Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
being often entirely without limbs, with an average diameter of from
three to five feet. I found a stump in Indiana nearly eight feet in
diameter (measured three feet above the ground), and a tree in Clarke
County, Kentucky, of about the same girth, tapering slowly to the first
branch, fifty-eight feet from the root.
In nearly all the Western and Southern States the tulip is generally
called poplar, and the lumber manufactured from it goes by the same
name, while in the East it is known as white-wood. The bark is very
thick and cork-like, exhaling an odor peculiarly pungent and agreeable;
the buds and tender twigs in the spring have a taste entirely individual
and unique, very pleasant to some persons, but quite repellent to
others. Gray squirrels and the young of the fox-squirrel eat the buds
and flowers as well as the cone-shaped fruit. Humming-birds and
bumble-bees in the blossoming-time make a dreamy booming among the
shadowy sprays. A saccharine, sticky substance, not unlike honey-dew,
may often be found in the hollows of the immense petals, in search of
which large black ants make pilgrimages from the root to the top of the
largest tulip-trees, patiently toiling for two or three hours over the
rough bark, among the bewildering wrinkles of which it is, a wonder how
the way is kept with such unerring certainty. I have calculated that in
making such a journey the ant does what is equivalent to a man's
pedestrian tour from New York City to the Adirondacks by the roughest
route, and all for a smack of wild honey! But the ant makes his long
excursion with neither alpenstock nor luncheon, and without sleeping or
even resting on the way.
The tulip-tree grows best in warm loam in which there is a mixture of
sand and vegetable mould superposed on clay and gravel. About its roots
you may find the lady-slipper and the dog-tooth violet, each in its
season. Its bark often bears the rarest lichens, and, near the ground,
short green moss as soft and thick as velvet. The poison-ivy and the
beautiful Virginia creeper like to clamber up the rough trunk, sometimes
clothing the huge tree from foot to top in a mantle of brown feelers and
glossy leaves. Seen at a distance, the tulip-tree and the
black-walnut-tree look very much alike; but upon approaching them the
superior symmetry and beauty of the former are at once discovered. The
leaves of the walnut are gracefully arranged, but they admit too much
light; while the tulip presents grand masses of dense foliage upheld by
knotty, big-veined branches, the perfect embodiment of vigor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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