Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 46, August, 1861

We live in a latitude and upon a soil, therefore, which are favorable to the harmonious grouping of vegetation. As we proceed southward, we witness a constant increase of the number of species gathered together in a single group. Nature is more addicted at the North to the habit of classifying her productions and of assembling them in uniform phalanxes. The painter, on this account, finds more to interest the eye and to employ his pencil in the picturesque regions of frost and snow; while the botanist finds more to exercise his observation in the crowded variety that marks the region of perpetual summer.

But while vegetation is more generally social in high latitudes, several families of Northern trees are entirely wanting in this quality. Seldom is a forest composed chiefly of Elms, Locusts, or Willows. Oaks and Birches are associated in forests, Elms in groves, and Willows in small groups following the courses of streams. Those Northern trees which are most eminently social, including the two just named, are the Beech, the Maple, the Hickory, the coniferous trees, and some others; and by the predominance of any one kind the character of the soil may be partially determined. There is no tree that grows so abundantly in miry land, both North and South upon this continent, as the Red Maple. It occupies immense tracts of morass in the Middle States, and is the last tree which is found in swamps, according to Michaux, as the Birch is the last we meet in ascending mountains. The Sugar-Maple is confined mostly to the Northeastern parts of the continent. Poplars are not generally associated exclusively in forests; but at the point where the Ohio and the Mississippi mingle their waters are grand forests of Deltoid Poplars, that stamp upon the features of that region a very peculiar physiognomy.

The characteristics of different woods, composed chiefly of one family of trees, would make an interesting study; but it would be tiresome to enter minutely into their details. Some are distinguished by a superfluity, others by a deficiency of undergrowth. In general, Pine and Fir woods are of the latter description, differing in this respect from deciduous woods. These differences are most apparent in large assemblages of wood, which have a flora as well as a fauna of their own. The same shrubs and herbaceous plants, for example, are not common to Oak and to Pine woods. There is a difference also in the cleanness and beauty of their stems. The gnarled habit of the Oak is conspicuous even in the most crowded forest, and coniferous woods are apt to be disfigured by dead branches projecting from the bole. The Birch, the Poplar, and the Beech are remarkable for the straightness, evenness, and beauty of their shafts, when assembled in a dense wood.

Some of the most beautiful forests in high latitudes consist of White Canoe-Birches. We see them in Massachusetts only in occasional groups, but farther north, upon river-banks, they form woods of considerable extent and remarkable beauty; and with their tall shafts, and their smooth white bark, resembling pillars of marble, supporting a canopy of bright green foliage, on a light feathery spray, they constitute one of the picturesque attractions of a Northern tour. Nature seems to indicate the native habitat of this noble tree by causing its exterior to bear the whiteness of snow, and it would be difficult to estimate its importance to the aboriginal inhabitants of Northern latitudes. Yellow Birch woods are not inferior in their attractions: individual trees of this species are often distinguished among other forest timber by extending their feathery summits above the level of the other trees.

The small White Birch is never assembled in large forest groups. Like the Alder, it seems to be employed by Nature for the shading of her living pictures, and for producing those gradations which are the charm of spontaneous wood-scenery. In this part of the continent, a Pitch-Pine wood is commonly fringed with White Birches, and outside of these with a lower growth of Hazels, Cornels, and Vacciniums, uniting them imperceptibly with the herbage of the plain. The importance of this native embroidery is not sufficiently considered by those industrious plodders who are constantly destroying wayside shrubbery, as if it were the pest of the farm,—nor by those "improvers," on the other hand, who wage an eternal warfare against little spontaneous groups of wood, as if they thought everything outside of the forest an intruder, if it was planted by accident, and had not cost money before it was placed there. Give me an old farm, with its stone-walls draped with Poison-Ivy and Glycine, and verdurous with a mixed array of Viburnums, Hazels, and other wild shrubbery, harboring thousands of useful birds, and smiling over the abundant harvests which they surround, before the finest artistical landscape in the world!

Pines are remarkably social in their habit, and cover immense tracts in high latitudes, extending southward, on this continent, as far as the very boundary of the tropics, where they are found side by side with the Dwarf Palm of Florida. But in the region of the true Palms the Pine is wanting. It is worthy of remark, however, that in the fossil vegetation of the Eocene world these two vegetable tribes are found associated. This fact, it seems to me, should be attributed to the mixing of the mountain Pines with the Palms of the sea-level, during that revulsion of Nature by which they were hurled into the same chaotic heap. We are not obliged to infer from their contiguity in these geological remains, that the two species ever flourished together in the same region.

Pine woods possess attractions of a peculiar kind: all lovers of Nature are enraptured with them, and there is a grandeur about them which is felt at once, when we enter them. Their dark verdure, their deep shade, their lofty height, and their branches which are ever mysteriously murmuring, as they are swayed by the wind, render them singularly solemn and sublime. This expression is increased by the hollow reverberating interior of the wood, caused by its clearness and freedom from underbrush. The ground beneath is covered by a matting of fallen leaves, making a smooth brown carpet, that renders a walk within its precincts as comfortable as in a garden. The foliage of the Pine is so hard and durable that in summer we always find the last autumn's crop lying upon the ground in a state of perfect soundness, and under it that of the preceding year only partially decayed. The foliage of two summers, therefore, lies upon the surface, checking the growth of humble vegetation, and permitting only certain species of plants to flourish with vigor.

Mushrooms of various forms and sizes spring out of these decayed leaves, often rivalling the flowers in elegance. Monotropas, uniting some of the habits of the Fungi with the botanical characters of the flowering plants, flourish side by side with the snowy Cypripedium and the singular Coral-Weed. The evergreen Dewberry, a delicate species of Rubus, trails its glossy leaves over the turfs, and mingles its beaded fruit with the scarlet berries of the Mitchella. The Pyrola, named by the Indians Pipsissewa, and regarded by them as a specific for consumption, suspends its pale purple flowers in beautiful umbels, as if to invite the feeble invalid to accept its proffered remedies. Variety, indeed, may be found in these deep shades; but it exists without that profusion which in more favored situations often benumbs our susceptibility to the charms of Nature.

The edging of a Pine wood depends on the character of the soil. The Pitch-Pine, that delights in sandy plains, is embroidered at the North by White Birches; and if a road be cut through a wood of this kind, these graceful trees immediately spring up in abundance by the wayside. If a pond occurs in the middle of a Pine wood, its margin is covered first with low bushes, such as the Andromeda, the Myrica, and the sweet-scented Azalea, then Alders and Willows rise between them and the forest. On the side of the pond that is bounded by high gravelly banks, the margin will be covered by Poplars and Birches. The White Pine, the most noble and the most beautiful tree of the whole coniferous tribe, predominates in the New-England forest; though some wide tracts are covered with the more homely Pitch-Pines, which are the trees that scent the atmosphere on damp still days with their delightful terebinthine odors. The woods in the vicinity of Concord, N.H., on the banks of the Merrimack, known by the poetic appellation of "The Dark Plains", are of this description. In still higher latitudes the dark, majestic Firs become the prevailing timber, and are regarded as typical of sub-arctic regions, where they are accompanied, as if to form a striking and cheerful contrast with their melancholy grandeur, by groups of graceful Birches, and lively, tremulous Poplars.