One summer walk in the deep forest, my friend the doctor, who knows many things besides the human frame, was puzzled at a sturdy tree bole, whose leaves far overhead mingled so closely with the neighboring greenery of beech and birch that in the dim light they gave no help. First driving the small blade of his pocket-knife deep into the rugged bark of the tree in question, he withdrew it, and then smelled and tasted, exclaiming, "Ah, I thought so; it _is_ the wild cherry!" And, truly, the characteristic prussic-acid odor, the bitter taste, belonging to the peach and cherry families, were readily noted; and another Sherlock Holmes tree fact came to me!
Of other hickories I know little, for the false shagbark, the mockernut, the pignut, and the rest of the family have not been disclosed to me often enough to put me at ease with them. There are to be more tree friends, both human and arborescent, and more walks with the doctor and the camera, I hope!
We of the cold North, as we crack the toothsome pecan, hardly realize its kinship with the hickory. It is full brother to our shellbark, which is, according to botany, _Hicoria ovata_, while the Southern tree is _Hicoria pecan_. A superb tree it is, too, reaching up amid its vigorous associates of the forests of Georgia, Alabama and Texas to a height exceeding one hundred and fifty feet. Its upright and elegant form, of a grace that conceals its great height, its remarkable usefulness, and its rather rapid growth, commend it highly. The nut-clusters are striking, having not only an interesting outline, but much richness of color, in greens and russets.
[Illustration: The American beech in winter]
It may seem odd to include the beech under the nut-bearing trees, to those of us who know only the nursery-grown forms of the European beech, "weeping" and twisted, with leaves of copper and blood, as seen in parks and pleasure-grounds. But the squirrels would agree; they know well the sweet little triangular nuts that ripen early in fall.
The pure American beech, uncontaminated and untwisted with the abnormal forms just mentioned, is a tree that keeps itself well in the eye of the woods rambler; and that eye is always pleasured by it, also. Late in winter, the light gray branches of a beech thicket on a dry hillside on the edge of my home city called attention to their clean elegance amid sordid and forbidding surroundings, and it was with anger which I dare call righteous that I saw a hideous bill-board erected along the hillside, to shut out the always beautiful beeches from sight as I frequently passed on a trolley car! I have carefully avoided buying anything of the merchants who have thus set up their announcements where they are an insult; and it might be noted that these and other offensive bill-boards are to others of like mind a sort of reverse advertising--they tell us what _not_ to purchase.