Things to Find Out
Questions from the original Key to the Nature Library to send you back into Trees — and out of doors.
- What tree bears leaves of three forms, one of which is mitten-shaped?
- What magic powers are attributed to a twig of witch hazel?
- What tree does the trained forester rely on as a guide post in the woods?
- What does John Muir call "the largest and noblest pine in the world"?
- What does Professor Sargent call "the loveliest cone-bearing tree"? "The most splendid ornamental tree"?
- What purpose do the "knees" of the bald cypress serve?
- What tree family does Evelyn credit with 360 distinct uses?
- What tree yields a salad described as "the very quintessence of cabbage?
- What American trees belong to the lily family?
- What native trees have the showiest flowers?
- Name ten of the tallest trees in the world. Ten of the oldest.
- Why does cutting down red cedars do away with rust in apple orchards?
- What creature is heard "whetting his teeth in a burning hickory back-log"?
- What kind of trees did the English Government pay pound 600 apiece for just before the battle of Waterloo?
- What tree was described by Gerarde as having leaves always in motion, "like women's tongues which seldom cease wagging?"
- What do honey bees do with the wax they gather from poplar buds?
- Why are tree buds sealed with wax, padded with wool and sheathed in closely overlapping scales?
- What is accomplished for riverside willows by the snapping off of their twigs in spring?
- What makes the leaves of poplars tremble?
- What tree family grows on all continents, from the Equator to the Arctic Circle?
- What tree has the hardest wood? The most precious?
- What tree has the smoothest bark, with vein-like swellings?
- What trees bear white flowers more than twelve inches across?
- How does a tree feed? Breathe? Grow?
- How did the Newtown pippin apple originate?
- Who was Johnnie Appleseed, and what credit does he deserve?
- What trees bear "witches' brooms"? What two causes produce them?
- What trees have foliage used to feed silkworms?
- Where was the famous "Chestnut of a Hundred Horsemen"?
- How old and how large did it grow to be? What destroyed it at last?
- What trees bear cones from 12 to 20 inches long?
- What are our ordinary postal cards made of?
- What insect invented paper from wood pulp?
- How is cork harvested in the oak groves of Portugal and North Africa?
- How is it that the plum crop depends on April weather?
- What are the "pins" that give the name to the pin oak?
- How many colour changes pass over an oak tree from April till November? A white oak? A black oak?
- What insect enemy of oak is encouraged and furnishes a scarlet dye?
- What subterranean fungus is hunted by peasants accompanied by a trained dog or pig, who locates the delicacy by the keen sense of smell?
- What are oak apples?
- What trees are intermediate between oaks and chestnuts?
- What oak is mistaken for a willow?
- Out of what were the first books made?
- What kinds of wood make the paper of to-day?
- Drive two nails into a tree trunk, a foot apart, horizontally. Drive two others, a foot apart, vertically. In five years will the tree's growth change the distance between either pair?
- What tree families have their leaves set opposite on the twigs?
- What tree cooperates with the coral polyp in extending the borders of the peninsula of Florida?
- What native hardy tree has the largest leaves, outside of tropical jungles?
- How did the dogwoods get their family name?
- What deception is discoverable in the blossoms of flowering dogwood?
- Read aloud the description of the flowering dogwood.
- What causes the autumnal colours in foliage?
- What becomes of the green leaf pulp as winter approaches?