FOREST FLOWERS 



345 



and well deserving a place among our own ornamental 

 trees of park and lawn. In its forest home it grows to a 

 height of more than a hundred feet, but when planted in 

 the open it is more compact in form, and as symmetrical 

 with its low growing branches and lower stature as when 

 its limbless trunk stretches up among the forest trees. 



The cucumber 

 tree, Magnolia acu- 

 minata, is a hand- 

 some tree with large 

 flowers resembling 

 in shape those of 

 the famed magnolia 

 of the South , though 

 smaller and sadly 

 lacking in their 

 greenish color the 

 waxen beauty of 

 their subtropical 

 cousins. The fruit, 

 which resembles a 

 small cucumber, 

 eventually splits 

 open at every seed, 

 allowing the bright 

 scarlet seeds to be 

 suspended by their 

 slender, thread-like 

 attachment for 

 some days before 

 they finally become 

 detached. 



The basswood, 

 with clusters of 

 creamy blossoms, 



FLOWERS OF THE CUCUMBER TREE {MAGNOLIA ACUMINATA) 



This is a handsome tree with large flowers not unlike those of the famous Southern magnolia, though 

 they are greenish in color and lack the waxen beauty of the true magnolia. 



each bearing a curious leafy bract, furnishes an abundance 

 of most excellent bee pasturage. This feature alone should 

 insure to the tree liberal planting. Valuable for its wood, 

 it pays its way after the very first years in the abundance 

 of amber honey which it produces. 



In our own opinion, there are few more attractive trees 

 when in bloom than the chestnut, now surely doomed unless 

 its persistent enemy can be routed. Though the beau- 

 tiful trees near New York have all been sacrificed and the 

 chestnut tree blight is surely passing westward, there are 

 still many beautiful specimens, laden in July with a feathery 



mass of creamy catkins. True, the pistillate flowers are 

 rarely noticed by the uninitiated, but it does not require a 

 botanist's eye to appreciate the showy staminate tassels. 

 The last of all trees or of all flowering plants to 

 bloom is the witch hazel, in some localities scarcely 

 attaining to more than shrub-like dimensions. When" 



its neighboring trees 

 are casting their 

 autumn leaves, this 

 strange species ex- 

 pands* its' small, 

 strap-shaped honey 

 yellow blossoms, the 

 fruit of which does 

 not mature until 

 the following mid- 

 summer. The plant 

 has a highly special- 

 ized method of seed 

 sowing, as unique 

 as are its flowering 

 plans. When ripe 

 and dry the cap- 

 sules burst elastic- 

 ally, propelling the 

 seeds, according to 

 William Hamilton 

 Gibson, forty-five 

 feet by actual meas- 

 urement. If one 

 wishes to test these 

 sharpshooters, a 

 simple method is to 

 gather some of the 

 branches in mid- 

 summer, when the fruit has nearly reached maturity, 

 and place them in the living-room. As the pods be- 

 come dry the capsules split and the bony seeds are 

 thrown quite across the room. 



And yet this seeming anomaly in reversing nature's rules 

 for flowering is only anticipating its companions in the 

 process, for while the other trees simply perfect their flower- 

 ing buds for the coming season, this joker expands them. 

 That is all the difference! And so between the pussy 

 willow and the witch hazel there is an almost constant 

 procession of forest flowers, each worthy of our attention. 



IF the 25,000,000 trees planted in the Pennsylvania 

 state forests were set four feet apart, as they act- 

 ually are in the woods, and planted in a straight line, they 

 would cover almost 19,000 miles. Planted twenty feet 

 apart, they would provide shade trees on both sides of 

 40,000 miles of highway. 



STATE Forests with a total of over 3,600,000 acres have 

 been established in thirteen states. Of these New 

 York has the largest forests, which comprise 1,826,000 

 acres; Pennyslvania is second with 1,008,000 acres, and 

 Wisconsin third with 400,000 acres. 



A SINGLE issue of a New York Sunday paper is said to 

 consume the timber from fifteen acres of forest. If 

 Pennsylvania's state forests were fully stocked, they could 

 furnish enough pulpwood to keep forty Sunday papers going 

 indefinitely. 



THE latest advice is not to char the ends of fence posts 

 before setting them in the ground. The charcoal is 

 said to hold water and thereby hasten rotting of the post. 



ABSORBENT cotton, vests, hose, and handkerchiefs are 

 now being made from wood in Germany. 



