THE TREE BOOK 



CHAPTER I: HOW TO KNOW THE TREES 



" 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 : "Every- 

 body 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 overthesnow. 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 be- 

 gin 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. 



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