INTRODUCTION 



OcxjASioNALLY I meet a person who says : "I know noth- 

 ing 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: "Everybody knows a white birch by 

 its bark." "Of course, anybody who has ever been chest- 

 nutting knows a chestnut tree." Most people know Lom- 

 bardy poplars, those green exclamation points so com- 

 monly planted in long soldierly rows on roadsides and 

 boundary hues in many parts of the country. Willows, 

 too, everybody knows are willows. The best nut trees, 

 the shagbark, chestnut, and butternut, need no formal in- 

 troduction. The honey locust has its striking three- 

 pronged thorns, and its purple pods dangling in win- 

 ter and skating off over the snow. The beech has its 

 smooth, close bark of Quaker gray, 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 



