December, 1916 
29 
A STUDY OF TREES IN WINTER 
Nature’s Etchings of Stark Branches Against 
the Sky Framed By Your Windows These Days 
E. P. POWELL 
I F the woodland land¬ 
scape in its glory of 
autumn tinted foliage is 
Nature’s painting, then 
is that same view in the 
starkness of winter a 
Master’s etching. How 
sharply are the naked 
branches engraved 
against the sky! With 
what strength and sim¬ 
plicity of line do the 
trunks stand out from 
the snowy fields! Even in the prevailing 
color note is the simile continued—gray 
and brown and black in place of the red 
and shining gold of autumn. 
Leaves are the changing, not the per¬ 
manent, elements of a tree. They are a part 
of the working apparatus, and are thrown 
down in the autumn like worn-out tools. 
The real tree stands there for you to look 
at and study in its elemental form. 
In front of my window stands a Magno¬ 
lia acuminata. With trunk as straight as 
an arrow, it reaches up some 50' in the air 
—the very model of vegetable growth. If 
you were to plan for the purpose of getting 
the largest amount of sunshine over every 
twig of the tree, you would do exactly what 
this magnolia has done. From the base 
limbs to the topmost twig it forms a com¬ 
plete pyramid, perfectly designed. 
Now look over at the evergreens, a form 
of foliage that Nature designed when the 
world was elementally rough and stormy, 
and you will see that the spruces and pines 
sit flat on the ground, exactly like pyramids 
—pyramids of green life. It is not only 
the form for getting the most perfectly dis¬ 
tributed foliage, and the best flood of sun¬ 
shine ; it is the shape above all which can 
most perfectly resist wind and weather. 
The magnolia limbs come out with about 
equal eagerness on all sides of the trunk, 
and feel their way on a gentle slant toward 
the light. You are surprised, as you look 
at them, to see what a community it is. The 
limbs rarely interfere, and they do co-oper¬ 
ate wonderfully in sustaining and carrying 
on the operations of life. Each limb has 
its branches, and each branch its twigs. To¬ 
gether they constitute a commonwealth of 
signal strength and beauty. 
S ometimes i 
think I like a tree 
better with the leaves 
off; at least, I do in the 
winter. What a piece of 
economy this annual 
change of dress is! If 
those leaves were not 
dropped the snows would 
break the whole beauti¬ 
ful poise of the tree. 
Then, as we look down 
to the ground, we see 
what these trees are about. The leaves are 
woven out of. the carbon and nitrogen of 
the air, with a bit of potash and phosphor¬ 
ous. When they are no longer wanted they 
are dropped to Mother Earth as a contri¬ 
bution to the soil. They make the humus, 
which bye and bye will add a large amount 
of nitrogen to the earth, and keep up fer¬ 
tility. Meanwhile they are protecting the 
grasses and plants from the severity of 
winter frost and storms. 
None but a fool would burn up leaves. 
They are a superb contribution to our com¬ 
fort and welfare. One should lift his hat 
to the bare old trees, and render thanks. 
Good neighbors and friends: you are giv¬ 
ing us that in which we may plant our fu¬ 
ture wheat, corn and roses, and which will 
help to keep the earth fertile in spite of 
the steady draft which our crops make 
upon it. May you live long and prosper! 
A little farther from my window stands 
a huge white elm. It is equally anxious to 
reach the sunlight and air. To do this, 
when it had reached a height of about 20', 
it split its trunk out in every direction, 
went on up and up to 70', and spread its 
limbs over an area of 30' in diameter. Not 
content with all this it leaned over its 
limbs and swung them down in every di¬ 
rection, to catch more of the light and play 
with the wind. You must not think that 
these grand old weeping elms were cre¬ 
ated just to please us. They are creating 
themselves superbly on an economic basis, 
yet every elm has contributed its quota to 
our soil and comfort. 
I T makes but little dif¬ 
ference in what direc¬ 
tion we look, for we 
shall find everywhere a 
rich study of life; and 
we can get at this life 
process better in winter 
than in summer. In one 
direction I am looking 
through an English elm, 
and a little farther off 
an English oak. These 
trees formed their hab¬ 
its in England, where the seasons are longer, 
and for that reason they refuse to throw 
down their leaves till a good while after our 
oaks and elms are bare. Like true Britons 
they stand, stubbornly resisting the frosts 
until November. But when the leaves are 
off you see that all of these foreigners like 
to hug the ground, sitting flat down like 
evergreens, while their limbs climb up con¬ 
ically without losing the idea of strength. 
You will notice, too, that each of them 
wants all the earth it can get hold of, and 
all the air room. They do not like elbow¬ 
ing or being elbowed, so that in an Ameri¬ 
can forest they would be entirely out of 
place. You set them on your lawn, where 
they make handsome ornamental trees. 
The English or cork-bark maple differs 
only in this: its head becomes nearly 
round, and symmetrical in all its lines. I 
like this neighborliness of English trees, 
growing side by side with our Yankees; 
but I wish they were a little more adaptable. 
I have just been lying on a pile of beech 
leaves, looking up through the bare limbs. 
If you want to know what knotted deter¬ 
mination and positiveness are, take a long 
look up through a beech tree. Each limb 
has a shoulder and the shoulders all run 
together in curves, so that for solidity and 
certainty there is not another tree like the 
beech. No wonder you cannot drive a nail 
into beech wood without bending. 
T HE only beech park 
I ever saw was in 
Buffalo. It was exactly 
like beech woods, where 
you can just walk under 
the limbs. If you trim 
up a beech tree you have 
spoiled it entirely. It 
will stand no sort of 
landscape artist work, 
as you can see because 
every inch of the wood 
is full of will. It has 
its own way, and will have it. The leaves 
are a rich brown, and I wish that I might 
lie on a pile of them every day, delicately 
sweet and crackly, with an October sun 
over me. My collies came, and jumped on 
me to hear the rustle and make me shout. 
Just over the hedge is a Kentucky cof¬ 
fee tree that I think very much of, because 
its character is so strongly marked in its 
limbs. These make elbows everywhere 
and every way, so as to fill up all the space, 
and never hit each other. It is curious 
about that, because all other trees get their 
limbs more or less snarled running against 
each other. When you get through with 
the Kentucky coffee tree you find each limb 
has taken just its fair chance, and made an 
elbow to avoid collision. 
There is only one tree where I really 
miss the leaves, and that is the gleditschia, 
which carries all summer, fine, small acacia¬ 
like leaves, and makes a tree through which 
the moonbeams sift delicately. I like it for 
a night tree, when it is exquisite. Just now 
it has lost its peculiar adaptiveness. 
No matter if you do not have any of 
these trees, study what you have. The 
common ash is one of the sturdy and 
rugged trees, a sort of plain everybody’s 
tree, and the maple has always an air of 
benevolence. You can never look at a hard 
maple without thinking of sugar, and the 
soft and Norway maples make autumn 
gorgeous. There is not much that is sug¬ 
gestive about them when the leaves are off, 
except simplicity and symmetry. 
You will perhaps, however, prefer to go 
into your orchard and study the remarkable 
dissimilarity of apple trees. Some are 
spreading, while others stand as erect as the 
ash. I think that in planting our lawn we 
should do it with an eye to as much variety 
as possible, not in the leaf alone, but in the 
limbs and the bark as well. 
A winter study of trees will tell you some 
remarkable things if you will not only look 
but see. And real seeing is an art. 
