages, they sent messages from one to an other. These messages between tribes, friendly or warlike, were written in hieroglyphics, cut into the smooth surface of beech bark, and messengers carried them back and forth.
Sheets of beech bark, as well as birch, made the walls and roofs of the huts in which people lived. Their boats and various household uten sils were made out of beech wood, which is so close-grained that vessels made of it hold water without leaking.
Another American tree with bark like the beech, but darker grey, grows always, by prefer ence, with its roots in wet soil. It is a little tree, with rigid, horizontal twigs, that form a flat tree top. This is called the blue beech, and its trunk does often have a bluish cast. It is also called hornbeam, for its wood is so hard that it was used in the early days to make the beams which went across the horns of the oxen. This is the part of the ox yoke which is the most subject to wear. Ironwood is another name that describes the hard wood.
We shall notice that this tree has not a regular cylindrical trunk like that of a beech. Strong swellings, that look like muscles, are seen, espe cially where the trunk branches into the main limbs. Have you ever noticed the arms of a blacksmith, or of an athlete ? How the veins and muscles stand out when the arm is in use! Just like them are the irregular swellings that course up the trunk of the hornbeam, and out into the limbs.
The hackberry is a handsome shade tree, which might, at first glance, be mistaken for an elm. The bark is different from that of any other tree. Once we see a hackberry, and learn its name, we will never mistake it again. The bark is light brown or grey, and finely checked by deep furrows. The ridges between bear strange, warty outgrowths. Look for these warts among the small branches. The twigs are smooth, but back a little way the warty eruptions begin, and become more prominent as the limbs thicken and approach the trunk. Sometimes the limbs have these warts so close together as to form con tinuous ridges.