Trees, Shrubs and Vines 



most picturesque and interesting appurtenances of a tree, 

 in no two species quite alike, not obtrusive yet assertive, 

 to which we are more indebted for the ensemble of effect 

 than most people ever imagine. It is this dark, rigid 

 covering of trunk and branch, peeping through foliage, 

 that gives stability, vigor, and expression, as every painter 

 knows. Color and texture vary endlessly : browns and 

 grays of every shade, with here and there a reddish and 

 yellow, fill out the gamut from the Turkey oak's deep 

 black to the silvery and chalky white of the gray and 

 paper birches ; and, overall this, stripes, bands, blotches 

 and reticulations of infinite variety that so plainly char- 

 acterize the tulip-tree, shadbush, chestnut, sophora, but- 

 tonwood, paulownia, Chinese mulberry, etc. 



Observe, too, the texture and surface-finish of bark ; 

 deeply corrugated in sassafras and osage orange, smooth 

 in birch and locust, unyielding in hickory and hornbeam, 

 loose and friable in white oak and elm, etc.; also the 

 three sorts of bark-exfoliation — in shagbark hickory, bald 

 cypress and red cedar longitudinal, in all birches lateral, 

 in button wood ragged and irregular ; the speckled, 

 warty or blistered surface in sweet gum, nettle-tree, 

 balsam fir, etc., and the diabolical spines of Hercules' 

 Club and honey locust. Every nature-artist tries vainly 

 to reproduce the bold and picturesque conceits in black 

 and gray and green upon the birches' white ground. 

 In all botanical life there is scarcely a greater mystery 

 than the infusion of such varied character and beauty 

 into what are really the cracked and worn-out garments 

 of the trees — dead husk converted into ornament. 



Of the many tree-students I have seen, not one has 

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