LEAFLET XLVII. A STUDY OF A TREE.[64] BY ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK. [64] Home Nature-Study Course, Vol. V, No. 2, November, 1903. THE SUGAR MAPLE. The maple puts her corals on in May, While loitering frosts about the lowlands cling, To be in tune with what the robins sing, Plastering new log-huts 'mid her branches gray; But when the autumn southward turns away, Then in her veins burns most the blood of Spring, And every leaf, intensely blossoming, Makes the year's sunset pale the set of day. --LOWELL. [Illustration] Like a friend is a tree, in that it needs to be known season after season and year after year in order to be truly appreciated. A person who has not had an intimate, friendly acquaintance with some special tree has missed something from life. Yet even those of us who love a tree because we find its shade a comfort in summer and its bare branches etched against the sky a delight in winter, may have very little understanding of the wonderful life-processes which have made this tree a thing of beauty. If we would become aware of the life of our tree we must study it carefully. We should best begin by writing in a blank book week after week what happens to our tree for a year. If we keep such a diary, letting the tree dictate what we write, we shall then know more of the life of our tree. In selecting a tree for this lesson I have chosen the sugar maple, for several reasons. It is everywhere common; it is beautiful; it is most useful; and it has been unanimously chosen as the representative tree of the Empire State. Let each of us choose some maple tree in our immediate vicinity that shall be the subject for our lesson now, and again in the winter, and again in the spring. Our first thought in this study is that a tree is a living being, in a measure like ourselves, and that it has been confronted with many difficult problems which it must have solved successfully, since it is alive. It has found breathing space and food; it has won room for its roots in the earth and for its branches in the light; and it has matured its seeds and planted them for a new generation. [Illustration: _Fig. 284. Sugar maple._] [Illustration: _Fig. 285. A sugar maple grown in an open field._] BRIEF PHYSIOLOGY OF THE TREE. The tree lives by breathing and by getting its daily food. It breathes through the numerous pores in its leaves, and green bark, and roots. The leaves are often called the lungs of the tree, but the young bark also has many openings into which the air penetrates, and the roots get air that is present in the soil. So the tree really breathes all over its active surface, and by this process takes in oxygen from the air. It gives off carbon dioxid as we do when we breathe. [Illustration: _Fig. 286. Silver maple._]