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The Parties of the May-Day Fairies: May: Sequoia

OLD AGE AND DEATH IN THE WORLD OF TREES Trees, like people, have certain average ages beyond which they seldom live. The Sequoia lives several thousand years, but an Aspen-grove begins to break up at about ninety, and the best yields are obtained at about twenty-five, as the growth after that is very slow. The Poplar, Balsam-Fir, and Gray Birch, depending on the character of the soil and how well they are cared for, begin to go between sixty and eighty; the Lodge-Pole Pine between one hundred and twenty and two hundred; the Beech and the Maple have been known to live three hundred and four hundred years; the Douglas Fir, Sugar-Pine, and Western Larch, five hundred; the Redwoods one thousand to one thousand five hundred; while, if you happen to live in California and have a likely young Sequoia growing on your place, you may not see it gathered to its fathers until after its five-thousandth birthday!

To reach the average age of its kith and kin a tree should have plenty of room for the spread of its branches and its roots. For this reason trees in the open country are considerably longer-lived than those in the tree cities, the forests. And the better they are fed -- i.e., the better the soil -- the faster they grow and the stronger and more valuable the wood. USEFUL HINTS FOR WOOD SCOUTS As early as March you can begin to look for the greenish-yellow flowers of the Silver Maple, the Red Maple, which vary from rich crimson to scarlet or dull yellowish red, the greenish blossoms of the Sweet-Gum, the brownish-yellow or reddish clusters of the White and Slippery Elms, the catkins of the Hornbeam, River-Birch, Cottonwoods, and Balsams.

The catkins of the Hornbeam, forming in the autumn, have reached considerable size, as we saw in November, by the time winter comes on, and they lengthen very rapidly in the sun-rays of the earliest spring days. That's why I said, in November, in comparing them to little sausages, that they were there "all ready for the warming up."