The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1885-05-30
TowsoNTowN, Md. SATURDAY, MAY 80 1885,
will grow closer together. They in
turn may be killed by food when they


turn may be killed by food when they
are very young.
/ have forgotten the exact time that
each of these trees sheds its seed some
thing will of course depend on the for
wardness of the spring. But along the
Wabash banks, last spring, I could see
three belts of young trees, and distin-
guish them by their general appearance.
The farther off, the palmer these belts
show, till lost to view. The upper
belt was sycamore, the second (down-
ward) cottonwood, and the third soft
maple. In June following there came
bigger flood than any that caused the
seeds to sprout, and killed all of them.
There was bigger flood in the preced-
ing February, but no seed fell then.
1t will sometimes happen that the
flood that plants the sycamores will be
the last one for that year, and when
they have lived through one summer
they are safe from any danger from
overflow. In still other seasons it will
happen to favor the cottonwood, or the
maple, or elm, or willow. New bars
are all the time extending from the
lower ends of the old ones; and as the
elevation of these will be such as to be
sometimes flooded once and not again
for that year, the trees that shed their
seed with the flood that barely covers
such bars will plant them to overfowing
fullness of their kind, and once they
are secure from other floods they live
out their time of two hundred to three
hundred years.
The upper surface of the interior of
the bottoms (back from the rivers) is
built up by sedimentation, and when
built above the height of the average
floods, the burr oak, black walnut,
buckeye, pawpaw, and bottom hickory
make their appearance. Such syca-
mores, cottonwoods, and naples as live
long enough to be relegated to the in
terror Gas very few of them do) by the
bottoms building riverward away from
them, do not and cannot reproduce
themselves, as the conditions that
sprout their seeds have moved away
from them. They die at the end of
three hundred years at most, and leave
no heirs to the soil.
How do the occasional lone, stray
sycamore and cottonwood fine their
way to the uplands? I can see how in
one case it was not only possible, but
very probable. Five miles southeast
of where am now writing (Rockville,
Indiana) is pasture of hill land, so
fenced as to include section of a small
stream at the foot of hill facing north.
There stand several half-grown syca-
mores which bear and shed their seed
in this corner watering place. There
these seeds are sprouted. There the
cattle and horses resort for water.
Every thimble full of mud that may
stick to their hoofs is liable to contain
from one to five half-sprouted seeds,
which are carried up the hillside and
on the upland, as the cattle and horses
return to their grass, and drop where
the sun takes up the unfinished work of
growing the tree. The result is that
on every square rod of ground near this
watering place stand one to five syca-
moreS, varying in age from one to ten
years, and they diminish in number as
the distance from the watering place in
creases. 1t has been used as a pasture
about ten years. remember when it
contained no sycamore at all. Just
outside of the pasture fence, to the
eastward, the land has never been
fenced. The COWS may drink where
they please, and there are no sycamores
scattered over the adjacent hills. If
any seeds are thus carried there, the
forest leaves and shade prevent their
sprouting and growing. But along the
little sand and gravel bars of the stream
they sprout as thick as grass, only to be
killed by the floods from the early
summer showers.
From this l infer that two hundred
to three hundred years ago the deer,
elk, and buffalo, in their many wander
ings across streams and over hills, have
occasionally carried in their hoofs part
ly sprouted seeds, and dropped them
on the hills where the sunshine was un-
obstructed, and the trees thus got their
footing, and once getting it were able
to stand afterward. These are the only
kinds of trees I have observed, but l
presume a similar law governs the dis
tribution and selfplanting of them all.