The Witch Hazel and the Sweet Gum 



and greys and browns in these corky ridges reminds one of the 

 banding of an agate. Now and then you come upon a gum tree 

 whose twigs are all smooth. 



Farther down, the branches have warty bark, broken into 

 rough, horny plates. This gives the tree its name, "alligator- 

 wood." Then the grey of the big branches gives way to the red- 

 brown of the trunk; the shallow fissures and scaly ridges give 

 a finer texture to this oldest bark than the limbs give us reason to 

 expect. 



In summer time the leaves of the sweet gum are our sure 

 guide to its identity. "Star-leaved gum," it is often called. 

 There is no other tree whose leaf so closely resembles a regular, 

 six-pointed star with one point missing where the petiole is 

 fastened on. These leaf stems are long and flexible — a very 

 important fact in analysing the beauty of the sweet gum tree in 

 full leaf. The large shining blades flutter on their stems, 



"Continuous as the stars that shine 

 And twinkle in the Milky Way." 



They fairly dazzle the beholder, as the polished leaves of the 

 tulip tree always do. 



But the summer garb of the sweet gum tree is pale and 

 monotonous compared with the radiant beauty of its October 

 foliage. Wherever gum trees grow, there the autumn landscape 

 is painted with the changeful splendour of sunset skies. The 

 leaves do not seem to dry and wither as maples and dogwoods do. 

 They give up their bright green for the most gorgeous shades 

 of red. "The tree is not a flame — it is a conflagration!" 



Often one sees a fence-row thicket of young gum trees all 

 burning low with dull crimsons as if their fires sullenly smoulder, 

 and might at any moment burst into the clear orange-red flame 

 that consumes a neighbour tree. Afterward, the foliage may 

 turn to those browns and lilac tones assumed by ash trees, but as 

 a rule the ground is littered with the leaves before they fade— 

 they "die like the dolphin." 



The sap of the sweet gum is resinous and fragrant. It is 

 easy to find this out by crushing a leaf or bruising a twig. Chip 

 through the bark of a tree and an aromatic gum accumulates in 

 the wound. In the Northern States this exudation is scant, but 

 it becomes more plentiful as one proceeds south. The most 



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