154 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



becomes modified ; so that, in the far West, it has come 

 to be recognized as the Western Wild Cherry (P. 

 demissa). 



Fully as handsome a tree as the Choke Cherry, with 

 blossoms quite as beautiful, is the common Wild Red 

 Cherry or Pin Cherry (Prunus pennsylvanica), a tree 

 which may grow to be forty or more feet in height in 



DAINTY BLOSSOMS OF THE CHOKE CHERRY 



Fig. 39 Nearly everyone is familiar with the common Choke Cherry 

 (Prunus virginiana) , and many birds feed upon its fruit sometimes long 

 before it gets a chance to ripen. 



a comparatively short space of time, and which dies at 

 the end of a few seasons. (Fig. 40.) Its long-stemmed 

 flowers have white petals, and their structure as a whole 

 is not only striking but singularly beautiful. Indeed, the 

 entire tree is worthy of our admiration, none the less 

 so when its fruit is ripe, and its every twig simply glistens 

 with thousands of little ruby spheres. What a feast for 

 the cherry-eating birds ! It is these very birds who are 

 responsible for the widening of the range of distribution 

 of this species of Prunus. Whenever you see a wild 

 cherry-tree, remember that a "pit" has been dropped 

 there by some fruit-loving passerine bird a robin, may- 

 be which had swallowed the cherry in another tree, per- 

 haps several miles away. Birds are' great forest-planters, 

 too; though very few people realize how useful they 

 are to man in this particular. One of the results of the 

 present war will be a marked increase in the number of 

 wild birds of many different families. 



Our elegant maple trees form a family by themselves 

 (Accraceae), with no especially near relatives upon either 

 hand. They are all confined to the single genus Acer, 

 though a subdivision takes place in the case of Negundo, 

 the Box Elder {Acer negundo), the samaras and leaves 

 of which are here shown in Fig. 42. Counting this tree, 

 we have about a dozen different kinds of maples in this 

 country ; and they are not only very valuable for their 

 timber, but they stand among the most hardy and reliable 

 of all our ornamental shade trees. 



With the exception of the Box Elder, their simple 

 leaves are deciduous, palmately veined, markedly lobed, 

 and opposite (Fig. 41). As to the fruit of the maples, 

 it is paired, being found at the proximal end of the two- 

 winged samara, the stem connecting it with the twigs or 

 branches of the tree being of some length, and attached 

 to a point at the median junction of the seeds. This is 



ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL SPECIES OF WILD CHERRY IS THE ONE 

 HERE PRESENTED; THESE ARE TERMINAL BRANCHES OF THE 

 BIRD CHERRY (.Prunus Pennsylvania), WITH MANY FLOWERS IN 

 FULL BLOOM 



Fig. 40 A half century or more ago, when robins, blue birds and cedar 

 birds were far more numerous, these trees used to actually swarm with 

 them as soon as the fruit exhibited any sign of ripening. 



well shown in the illustration of the branch of the Silver 

 Maple in the figure last referred to. There is no mis- 

 taking a maple after one has examined its leaves and 

 winged fruit ; no other tree in any way resembles its 

 composition. 



In the Northern Hemisphere alone, nearly seventy 



