IN THE LANDSCAPE 11 



apple-trees are of human habitations and human labor; 

 they cluster about the buildings, or stand guard, at a 

 gate; they are in plantations made by hands. As I see 

 them again, I wonder whether any other plant is so char- 

 acteristically a home-tree. 



So is the apple-tree, even when full grown, within the 

 reach of children. It can be climbed. Little swings are 

 hung from the branches. Its shade is low and familiar. 

 It bestows its fruit liberally to all alike. 



The apple is a sturdy tree. Short of trunk and short 

 of continuous limb,^it is yet a stout and rugged object, 

 the indirectness of its branching branches adding to its 

 picturesque quality. It is a tree of good structure. Al- 

 though its limbs eventually arch to the ground, if left 

 to themselves, they yet have great strength. The angul- 

 arity of the branching, the frequent forking, the big heal- 

 ing or hollow knots with rounding callus-lips, give the 

 tree character. Anywhere it would be a marked tree, 

 unlike any other. 



The bark on the older surface sheds in short oblong 

 irregular scales or plates that detach perhaps at both ends 

 and often at the sides, clinging by the middle until the 

 curl loosens them and they fall to the ground. These 

 plates or chips are more or less rowed up and down the 

 trunk and on the larger branches, yet the apple bark is 

 not ridged and furrowed as on the elm. The bark is not 

 checked in squares as on old pear-trees nor peeling as 

 on cherries. In dry weather, the loose old bark is dark 

 brown-gray, often supporting gray lichens, but in rain 

 it is soft and nearly black, yielding pleasantly to the 

 touch. In the forks, the bark is not so readily cast and 

 there the chips may lie in heaps. On the young limbs 



