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

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 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 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 neighbours’ 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 recognisable 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.

Julia Rogers

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.”