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How to Know the Trees in Winter: November: Cherry

Birch: "The Lady of the Woods" is also a "Lady of the Lake," for, besides rich moist hillsides, she frequents the banks of lakes, swamps, and streams. The bark has horizontal holes, called lenticels, which help the leaves help the tree to get its breath, by admitting air. All trees have these breathing-holes, but they are especially prominent in Birches, Cherry Trees, and some others. The differing colors of the bark help give their names to the different species of the Birch family - Black, White, Red, Yellow. Box-Elder. (See Maple.) Buckeye. (Treated along with its half-brother, the Horse-Chestnut, under Chestnut.) Butternut. (See White Walnut, under Walnut.) Buttonwood. (See Sycamore.) Cherry: Of course all boys and birds know the Wild Black Cherry, although its berries, to the spoiled taste of after-years, seem such puckery affairs, but every one can enjoy the beauty of the tree itself, with its gracefully curved limbs and noble crown. Usually forty to fifty feet high, on the slope of the southern Alleghanies it reaches a height of one hundred. Prefers rich, moist soil, but will grow in light, sandy lands, and, like the Pines, endures the salt winds of the sea as very few trees can. Only on the younger branches is the bark reddish brown and shiny, like that of the tame Cherry. Chestnut: We're not going to forget, very soon, the tree that has just opened its generous, rough-gloved hands with the first frost, and distributed its gifts, right and left, like a special, early edition Santa Claus, are we? But if somebody doesn't soon discover a way of dealing with the deadly bark disease that is killing our Chestnut Trees by the thousands, this good friend will survive only in pictures and print. What a magnificent specimen of treehood he is, with his straight trunk, gray, deep-furrowed, and broad-ridged, rising sixty to one hundred feet in the air, his wide-spreading branches and general mien of a patriarch, the father of his people! Now, about a Chestnut that isn't a Chestnut! I mean the Horse-Chestnut. The Horse-Chestnut belongs to the same family as the Buckeye, while the old friend of our boyhood, whose perilous state we have just been talking about, is more closely related to the Oaks and the Beeches. Erect trunk, cone-like head. May be one hundred feet high. Branches curve upward, then down, then up again at tips. Buckeye, in size and anatomy, practically identical, but Ohio and California Buckeyes much smaller.

Cottonwood. (See Poplar.) Cucumber Tree or Mountain-Magnolia: On moist, fertile soil from western New York to southern Illinois, south through central Kentucky to Alabama and Arkansas. In the forest rises to ninety feet. In the open takes the form of a cone with low-sweeping branches. Bark, brown.

Elm: With its graceful arches and vase-like outline is almost as well known as the picture of George Washington. Rises to a considerable height without branches; then divides into two or three, sometimes as many as five, branches, which gradually bend away from each other until they reach a height of sixty to one hundred feet and then spread into feathery plumes. Abundant in moist woods, especially in rich soil. Bark, ashy gray.

The English Elm, which first came to this country in Colonial times, is like John Bull, stout and stocky and hasn't the drooping habit of its American cousin; in fact, looks something like an Oak. Bark, ashy gray to dark brown. The Slippery or Red Elm -- it gets both names from its bark -- sixty to seventy feet high, with broad, open, flat-topped head, is very common along streams and on fertile hillsides. Bark, grayish to reddish brown. Cork-Elm, so called from the corky ridges covering twigs and smaller branches; Rock and Hickory Elm, from the hardness of its wood; and Cliff-Elm because it frequents the cliffs as well as dry, gravelly uplands, rocky slopes, and soils of heavy clay.

Hackberry: Belongs to the Elm family and might easily be mistaken for an Elm in winter, although it seldom reaches the average size of the Elms. An interesting identification mark for winter is its tendency to grow twigs in dense clusters known as "witch brooms," due to infection of the bud, a peculiarity shared by the Birches. These "witch brooms" don't do the trees any harm and the birds will be much obliged if you'll leave them alone. On a Birch in the famous Kew Gardens in the suburbs of London is a "broom" two yards wide, containing seven nests of blackbirds and thrushes. Hackberries prefer rich, moist soil, but will grow on gravelly hills. Bark, light brown or silvery gray.