Excursions — The Succession of Forest Trees - Part II

I think that I may venture to say that every white-pine cone that falls to the earth naturally in this town, before opening and losing its seeds, and almost every pitch-pine one that falls at all, is cut off by a squirrel, and they begin to pluck them long before they are ripe, so that when the crop of white-pine cones is a small one, as it commonly is, they cut off thus almost every one of these before it fairly ripens.

I think, moreover, that their design, if I may so speak, in cutting them off green, is, partly, to prevent their opening and losing their seeds, for these are the ones for which they dig through the snow, and the only white-pine cones which contain anything then.

I have counted in one heap, within a diameter of four feet, the cores of 239 pitch-pine cones which had been cut off and stripped by the red squirrel the previous winter.

The nuts thus left on the surface, or buried just beneath it, are placed in the most favorable circumstances for germinating.

I have sometimes wondered how those which merely fell on the surface of the earth got planted; but, by the end of December, I find the chestnut of the same year partially mixed with the mould, as it were, under the decaying and mouldy leaves, where there is all the moisture and manure they want, for the nuts fall first.

In a plentiful year, a large proportion of the nuts are thus covered loosely an inch deep, and are, of course, somewhat concealed from squirrels.

One winter, when the crop had been abundant, I got, with the aid of a rake, many quarts of these nuts as late as the tenth of January, and though some bought at the store the same day were more than half of them mouldy, I did not find a single mouldy one among these which I picked from under the wet and mouldy leaves, where they had been snowed on once or twice.

Nature knows how to pack them best.

They were still plump and tender.

Apparently, they do not heat there, though wet.

In the spring they were all sprouting.

Loudon says that “when the nut [of the common walnut of Europe] is to be preserved through the winter for the purpose of planting in the following spring, it should be laid in a rot-heap, as soon as gathered, with the husk on; and the heap should be turned over frequently in the course of the winter.

” Here, again, he is stealing Nature’s “thunder.

” How can a poor mortal do otherwise?

for it is she that finds fingers to steal with, and the treasure to be stolen.

In the planting of the seeds of most trees, the best gardeners do no more than follow Nature, though they may not know it.

Generally, both large and small ones are most sure to germinate, and succeed best, when only beaten into the earth with the back of a spade, and then covered with leaves or straw.

These results to which planters have arrived, remind us of the experience of Kane and his companions at the North, who, when learning to live in that climate, were surprised to find themselves steadily adopting the customs of the natives, simply becoming Esquimaux.

So, when we experiment in planting forests, we find ourselves at last doing as Nature does.

Would it not be well to consult with Nature in the outset?

for she is the most extensive and experienced planter of us all, not excepting the Dukes of Athol.

In short, they who have not attended particularly to this subject are but little aware to what an extent quadrupeds and birds are employed, especially in the fall, in collecting, and so disseminating and planting the seeds of trees.

It is the almost constant employment of the squirrels at that season and you rarely meet with one that has not a nut in its mouth, or is not just going to get one.

One squirrel-hunter of this town told me that he knew of a walnut-tree which bore particularly good nuts, but that on going to gather them one fall, he found that he had been anticipated by a family of a dozen red squirrels.

He took out of the tree, which was hollow, one bushel and three pecks by measurement, without the husks, and they supplied him and his family for the winter.

It would be easy to multiply instances of this kind.

How commonly in the fall you see the cheek-pouches of the striped squirrel distended by a quantity of nuts!

This species gets its scientific name _Tamias_, or the steward, from its habit of storing up nuts and other seeds.

Look under a nut-tree a month after the nuts have fallen, and see what proportion of sound nuts to the abortive ones and shells you will find ordinarily.

They have been already eaten, or dispersed far and wide.

The ground looks like a platform before a grocery, where the gossips of the village sit to crack nuts and less savory jokes.

You have come, you would say, after the feast was over, and are presented with the shells only.

Occasionally, when threading the woods in the fall, you will hear a sound as if some one had broken a twig, and, looking up, see a jay pecking at an acorn, or you will see a flock of them at once about it, in the top of an oak, and hear them break them off.

They then fly to a suitable limb, and placing the acorn under one foot, hammer away at it busily, making a sound like a woodpecker’s tapping, looking round from time to time to see if any foe is approaching, and soon reach the meat, and nibble at it, holding up their heads to swallow, while they hold the remainder very firmly with their claws.

Nevertheless, it often drops to the ground before the bird has done with it.

I can confirm what Wm.

Bartram wrote to Wilson, the Ornithologist, that “The jay is one of the most useful agents in the economy of nature, for disseminating forest trees and other nuciferous and hard-seeded vegetables on which they feed.

Their chief employment during the autumnal season is foraging to supply their winter stores.

In performing this necessary duty they drop abundance of seed in their flight over fields, hedges, and by fences, where they alight to deposit them in the post-holes, &c. It is remarkable what numbers of young trees rise up in fields and pastures after a wet winter and spring.

These birds alone are capable, in a few years’ time, to replant all the cleared lands.

” I have noticed that squirrels also frequently drop their nuts in open land, which will still further account for the oaks and walnuts which spring up in pastures, for, depend on it, every new tree comes from a seed.

When I examine the little oaks, one or two years old, in such places, I invariably find the empty acorn from which they sprung.

So far from the seed having lain dormant in the soil since oaks grew there before, as many believe, it is well known that it is difficult to preserve the vitality of acorns long enough to transport them to Europe; and it is recommended in Loudon’s Arboretum, as the safest course, to sprout them in pots on the voyage.

The same authority states that “very few acorns of any species will germinate after having been kept a year,” that beechmast, “only retains its vital properties one year,” and the black-walnut, “seldom more than six months after it has ripened.

” I have frequently found that in November, almost every acorn left on the ground had sprouted or decayed.

What with frost, drouth, moisture, and worms, the greater part are soon destroyed.

Yet it is stated by one botanical writer that “acorns that have lain for centuries, on being ploughed up, have soon vegetated.

” Mr. George B. Emerson, in his valuable Report on the Trees and Shrubs of this State, says of the pines: “The tenacity of life of the seeds is remarkable.

They will remain for many years unchanged in the ground, protected by the coolness and deep shade of the forest above them.

But when the forest is removed, and the warmth of the sun admitted, they immediately vegetate.

” Since he does not tell us on what observation his remark is founded, I must doubt its truth.

Besides, the experience of nurserymen makes it the more questionable.

The stories of wheat raised from seed buried with an ancient Egyptian, and of raspberries raised from seed found in the stomach of a man in England, who is supposed to have died sixteen or seventeen hundred years ago, are generally discredited, simply because the evidence is not conclusive.

Several men of science, Dr. Carpenter among them, have used the statement that beach-plums sprang up in sand which was dug up forty miles inland in Maine, to prove that the seed had lain there a very long time, and some have inferred that the coast has receded so far.

But it seems to me necessary to their argument to show, first, that beach-plums grow only on a beach.

They are not uncommon here, which is about half that distance from the shore; and I remember a dense patch a few miles north of us, twenty-five miles inland, from which the fruit was annually carried to market.

How much further inland they grow, I know not.

Dr. Chas.

T.

Jackson speaks of finding “beach-plums” (perhaps they were this kind) more than one hundred miles inland in Maine.

It chances that similar objections lie against all the more notorious instances of the kind on record.

Yet I am prepared to believe that some seeds, especially small ones, may retain their vitality for centuries under favorable circumstances.

In the spring of 1859, the old Hunt House, so called, in this town, whose chimney bore the date 1703, was taken down.

This stood on land which belonged to John Winthrop, the first Governor of Massachusetts, and a part of the house was evidently much older than the above date, and belonged to the Winthrop family.

For many years, I have ransacked this neighborhood for plants, and I consider myself familiar with its productions.

Thinking of the seeds which are said to be sometimes dug up at an unusual depth in the earth, and thus to reproduce long extinct plants, it occurred to me last fall that some new or rare plants might have sprung up in the cellar of this house, which had been covered from the light so long.

Searching there on the 22d of September, I found, among other rank weeds, a species of nettle (_Urtica urens_), which I had not found before; dill, which I had not seen growing spontaneously;

the Jerusalem oak (_Chenopodium botrys_), which I had seen wild in but one place; black nightshade (_Solanum nigrum_), which is quite rare hereabouts, and common tobacco, which, though it was often cultivated here in the last century, has for fifty years been an unknown plant in this town, and a few months before this not even I had heard that one man in the north part of the town, was cultivating a few plants for his own use.

I have no doubt that some or all of these plants sprang from seeds which had long been buried under or about that house, and that that tobacco is an additional evidence that the plant was formerly cultivated here.

The cellar has been filled up this year, and four of those plants, including the tobacco, are now again extinct in that locality.

It is true, I have shown that the animals consume a great part of the seeds of trees, and so, at least, effectually prevent their becoming trees; but in all these cases, as I have said, the consumer is compelled to be at the same time the disperser and planter, and this is the tax which he pays to nature.

I think it is Linnaeus, who says, that while the swine is rooting for acorns, he is planting acorns.

Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed—a, to me, equally mysterious origin for it.

Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.

I shall even believe that the millennium is at hand, and that the reign of justice is about to commence, when the Patent Office, or Government, begins to distribute, and the people to plant the seeds of these things.

’ In the spring of 1857, I planted six seeds sent to me from the Patent Office, and labelled, I think, “_Poitrine jaune grosse,_” large yellow squash.

Two came up, and one bore a squash which weighed 123-1/2 pounds, the other bore four, weighing together 186-1/4 pounds.

Who would have believed that there was 310 pounds of _poitrine jaune grosse_ in that corner of my garden?

These seeds were the bait I used to catch it, my ferrets which I sent into its burrow, my brace of terriers which unearthed it.

A little mysterious hoeing and manuring was all the _abra cadabra presto-change,_ that I used, and lo!

true to the label, they found for me 310 pounds of _poitrine jaune grosse_ there, where it never was known to be, nor was before.

These talismen had perchance sprung from America at first, and returned to it with unabated force.

The big squash took a premium at your fair that fall, and I understood that the man who bought it, intended to sell the seeds for ten cents a piece.

(Were they not cheap at that?

) But I have more hounds of the same breed.

I learn that one which I despatched to a distant town, true to its instinct, points to the large yellow squash there, too, where no hound ever found it before, as its ancestors did here and in France.

Other seeds I have which will find other things in that corner of my garden, in like fashion, almost any fruit you wish, every year for ages, until the crop more than fills the whole garden.

You have but little more to do, than throw up your cap for entertainment these American days.

Perfect alchemists I keep, who can transmute substances without end; and thus the corner of my garden is an inexhaustible treasure-chest.

Here you can dig, not gold, but the value which gold merely represents; and there is no Signor Blitz about it.

Yet farmers’ sons will stare by the hour to see a juggler draw ribbons from his throat, though he tells them it is all deception.

Surely, men love darkness rather than light.

[4] An Address read to the Middlesex Agricultural Society, in Concord, September, 1860. WALKING.