Thus having prepared their buds
Against a sure winter
The wise trees
Stand sleeping in the cold. — William Carlos Williams
In the frozen winter world, deciduous trees are naked before the sky. Their trunks, branches, and bark are more prominent when they are stripped of their foliage. While out on a winter walk, close inspection of our native and imported trees reveals a richness of color, texture, and fragrance.
Our indigenous birch trees have distinctive bark. The yellow birch, Betula allenghaniensis, with its shimmery, peeling yellow trunk, can grow to a height of one-hundred feet. The black or sweet birch, B. lenta, does not grow as tall, and its bark is a smooth, shiny, dark brown with a distinct smell of wintergreen when peeled. Black-birch oil was used to give a wintergreen flavor to candy and medicines. The trees can be tapped like sugar maples to produce syrup, and fermented sap can be made into birch beer.
A quintessential feature of the New England landscape is our white birch, B. papyrifera. The peeling, stark trunks against a blue winter sky are glorious. One of its common names, paper birch, comes from the thin sheets that can be taken from the tree. But stripping bark from a live tree will create a scar, so it is best to find a fallen log as a paper source. Its other nickname is the canoe birch. Native people have used white-birch bark in the construction of canoes. The watercraft were built using white cedar for the frame and birch bark for the shell. Thread made from spruce or larch roots (watap) was used to sew the bark together, and resin from conifers and deer tallow was applied to caulk the seams. Today, the wood from the white birch is used to make clothespins, popsicle sticks, spools, and broomsticks.
The maple family has numerous native species. Acer saccharum, the sugar maple, and A. rubrum, the red maple, create multi-branched patterns against the sky. A solitary tree in a field often grows into a pleasing, symmetrical, oval presence. The striped or moosewood maple, A. pennsylvanicum, is an understory tree with stunning dark gray-green and white vertical striations.
One of my favorite trees is A. griseum, a maple native to China. It was introduced to the West in 1899 by the plant hunter E. H. Wilson and soon after brought to the United States by the Arnold Arboretum in Boston. Commonly called the paperbark maple, it has the most amazing exfoliating bark. When backlit by the low winter sun, curls of peeling bark glow in hues of coppery orange and cinnamon brown. A mature tree grows along the side of Bear Swamp Road, planted years ago by Elinor Clark (who also wrote about gardens in the first years of the Ashfield News). Asia is the source of many trees with colorful trunks. Stewartia trees grow in China, Korea, and Japan, and are hardy here, with striking peeling bark in winter. The seven-son tree, Heptacodium miconioides, was only introduced to the West in 1980. Vertical strips of bark hang off the trunk in shades of brown.
The American beech, Fagus grandiflora, often grows in groves from a single rootstock. The smooth, thin, gray bark of beech trees is reminiscent of elephant skin especially along a thick trunk. Beechnuts, the fruit of this tree, are an important source of food to wildlife. Unfortunately, our beech trees are under attack. A beech scale insect has infested the trees which causes two fungi to flourish and produce cankers on the bark. The blistering weakens and eventually girdles and kills the trees. It is a painful sight.
The European beech, F. sylvatica, is often planted as an ornamental. Varieties have been bred with purple and copper foliage, and weeping or columnar habit. A majestic specimen of the weeping beech, ‘Pendula,’ is growing on the Smith College campus. Walking under the tent of branches that reach to the ground is like entering a domain inhabited by hobbits or fairies.
The sycamore, Platanus occidental, has smooth, mottled bark that peels off in flakes, uncovering patches of green and brown. It can grow up to a height of one-hundred feet. Michael Dirr calls it “a great and noble tree.” A towering sycamore grows on the west side of Route 47 in Sunderland. I used to pass it often when traveling to Blue Meadow Nursery and would think what a good candidate it would be for pagan tree worship. The London plane tree so common in Europe is a hybrid; the American sycamore is one parent and the Asian sycamore is the other.
In Ashfield you can walk outside anywhere and commune with our trees, or you can travel to see majestic old growth at Mohawk State Forest or the Bryant Homestead, places where the trees have never been cut. In winter it is easy to stay inside and warm, but the trees have much to offer out in the cold. I often walk along the road, marveling at the straight trunks of the white ash, Fraxinus Americana, with its ridged, diamond patterned bark. Or I hike through a field dotted with old gnarly apple trees. Sometimes I walk into my garden to admire the fuzzy, promising buds of my star magnolia. Trees stand tall, a connection of the earth and the sky; our winter garden.
“I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.” — Henry David Thoreau
January, 2020