Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885

  A FOREST BEAUTY.

  Last spring, or possibly it was early in June, I was walking, in companywith an intelligent farmer, through a bit of heavy forest that borderedsome fields of corn and wheat, when a golden, flame-like gleam from themidst of the last year's leaves and twigs on the ground at my feetattracted my sight. I stooped and picked up a large fragment of a flowerof the _Liriodendron Tulipifera_ which had been let fall by someforaging squirrel from the dark-green and fragrant top of the giant treenearest us. Strange to say, my farmer friend, who owned the rich Indianasoil in which the tree grew, did not know, until I told him, that the"poplar," as he called the tulip-tree, bears flowers. For twenty yearshe had owned this farm, during which time he had cut down acres offorest for rails and lumber, without ever having discovered the gorgeousblossom which to me is the finest mass of form and color to be seen inour American woods. As I had a commission from an artist to procure aspray of these blooms for her, I at once began to search the tree-topwith my eyes. The bole, or stem, rose sixty feet, tapering but slightly,to where some heavy and gnarled limbs put forth, their extremities lostin masses of peculiarly dark, rich foliage. At first I could distinguishno flowers, but at length here and there a suppressed glow of orangeshot with a redder tinge showed through the dusky gloom of the leaves.Lo! there they were, hundreds of them, over three inches in diameter,bold, gaudy, rich, the best possible examples of nature's pristineexuberance of force and color. Two gray squirrels were frisking aboutamong the highest sprays, and it was my good fortune that my friendcarried on his shoulder a forty-four-calibre rifle; for, though it wasdeath to the nimble little animals, it proved to be the instrument withwhich I procured my coveted flowers. It suggested the probability that,if bullets could fetch down squirrels from that tree-top, they mightalso serve to clip off and let fall some of the finest clusters orsprays of tulip. The experiment was tried, with excellent result. I madethe little artist glad with some of the grandest specimens I have everseen.

  The tulip-tree is of such colossal size and it branches so high aboveground that it is little wonder few persons, even of those most used tothe woods, ever see its bloom, which is commonly enveloped in a mass oflarge, dark leaves. These leaves are peculiarly outlined, having shortlobes at the sides and a truncated end, while the stem is slender, long,and wire-like. The flower has six petals and three transparent sepals.In its centre rises a pale-green cone surrounded by from eighteen tothirty stamens. Sap-green, yellow of various shades, orange-vermilion,and vague traces of some inimitable scarlet, are the colors curiouslyblended together within and without the grand cup-shaped corolla. It isEdgar Fawcett who draws an exquisite poetic parallel between the orioleand the tulip,--albeit he evidently did not mean the flower of ourLiriodendron, which is nearer the oriole colors. The association of thebird with the flower goes further than color, too; for the tulip-tree isa favorite haunt of the orioles. Audubon, in the plates of his greatornithological work, recognizes this by sketching the bird and somerather flat and weak tulip-sprays together on the same sheet. I havefancied that nature in some way favors this massing of colors by placingthe food of certain birds where their plumage will show to bestadvantage on the one hand, or serve to render them invisible, on theother, while they are feeding. The golden-winged woodpecker, the downywoodpecker, the red-bellied woodpecker, and that grand bird the pileatedwoodpecker, all seem to prefer the tulip-tree for their nesting-place,pecking their holes into the rotten boughs, sometimes even piercing anouter rim of the fragrant green wood in order to reach a hollow place. Iremember, when I was a boy, lying in a dark old wood in Kentucky andwatching a pileated woodpecker at work on a dead tulip-bough that seemedto afford a great number of dainty morsels of food. There were streaksof hard wood through the rotten, and whenever his great horny beakstruck one of these it would sound as loud and clear as the blow of acarpenter's hammer. This fine bird is almost extinct now, having totallydisappeared from nine-tenths of the area of its former habitat. I neversee a tulip-tree without recollecting the wild, strangely-hilarious cryof the _Hylotomus pileatus_; and I cannot help associating thegiant bloom, its strength of form and vigor of color, with the scarletcrest and king-like bearing of the bird. The big trees of Californiaexcepted, our tulip-bearing Liriodendron is the largest growth of theNorth-American forests; for, while the plane-tree and theliquidambar-(sweet-gum) tree sometimes measure more in diameter near theground, they are usually hollow, and consequently bulged there, whilethe tulip springs boldly out of the ground a solid shaft of clear,clean, and sweetly-fragrant wood, sixty or seventy feet of the bolebeing often entirely without limbs, with an average diameter of fromthree to five feet. I found a stump in Indiana nearly eight feet indiameter (measured three feet above the ground), and a tree in ClarkeCounty, Kentucky, of about the same girth, tapering slowly to the firstbranch, fifty-eight feet from the root.

  In nearly all the Western and Southern States the tulip is generallycalled poplar, and the lumber manufactured from it goes by the samename, while in the East it is known as white-wood. The bark is verythick and cork-like, exhaling an odor peculiarly pungent and agreeable;the buds and tender twigs in the spring have a taste entirely individualand unique, very pleasant to some persons, but quite repellent toothers. Gray squirrels and the young of the fox-squirrel eat the budsand flowers as well as the cone-shaped fruit. Humming-birds andbumble-bees in the blossoming-time make a dreamy booming among theshadowy sprays. A saccharine, sticky substance, not unlike honey-dew,may often be found in the hollows of the immense petals, in search ofwhich large black ants make pilgrimages from the root to the top of thelargest tulip-trees, patiently toiling for two or three hours over therough bark, among the bewildering wrinkles of which it is, a wonder howthe way is kept with such unerring certainty. I have calculated that inmaking such a journey the ant does what is equivalent to a man'spedestrian tour from New York City to the Adirondacks by the roughestroute, and all for a smack of wild honey! But the ant makes his longexcursion with neither alpenstock nor luncheon, and without sleeping oreven resting on the way.

  The tulip-tree grows best in warm loam in which there is a mixture ofsand and vegetable mould superposed on clay and gravel. About its rootsyou may find the lady-slipper and the dog-tooth violet, each in itsseason. Its bark often bears the rarest lichens, and, near the ground,short green moss as soft and thick as velvet. The poison-ivy and thebeautiful Virginia creeper like to clamber up the rough trunk, sometimesclothing the huge tree from foot to top in a mantle of brown feelers andglossy leaves. Seen at a distance, the tulip-tree and theblack-walnut-tree look very much alike; but upon approaching them thesuperior symmetry and beauty of the former are at once discovered. Theleaves of the walnut are gracefully arranged, but they admit too muchlight; while the tulip presents grand masses of dense foliage upheld byknotty, big-veined branches, the perfect embodiment of vigor.

  In the days of bee-hunting in the West, I may safely say that a majorityof bee-trees were tulips. I have found two of these wild Hyblas since Ibegan my studies for this paper; but the trees have become so valuablethat the bees are left unmolested with their humming and their honey. Itseems that no more appropriate place for a nest of these wildnectar-brewers could be chosen than the hollow bough of a gianttulip,--a den whose door is curtained with leaves and washed round withodorous airs, where the superb flowers, with their wealth of goldenpollen and racy sweets, blaze out from the cool shadows above andbeneath. But the sly old 'coon, that miniature Bruin of our Westernwoods, is a great lover of honey, and not at all a respecter of therights of wild bees. He is tireless in his efforts to reach everydeposit of waxy comb and amber distillation within the range of his keenpower of scent. The only honey that escapes him is that in a hollow toosmall for him to enter and too deep for his fore-paws to reach thebottom.

  Poe, in his story of the Gold-Bug, falls into one of his characteristicerrors of conscience. The purposes of his plot required that a verylarge and tall tree should be climbed, and, to be picturesque, a tulipwas chosen. But, in or
der to give a truthful air to the story, thefollowing minutely incorrect description is given: "In youth thetulip-tree, or _Liriodendron Tulipiferum_, the most magnificent ofAmerican foresters, has a trunk peculiarly smooth, and often rises to agreat height without lateral branches; but in its riper age the barkbecomes gnarled and uneven, while _many short limbs make theirappearance on the stem_" The italics are mine, and the sentenceitalicized contains an unblushing libel upon the most beautiful of alltrees. Short branches never "appear on the stems" of old tulip-trees.The bark, however, does grow rough and deeply seamed with age. I haveseen pieces of it six inches thick, which, when cut, showed a fine grainwith cloudy waves of rich brown color, not unlike the darkest mahogany.But Poe, no matter how unconscionable his methods of art, had the trueartistic judgment, and he made the tulip-tree serve a picturesque turnin the building of his fascinating story; though one would have had moreconfidence in his descriptions of foliage if it had been May instead ofNovember.

  The growth of the tulip-tree, under favorable circumstances, is strongand rapid, and, when not crowded or shaded by older trees, it beginsflowering when from eighteen to twenty-five years old. Theblooming-season, according to the exigences of weather, begins from May20 to June 10 in Indiana, and lasts about a week. The fruit followingthe flower is a cone an inch and a half long and nearly an inch indiameter at the base, of a greenish--yellow color, very pungent andodorous, and full of germs like those of a pine-cone. The tree is easilygrown from the seed. Its roots are long, flexible, and tough, and whenyoung are pale yellow and of bitterish taste, but slightly flavored withthe stronger tulip individuality which characterizes the juice and sapof the buds and the bark of the twigs. The leaves, as I have said, aredark and rich, but their shape and color are not the half of theirbeauty. There is a charm in their motion, be the wind ever so light,that is indescribable. The rustle they make is not "sad" or "uncertain,"but cheerful and forceful. The garments of some young giantess, such asBaudelaire sings of, might make that rustling as she would run past onein a land of colossal persons and things.

  I have been surprised to find so little about the tulip-tree in ourliterature. Our writers of prose and verse have not spared the magnoliaof the South, which is far inferior, both tree and flower, to our gaudy,flaunting giantess of the West. Indeed, if I were an aesthete, and werelooking about me for a flower typical of a robust and perfect sentimentof art, I should greedily seize upon the bloom of the tulip-tree. What a"craze" for tulip borders and screens, tulip wallpapers and tulippanel-carvings, I would set going in America! The colors, old gold,orange, vermilion, and green,--the forms, gentle curves and classicaltruncations, and all new and American, with a woodsy freshness andfragrance in them. The leaves and flowers of the tulip-tree are sosimple and strong of outline that they need not be conventionalized fordecorative purposes. During the process of growth the leaves often takeon accidental shapes well suited to the variations required by thedesigner. A wise artist, going into the woods to educate himself up tothe level of the tulip, could not fail to fill his sketch-books withstudies of the birds that haunt the tree, and especially such brilliantones as the red tanager, the five or six species of woodpecker, theorioles, and the yellow-throated warbler. The Japanese artists give uswonderful instances of the harmony between birds, flowers, and foliage;not direct instances, it is true, but rather suggested ones, from whichlarge lessons might be learned by him who would carry the thought intoour woods with him in the light of a pure and safely-educated taste.Take, for instance, the yellow-bellied woodpecker, with its red fore-topand throat, its black and white lines, and its bright eyes, togetherwith its pale yellow shading of back and belly, and how well it would"work in" with the tulip-leaves and flowers! Even its bill and feetharmonize perfectly with the bark of the older twigs. So thegolden-wing, the tanager, and the orioles would bear their colorsharmoniously into any successful tulip design.

  South of the Alleghany Mountains I have not found as fine specimens ofthis tree as I have in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana. Everywhere thesaw-mills are fast making sad havoc. The walnut and the tulip are soonto be no more as "trees with the trees in the forest." Those growing inthe almost inaccessible "pockets" of the Kentucky and Tennesseemountains may linger for a half-century yet, but eventually all will begone from wherever a man and a saw can reach them.

  The oak of England and the pine of Norway are not more typical than thetulip-tree. The symmetry, vigor, and rich colors of our tree mightrepresent the force, freedom, and beauty of our government and oursocial influences. If the American eagle is the bird of freedom, thetulip is the tree of liberty,--strong, fragrant, giant-flowered,flaunting, defiant, yet dignified and steadfast.

  A very intelligent old man, who in his youth was a great bear- andpanther-hunter, has often told me how the black bear and the tawnycatamount used to choose the ample "forks" of the tulip-tree for theirretreats when pursued by his dogs. The raccoon has superseded the largergame, and it was but a few weeks ago that I found one lying, like astriped, fluffy ball of fur, in a crotch ninety feet above ground. "Ourwhite-wood" lumber has grown so valuable that no land-owner will allowthe trees to be cut by the hunter, and hence the old-fashioned'coon-hunt has fallen among the things of the past, for it seems thatthe 'coon is quite wise enough to choose for the place of his indwellingthe costliest tulip of the woods. I have already casually mentioned thefact that the tulip-tree's bloom is scarcely known to exist by evenintelligent and well-informed Americans. Every one has heard of themimosa, the dogwood, the red-bud, and the magnolia, but not of thetulip-bearing tree, with its incomparably bold, dashing, giantesqueflower, once so common in the great woods of our Western and MiddleStates. I have not been able to formulate a good reason for this. Everyone whose attention is called to the flower at once goes into rapturesover its wild beauty and force of coloring, and wonders why poems havenot been written about it and legends built upon it. It is a granderbloom than that which once, under the same name, nearly bankruptedkingdoms, though it cannot be kept in pots and greenhouses. Its colorsare, like the idiosyncrasies of genius, as inimitable as they arefascinating and elusive. Audubon was something of an artist, but histulip-blooms are utter failures. He could color an oriole, but not thecorolla of this queen of the woods. The most sympathetic and experiencedwater-colorist will find himself at fault with those amber-rose,orange-vermilion blushes, and those tender cloudings of yellow andgreen. The stiff yet sensitive and fragile petals, the transparentsepals, with their watery shades and delicate washing of olive-green,the strong stamens and peculiarly marked central cone, are scarcely lessdifficult. All the colors elude and mock the eager artist. While thegamut of promising tints is being run, he looks, and, lo! the grandtulip has shrivelled and faded. Again and again a fresh spray is fetchedin, but when the blooming-season is over he is still balked anddissatisfied. The wild, Diana-like purity and the half-savage,half-aesthetic grace have not wholly escaped him, but the color,--ah Ithere is the disappointment.

  I have always nursed a fancy that there is something essential toperfect health in the bitters and sweets of buds and roots and gums andresins of the primeval woods. Why does the bird keep, even in old age,the same brilliancy of plumage and the same clearness of eye? Is itbecause it gets the _elixir vitae_ from the hidden reservoir ofnature? Be this as it may, there are times when I sincerely long for aball of liquidambar or a mouthful of pungent spring buds. The inner barkof the tulip-tree has the wildest of all wild tastes, a peculiarlygrateful flavor when taken infinitesimally, something more savage thansassafras or spice-wood, and full of all manner of bitter hints andastringent threatenings: it has long been used as the very bestappetizer for horses in the early spring, and it is equally good forman. The yellow-bellied woodpecker knows its value, taking it with headjauntily awry and quiet wing-tremblings of delight. The squirrels getthe essence of it as they munch the pale leaf-buds, or later when theybite the cones out of the flowers. The humming-birds and wild bees arethe favored ones, however, for they get the ultimate distillation
of allthe racy and fragrant elements from root to bloom.

  The Indians knew the value of the tulip-tree as well as its beauty.Their most graceful pirogues were dug from its bole, and its odorousbark served to roof their rude houses. No boat I have ever tried runs solightly as a well-made tulip pirogue, or dug-out, and nothing underheaven is so utterly crank and treacherous. Many an unpremeditatedplunge into cold water has one caused me while out fishing orduck-shooting on the mountain-streams of North Georgia. If you darestand up in one, the least waver from a perfect balance will send thesensitive, skittish thing a rod from under your feet, which of courseleaves you standing on the water without the faith to keep you fromgoing under; and usually it is your head that you are standing on. But,to return to our tree, I would like to see its merits as an ornamentaland shade tree duly recognized. If grown in the free air and sunlight,it forms a heavy and beautifully-shaped top, on a smooth, bright bole,and I think it might be forced to bloom about the fifteenth year. Theflowers of young, thrifty trees that have been left standing in openfields are much larger, brighter, and more graceful than those of oldgnarled forest-trees, but the finest blooms I ever saw were on a gianttulip in a thin wood of Indiana. A storm blew the tree down in the midstof its flowering, and I chanced to see it an hour later. The whole greattop was yellow with the gaudy cups, each gleaming "like a flake offire," as Dr. Holmes says of the oriole. Some of them were nearly fourinches across. Last year a small tree, growing in a garden near where Iwrite, bloomed for the first time. It was about twenty years old. Itsflowers were paler and shallower than those gathered at the same time inthe woods. It may be that transplanting, or any sort of forcing orcultivation, may cause the blooms to deteriorate in both shape andcolor, but I am sure that plenty of light and air is necessary to theirbest development.

  In one way the tulip-tree is closely connected with the most picturesqueand interesting period of American development. I mean the period of"hewed-log" houses. Here and there among the hills of Indiana, Ohio,Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Carolinas, there remains one of those low,heavy, lime-chinked structures, the best index of the first change fromfrontier-life, with all its dangers and hardships, to the peace andcontentment of a broader liberty and an assured future. In fact, to mymind, a house of hewed tulip-logs, with liberal stone chimneys and heavyoaken doors, embowered in an old gnarled apple-and cherry-orchard,always suggests a sort of simple honesty and hospitality long sincefallen into desuetude, but once the most marked characteristic of theAmerican people. It is hard to imagine any meanness or illiberalitybeing generated in such a house. Patriotism, domestic fidelity, andspotless honesty used to sit before those broad fireplaces wherein thehickory logs melted to snowy ashes. The men who hewed those logs "hewedto the line" in more ways than one. Their words, like the bullets fromtheir flint-locked rifles, went straight to the point. The women, too,they of the "big wheel" and the "little wheel," who carded and spun andwove, though they may have been a trifle harsh and angular, werediamond-pure and the mothers of vigorous offspring.

  I often wonder if there may not be a perfectly explainable connectionbetween the decay or disappearance of the forests and the evaporation,so to speak, of man's rugged sincerity and earnestness. Why should notthe simple ingredients that make up the worldly part of our souls andbodies be found in all their purity where nature's reservoir has neverbeen disturbed or its contents tainted? Why may not the subtile forcethat develops the immense tulip-tree and clothes it with such a starrymantle have power also to invigorate and intensify the life of man? "Iwas rocked in a poplar trough," was the politician's boast a generationago. Such a declaration might mean a great deal if the sturdy, toweringstrength of the tree out of which the trough was dug could have beenabsorbed by the embryo Congressman. The "oldest inhabitant" of everyWestern neighborhood recollects the "sugar-trough" used in themaple-sap-gathering season, ere the genuine "sugar-camp" had beenabandoned. Young tulip-trees about fifteen inches in diameter were cutdown and their boles sawed into lengths of three feet. These were splitin two, and made into troughs by hollowing the faces and charring themover a fire. During the bright spring days of sugar-making the youngWestern mother would wrap her sturdy babe in its blanket and put it in adry sugar-trough to sleep while she tended the boiling syrup. A man bornsixty years ago in the region of tulip-trees and sugar-camps wasprobably cradled in a "poplar" trough; and there were those born whowould now be sixty years old if they had not in unwary infancy tumbledinto the enormous rainwater-troughs with which every well-regulatedhouse was furnished. I have seen one or two of these having a capacityof fifty barrels dug from a single tulip bole. In such a pitfall somebudding Washington or Lincoln may have been whelmed without causing somuch as a ripple on the surface of history.

  But, turning to take leave of my stately and blooming Western beauty, Isee that she is both a blonde and a brunette. She has all the dreamy,languid grace of the South combined with the _verve_ and force ofthe North. She is dark and she is fair, with blushing cheeks and dewylips, sound-hearted, strong, lofty, self-reliant, a true queen of thewoods, more stately than Diana, and more vigorous than Maid Marian.

  MAURICE THOMPSON.