One of the things I wanted much to see when I first traveled South was the famed live-oak, the majesty and the mournfulness of which had been long sung into me. Perhaps I expected too much, as I did of the palmetto, another part of my quest, but surely there was disappointment when I was led, on the banks of the Manatee River in Florida, to see a famous live-oak. It was tall and grand, but its adornment of long, trailing gray Spanish moss, which was to have attached the sadness to it, seemed merely to make it unkempt and uncomfortable. I was instantly reminded of a tree at home in the far North that I had never thought particularly beautiful, but which now, by comparison, took on an attractiveness it has never since lost. Imagine a great spreading weeping willow turned dingy gray, and you have a fair picture of a moss-covered live-oak; but you will prefer it green, as is the willow, I believe.
One day a walk about Savannah, which city has many splendid live-oaks in its parks and squares, involved me in a sudden shower, when, presto! the weeping willow of the North was reincarnated before my eyes, for the falling rain turned the dingy moss pendants of the live-oak to the whitish green that makes the willow such a delightful color-note in early spring. I have been thankful often for that shower, for it gave a better feeling about the live-oak, and made me admire the weeping willow.
The live-oak, by the way, has a leaf very little like the typical oak--it is elliptical in shape and smooth in outline. The curious parasitic moss that so frequently covers the tree obscures the really handsome foliage.
The English Oak, grand tree that it is, grows well in America, as everything English should by right, and there are fine trees of this _Quercus Robur_ on Long Island. The acorns are of unusual elegance, as the photograph which shows them will prove.
The red oak, the black oak, the scarlet oak, all splendid forest trees of the Northeast, are in the group of confusion that can be readily separated only by the timber-cruiser, who knows every tree in the forest for its economic value, or by the botanist, with his limp-bound Gray's Manual in hand. I confess to bewilderment in five minutes after the differences have been explained to me, and I enjoyed, not long ago, the confusion of a skilful nurseryman who was endeavoring to show me his young trees of red oak which the label proved to be scarlet! But the splendidly effective trees themselves can be fully appreciated, and the distinctions will appear as one studies carefully the features of these living gifts of nature's greenness. The trees wait on one, and once the habit of appreciation and investigation is formed, each walk afield, in forest or park, leads to the acquirement of some new bit of tree-lore, that becomes more precious and delightful as it is passed on and commented upon in association with some other member of the happily growing fraternity of nature-lovers.