Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1902-07-05
AMONG THE TREES
Curiosities of the Woodland
Keenly Observed
IN A GROUP OF PINES
LIFE IN THE WOODS IS A sTRUG-
GLE oFTENTIMES.
In the White Mountain Forests Many
Strange Growths Afford In
teresting Data.
IN A GROUP OF PINES

Written for The Evening Star by F. Schuyler
Matthews.
There is nothing in the world more widely
separated than the life Of the city and that
of the wood The conditions of existence
are so completely opposite one another that
| natural life becomes a curiosity to that
other life, which is reared and trained in
the metropolis, where humanity is aggres-
sively active and correSpondingly noisy. Yet
in both town and wood the same serious
struggle for existence is relentlessly pro-
crossing, in the one case with friction and
din like that of a machine, in the other,
silently and ceaselessly When Cowper
wrote those words-"Oh for lodge in some
vast Wilderness he tohched the keynote
Of our kinship with the natural world: we
also had the longing, but we did not know
1t, hardly had taken time to think about
it, thought perhaps that we could i'll af-
ford to spare the time necessary to cultivate
our acquaintance with nature, counted the
building of a lodge an extravaganza and
a vision of mpracticability. Now, We have
come to different way of thinking; it IS
worth the while to live in or near the woods
for some part Of the summer and we find
to our surprise that they are filled with a
mysterious and curious life not half under
stood. After a little experience with the
trees and shrubs and woodland plants we
ma evidences Of competition and struggle.
Here is a group of pines; the forest floor
below is almost bereft of life, the slippery
tan-colored needles are so closely matted
that only occasional tiny sapling pushes
it's way upward from between them, and it
is more than evident that its life is not
prosperous. Woodsmen tell us that if those
pines were cut down, at once a host of little
trees would spring into existence before two
years had eiapsed-and they would not be
pines, either. Strange, why have not the
ed n,ISpI 70
new crop? They have, but there is no
chance for the baby pines; for long time
the gray birches or the paper birches have
struggled to get a footing where the pines
stood; now they have their chance, they
have a start in the race for life and they
are bound to win.
The baby pines may wait-or rot in the
ground. That needle-covered floor more
over, has prevented many a forest plant
from obtaining a foothold and the old pines
have sucked up every bit of moisture and
life out of the soil: four inches down it is
all sand; the conditions, in word, have
curiously conspired against any interloper.
The pine woods usually have things all their
own way until the woodsman enters with
an AK over his shoulder, then life takes on
a different aspect. 1t is so with the spruce
there is not much life beneath the inter-
locking branches of score two of these
trees, and they also have things their own
way Perhaps they do, one cannot always
be sure of that. Life in the woods is a
the ground. Vegetation fights against itself
and when that does not occur may be some
insect steps in and alters the whole visual
character of a mountain side. Last sum-
mer the gray birches began to wither early,
and by october they were stripped of their
god-or rather brown LEAKAGE, for the gold
never really existed; the forest caterpillar
had been at work, and he with the drought
of the previous June set a new note of color
for the forest-clad mountains in autumn.
About three or four years ago the spruce
trees near Boothbay harbor, Me, began to
assume strange and unhealthy color; a
vegetable parasite has been at work upon
them, they had to engage in a struggle for
life. A miserable microscopic mistletoe
scarcely more than half an inch tall with
the burdenSome name of aceuthorium pu-
sillun, fastens upon the spruces and sets
up grewsOme factories for the manufactu
of so-called witches brooms. The parasite
spreads by means of minute suckers which
are attached beneath the bark of the tree;
they drain the latter Of all its juices, and
the needles begin to turn yellow in short
meter. The purple-brown fruit of the little
plant ripens in September and-strange
provision of nature-the seeds are violently
expelled from it at the moment it becomes
separated from it's stem. Out they fly and
stick to the nearest branch or plant they
hit, scarcely ever dropping, for each seed is
covered with a sort of sticky matter Sufti-
GENTLY adhesive to answer all practical pur-
poses.
Then it is goodbye to the tree which is
the unconscious host