No More Learning

I had heard of it through
Michaux, but more modern botanists, so far as I know, have not
treated it as of any peculiar importance. Thus it was a half-fabulous
tree to me. I contemplated a pilgrimage to the "Glades," a portion of
Pennsylvania where it was said to grow to perfection. I thought of
sending to a nursery for it, but doubted if they had it, or would
distinguish it from European varieties. At last I had occasion to go
to Minnesota, and on entering Michigan I began to notice from the cars
a tree with handsome rose-colored flowers. At first I thought it some
variety of thorn; but it was not long before the truth flashed on me,
that this was my long-sought crab-apple. It was the prevailing
flowering shrub or tree to be seen from the cars at that season of the
year,--about the middle of May. But the cars never stopped before one,
and so I was launched on the bosom of the Mississippi without having
touched one, experiencing the fate of Tantalus. On arriving at St.
Anthony's Falls, I was sorry to be told that I was too far north for
the crab-apple. Nevertheless I succeeded in finding it about eight
miles west of the Falls; touched it and smelled it, and secured a
lingering corymb of flowers for my herbarium. This must have been near
its northern limit.


HOW THE WILD APPLE GROWS

But though these are indigenous, like the Indians, I doubt whether
they are any hardier than those backwoodsmen among the apple trees,
which, though descended from cultivated stocks, plant themselves in
distant fields and forests, where the soil is favorable to them. I
know of no trees which have more difficulties to contend with, and
which more sturdily resist their foes. These are the ones whose story
we have to tell.
It oftentimes reads thus:--

Near the beginning of May, we notice little thickets of apple trees
just springing up in the pastures where cattle have been,--as the
rocky ones of our Easterbrooks Country, or the top of Nobscot Hill, in
Sudbury. One or two of these, perhaps, survive the drought and other
accidents,--their very birthplace defending them against the
encroaching grass and some other dangers, at first.

In two years' time 't had thus
Reached the level of the rocks,
Admired the stretching world,
Nor feared the wandering flocks.

But at this tender age
Its sufferings began:
There came a browsing ox
And cut it down a span.

This time, perhaps, the ox does not notice it amid the grass; but the
next year, when it has grown more stout, he recognizes it for a
fellow-emigrant from the old country, the flavor of whose leaves and
twigs he well knows; and though at first he pauses to welcome it, and
express his surprise, and gets for answer, "The same cause that
brought you here brought me," he nevertheless browses it again,
reflecting, it may be, that he has some title to it.

Thus cut down annually, it does not despair; but, putting forth two
short twigs for every one cut off, it spreads out low along the ground
in the hollows or between the rocks, growing more stout and scrubby,
until it forms, not a tree as yet, but a little pyramidal, stiff,
twiggy mass, almost as solid and impenetrable as a rock. Some of the
densest and most impenetrable clumps of bushes that I have ever seen,
as well on account of the closeness and stubbornness of their branches
as of their thorns, have been these wild apple scrubs. They are more
like the scrubby fir and black spruce on which you stand, and
sometimes walk, on the tops of mountains, where cold is the demon they
contend with, than anything else. No wonder they are prompted to grow
thorns at last, to defend themselves against such foes. In their
thorniness, however, there is no malice, only some malic acid.

The rocky pastures of the tract I have referred to--for they maintain
their ground best in a rocky field--are thickly sprinkled with these
little tufts, reminding you often of some rigid gray mosses or
lichens, and you see thousands of little trees just springing up
between them, with the seed still attached to them.

Being regularly clipped all around each year by the cows, as a hedge
with shears, they are often of a perfect conical or pyramidal form,
from one to four feet high, and more or less sharp, as if trimmed by
the gardener's art. In the pastures on Nobscot Hill and its spurs,
they make fine dark shadows when the sun is low. They are also an
excellent covert from hawks for many small birds that roost and build
in them. Whole flocks perch in them at night, and I have seen three
robins' nests in one which was six feet in diameter.

No doubt many of these are already old trees, if you reckon from the
day they were planted, but infants still when you consider their
development and the long life before them.