GREEN SYMBOLS 
MARK DANIELS 
Landscape Architect Formerly in Charge of U. S. National Parks 
What the Spirit of Trees May Mean to the Spirit of Man 
Understanding of the Significance of Growing Things Lifts Gardening 
Out of Commonplaceness Into the Realm of Inspired Art 
fVl^HFRE is more to trees than leaves, branches, bark, and 
Iri^P roots. Through the ages man has attached to them 
MW’Si a significance that is not the product of chance. Greek 
mythology is enriched with numerous legends of 
dryads and hamadryads. With the Greeks, the beauty of 
legendry was a product of that finer sensitiveness that dis- 
covers the spiritual interpretation of things apparently purely 
material. Had Jupiter been Teutonic he might have trans- 
formed Baucis and Philemon into pregnant equestrian statues on 
the Sieges Allee instead of a buxom Linden and a sturdy Oak on 
a sun-bathed hill in Phrygia. 
Doctor Freud contends that much of the emotion that is 
aroused in us is the result of the stirring of some nebulous, for- 
gotten fancy of childhood days. In a marked degree this is 
true of trees. 
The fairy tales of youth are so frequently set in forests that 
we have come to associate unconsciously certain forest scenes 
with certain emotions. The desert mesas of Arizona would 
hardly be an appropriate setting for the tale of little Red Riding- 
hood nor can one picture leprechawns playing leapfrog in a dark 
forest of Swamp Mahogany. 
From this unconscious association of trees with forgotten 
dreams of childhood comes the keen joy experienced by some 
impressionable people when they find themselves in the forest. 
They sense the crock of gold beneath the twisted, moss-covered 
roots of an aged Oak. Their blood leaps at the sight of the 
dancing golden leaves of young Poplars that frolic with the 
breeze on the margin of a sunny glade. Their voices are 
hushed in the great forests of towering Redwood trunks. They 
feel the cold clutch of fear as they penetrate the deep shadows 
where the denser forest has made accomplice of huge boulder 
and blasted trunk to shape black caverns into fitting homes for 
lurking beasts, and they laugh again at the sight of a Dwarf 
Juniper, whose bent trunk and shrunken top, inclined by the 
weight of many snows, looks like nothing so much as a little old 
miller carrying a sack of corn up a hill. 
Pity him who sees a difference only in the shapes and colors 
of trees. He cannot feel the cloud-longing in the aspiring 
branches of lofty Pines. He will never know the laughing tree 
that echoes with the songs of birds. He may never see a weep- 
ing tree where it mourns the waning light, shedding raindrops 
like tears upon the barren graves of blossoms banished by its 
sombre shade. 
strive for inconsistency in the selection of trees for the garden. 
The Monkey-puzzle is a fair sample of their hobbies. The 
puzzle is whether the thing is a tree or a bizarre imitation, with 
its snake-like, spiked tentacles repelling the sight of man. It 
has no place except in the grotesque or botanical garden. Per- 
haps the most ridiculous use of trees is found in California. In 
that land where snow-capped peaks pour crystal waters upon 
valleys as fertile as the Euphrates, where giant forests protect 
the Wild Azalea from an unclouded sun, where rounded Oaks 
hug the curving hills and gold and purple splashes paint the 
distant fields, they plant giant Fan Palms and huge, spreading 
Date Palms in twenty-foot front yards. Not only is the up- 
ended Shaving-brush used in tiny spaces where the owner may 
be expected to know no better but there are large estates, 
planned by pseudo-landscape architects, where may be found a 
Date Palm dominating a central bed, smothering four Irish 
Yews and victoriously arguing with a Silver Birch, an Italian 
Cypress, and a Colorado Blue Spruce. This in one of the 
garden spots of the world! Truly, the cobbler’s sons wear no 
shoes. 
How different is this from the thought and care exercised by 
the Japanese and the sympathy with which they interpret the 
spirit of the trees they employ in their gardens, for they have 
gone a long way in this form of spiritual interpretation. Certain 
trees such as the “Tree of Upright Spirit” (Shojin-boku), the 
“View-perfecting Tree” (Keiyo-boku) and the “Tree of 
Solitude” (Sekizen-boku) are carefully and sympathetically 
employed to fit selected moods. The “Tree of Solitude” 
is always one of dark, dense foliage that casts deep shadows. 
In China it is used to shade the “Thinking Seat.” The 
“Tree of Upright Spirit” is usually a tall Pine of stately 
form. Would the Japanese plant Cacti and Poppies in their 
temple grounds? I do not think the fact that one was in- 
digenous and the other abundant would lead the Japanese, as it 
has us, to employ them in such service. 
1 am not decrying the merits of any tree, only the ignorant 
and unsympathetic use of them. 1 have seen growths of 
Palms in their native habitat that were most inspiring. 1 have 
also seen them planted where they looked well. Every tree and 
shrub has its place and many of them lend charm to a great 
variety of settings. Some, however, look well in very few 
places indeed and no one lacking a deep and sympathetic feeling 
for them may hope to use their varied types with true success. 
As Individual Expressions 
A PPRECIATION of the individuality of trees is the key to 
. the interpretation of what they express, and the interpreta- 
tion of tree and floral expression is the soul of landscape archi- 
tecture. It is not only through an association of ideas, but 
sometimes through a deeper, hidden sense that some people 
experience radically dissimilar emotions in the enviroment of 
different kinds of trees. Were the Greeks prompted to dedicate 
the Cypress to Pluto and to place a Cypress branch in the homes 
of departed friends through the association of ideas? If so, 
what race before them did anything of the sort that could suggest 
such a thought? We plant Hollyhocks and Mountain Ash, 
Cactus and Harebells, and try to make them grow over the 
graves of those whose eyes are mercifully closed for all time to 
the horrors of some of our burial grounds. 
It would seem that a few of our modern landscape gardeners 
T O THE sympathetic the spirit of the trees is as obvious as 
their different forms. The broad Oak that spreads its 
welcome noonday shade over dozing cattle in the sun-scorched 
valleys expresses protection and steadfastness. The Silver 
Birches that line the cool streams of the north are the virgins of 
the forest. The Spruces are the queens, the great Pines are the 
kings, and the Sequoias the high priests of the forest people. 
There are princes, lords, court jesters, gnomes, pygmies, and 
elves. Was there ever a thing that looked more like a witch 
than the old witch tree on the Del Monte peninsula? 
As the Sequoias compel reverence so do the kingly great Pines 
express power and uprightness, the small Pines industry, and 
the Oaks steadfastness. The low Poplars, Alders, and Aspens 
are for playfulness; the Maples, Lindens, and Sycamores for 
domesticity. The Silver Birches, so like the slender virgins 
of a Boticelli, must ever be the emblem of purity. The form and 
