Pines and Firs
Mrs. Dyson
Pines and firs! Who knows the difference between a pine and a fir! These trees are first cousins; they often dwell together in our woods; they are evergreen; they have narrow, pointed leaves; and they bear cones, and so we often call them all firs, as if they were brothers. This may satisfy strangers and passers-by who only turn their heads and say: “Ah! a fir wood,” but it will not be sufficient for the friends of the trees. Pines and firs are as different as oaks and beeches; and who would not be ashamed to take a beech for an oak!
A fir is the shape of a church steeple or a spear-head about to cleave the sky. The lowermost branches come out in a ring and spread out straight and stiff like the spokes of a wheel. Above this whorl is another of shorter branches still, and so on, till the top ring is quite a little one round a pointed shoot. The little shoots fork out on each side of the big branches, and like them are set closely with leaves. These shoots do not point up to the sky nor down to the earth; they spread out flat, so that the branch looks like a huge fern.
Pines begin to grow like firs; but as they shoot up side by side in the woods, their lower branches drop off for want of air and sunshine, and their upper branches spread out wider. A fir is a pyramid with a pointed top; but a full-grown pine has a flat top, and often a tall, bare trunk, so that it looks like a great umbrella. A famous Roman writer, Pliny, said that the smoke of a volcano was like a pine tree. The smoke shoots up in a great pillar from the mouth of the fiery mountain, and then spreads itself out in a black cap.
You have often amused yourselves with finding pictures in the clouds. Have you seen a pillar of mist rise up from the horizon, the meeting line of the earth and sky, and then lose itself in a soft cloud? The country people in some parts of Europe call this cloud-form Abraham’s tree or Adam’s tree, because it is so like a pine tree. When the clouds break up into the soft, white, fleecy ripples that we call a mackerel sky, they say, “We shall have wind, for Adam’s tree is putting forth leaves.”
The pine trees dress themselves in long, blue-green, rounded needles set in bundles of two, three, or more, bristling out all round their branches; but the fir trees wear short, narrow, flat leaves of a yellow-green colour, set singly each one by itself. These fir leaves come out all round the stem just as pine leaves do, but they are parted down the middle as we sometimes part our hair, so that they spread out flat in two thick rows.
Mr. Ruskin calls the pines and firs and their relations the builders with the sword, because of their narrow, pointed leaves, and the broad-leaved trees he calls the builders with the shield. The trees of the sword stand erect on the hills like armed soldiers prepared for war; while the trees of the shield spread themselves in the valleys to shelter the fields and pastures.
Why do these mountain trees have such narrow leaves? Can you find out a reason? Perhaps this is one: when the great, strong wind is raging with all his force, he will not suffer any resistance but breaks down everything that tries to stay him in his course; if he meets broad leaves and heavy branches, he hurls them out of his way, but he just whistles through the slender leaves and branches of the pines and firs, and scarcely knows they are there.
When you gather the cones in the wood, you may know at once whether they have fallen from pine trees or from fir trees. A pine cone looks like a single piece of carved solid wood until it opens, and then each hard scale shows a thick, square head; but the fir cones are made of broad, papery scales, with thin edges laid neatly one over the other.
Now you will never have any difficulty in knowing the pines from the firs, even in the far distance—colour, form, dress, fruit, all are different.
How is it we make a mistake, and call the Scotch pine by the name of Scotch fir? Perhaps it is because this tree is the only one of the great pine and fir family that is a real native of Britain. Our stay-at-home ancestors who lived above three hundred years ago never saw a real fir, and so their one pine had to represent all its relations. They knew it perhaps better than we do, for in their days there were many forests that have since been cut down to make room for houses and gardens and fields.
Sometimes when you have been walking over the moorland you have run to gather some bright yellow moss, and have suddenly found your foot sinking into wet, black mud, and you have heard stories of men and horses sucked down by just such dreadful slime. Hundreds of years ago forests stood where now lie these dangerous bogs, and the trees and shrubs rotting and decaying in the wet have changed into black, brown swamps. Many bogs have been drained, and the trunks of pine trees have been found in them standing as they grew. In one bog in Yorkshire pine trees were found sawn across and left to lie and rot. Who felled these trees which have been lying there hundreds of years? Can we tell? Yes; for among the trees are scattered axe-heads and Roman coins, and we are able to picture the old story of the place. There was once a forest there, and the ancient Britons hid themselves in its shelter, and the Romans cut down the trees to drive them from their hiding-place.
There are two common kinds of firs which you will find in the woods. One is the spruce fir, a very prim and proper tree, with slightly curving branches turned up at the tips. It looks as if the branches had been all cut to a pattern, and their length and the distances between them carefully measured. When you have been washed and brushed and pulled and straightened, and had every hair and bow set in its proper place, so that you look particularly trim and neat, you sometimes laugh and call one another spruce, like the spruce fir.
Some people think the name “spruce” means the pruce, or Prussian tree; others say it means the sprouting tree, the tree that sprouts at the ends of its branches. In some countries these bright-green sprouts are cut off and made into a kind of beer called spruce beer.
The spruce fir is at home on the high mountains of Europe where it often grows one hundred and fifty feet high. You long for the time when you will be taken to Switzerland to see the snow-capped Alps. Then standing out against the white snow and the glittering ice rivers you will see the dark spruce forests. This fir is also at home in Norway and the cold lands of the North, and so we call it the Norway Spruce to distinguish it from other kinds of spruce fir that grow in America. In Norway many old men and women earn a living by gathering and selling in the markets pieces of fir for the people to strew on the graves as we do flowers.
What sort of cones has the spruce? Can you find some in the fir wood? They are five or six inches long and perhaps two inches thick. You will see them hanging from the ends of the upper branches, and perhaps you may find some empty ones on the ground. Look at them. Those thin scales are very different from the tough walls of the pine cone: each one is shaped off to a point, and this point is divided into two sharp teeth.
Perhaps when you are looking for the cones, you will find growing fast to the branches among the leaves some fanciful things that look like little cones. These are very gay; every scale has a border of crimson velvet and a green spine in the middle of its back, like a little tusk. If you open them you will find some brown, soft things inside. Do you know what they are? Perhaps, if you have not already made friends with the real cone, you will think these are seeds; but some of you are growing wise, and know that you have intruded into a little nest of insects. If you tie a net round the branch and keep watch, you may see them come out. Their mother pierced a hole in a brown bud last autumn and laid her eggs there; then when the buds burst in spring the lower leaves grew fast together and made this comfortable house, and those green tusks you see are the leaf points.
But what is the other kind of fir that grows in our wood? It is rather like the spruce in shape, but it is not quite so stiff and prim and proper, and underneath each little leaf there are two silver lines, and so we call this the silver fir. You may always know it from the spruce by these silver lines. Each stiff little leaf has its edges rolled under as if ready for hemming, and there is a thick green rib down the middle of the under side, so the silver lining just peeps out in single streaks between the rib and the hems.
The spring tufts of the Norway spruce are of a bright yellow-green; those of the silver fir are paler and softer in tint, more like the primrose. When the sulphur butterfly lights on them we lose sight of him, so he flits from one to another, feeling quite safe, and keeping carefully away from those dark old leaves where he would be pounced upon at once.
The silver fir does not let its cones hang down; it holds them proudly erect on its branches; like little towers often eight inches high. We wonder how such slender twigs can hold up such large cones. They look like hairy giants, for their scales do not end in two little teeth, but in a long point which turns back and bends downwards.
The silver fir does not like quite such cold places as the spruce and the Scotch pine; it dwells lower down the mountain sides, and is at home in Central Europe.
All the pines and firs, like the Scotch pine, have those wonderful pipes and reservoirs of sticky turpentine juice inside their bark, but each kind of fir has its own way of making its stores, and so we get different kinds of resin and turpentine and balsams from different trees.
It is these stores of resin that make the pine wood burn so brightly. The Highland chief needed no gas for his great illuminations; he had only to call his followers to hold up branches of blazing pine. It is not very wise to light a picnic fire in a pine or fir wood, for sometimes a few sparks will set a whole forest in flames.
Fir—fire: how much alike these two words are! Do you think they must have some connection with one another? Were the first fires made of fir wood? or was this tree called fir because it made such good fires? These words are so old that we can only guess their history.
Those of you who like pretty things have often fingered admiringly some bright, shining necklace of amber beads. The pieces of amber from which those beads were cut were picked up on the shores of the Baltic Sea, and it is supposed that once upon a time some great pines or firs dropped their gummy juice and this hardened into these beautiful transparent stones.
Pines and firs are some of our greatest tree givers. They seem never tired of giving. Can you think of anything that is made of pine or fir wood? Perhaps you remember hearing that the seats or panels or ceilings in your school or church were of the wood of an American pine called the pitch pine. But common fir wood has a name of its own. Who has not heard of deal? A deal is a part or portion, and so we talk of a great deal of something meaning a large portion. Our fir wood comes in great quantities from Norway and Germany, where it is first cut and sawn into planks. Each plank is a deal—that is, a portion of the wood. It has been easy to leave out the article and call the wood deal.
Our white deal comes from the firs, chiefly from the Norway spruce. The darker-coloured deal is the gift of the Scotch pine.
How can the great trees be carried from the mountain-tops, do you suppose? The streams are the carriers; they float the great trunks down to the rivers, where they are tied together in great rafts and floated on again to their new home, or to the seaport from which they can be shipped to foreign lands. Sometimes when the nearest stream is at a long distance from the trees, a wooden slide is made to it. In the winter, water is poured down the slide, and when it freezes the trees easily shoot down the slippery way to the stream. Oh, what fun it must be! You would like to be there to see. In the year 1810, when all Europe was at war with the great Emperor Napoleon, the deal traffic on the Baltic Sea was stopped. What was to be done? Near the Lake of Lucerne there is a high mountain, called Mont Pilate, covered with great forests of pine and fir. If these could only be cut down and brought to the lake, they could easily be floated down the Rhine to the sea. So a tremendous slide was made from Mont Pilate to the lake. It was six feet broad, and from three to six feet deep, and eight miles long, and twenty-five thousand pine trees were used in making it. When water had been poured down and had frozen, the great trunks were started one at a time. Away they shot, and reached the lake, eight miles off, in six minutes, and in wet weather, when the slide was very slippery, they were only three minutes on the way.
Look at the deal planks on the floor of your room. Do you see those dark knots? They show you where once branches sprang out of the trunk. Many of these decayed and dropped off while quite young, and a little store of juice prepared for the branch gathered into the knot and turned it brown and dark. You will often find the knots in pairs, showing you how the branches grew opposite one another.
These long straight lines in the plank that we call the grain show the rings of wood made by the pine tree year by year.
How astonished you would be if suddenly out of that plank a great insect were to creep and spread out its wings. This sometimes happens, to the alarm of the people in the room, but only when the wood is new and has been used too soon, before it was properly dried and seasoned. The insect looks very formidable, for it has a long, pointed weapon at the end of its body, but it is quite harmless. It is called the giant sirex, and it looks something like a wasp or hornet. With its weapon it pierces holes in the pine tree bark and lays its eggs there. The grubs eat great tunnels in the trunk, and when they are full grown they creep nearly to the outside, and there wait till they are changed and their wings are ready before they creep out. Sometimes while they wait the tree is cut down and then they are either sawn in two or left inside the plank.
We often see young fir trees in a very strange place, bearing wonderful fruit of gold and silver shining lights, and glittering toys.
“The fir tree stood
In a beautiful room;
A hundred tapers
Dispelled the gloom.
All decked with gold and silver was he,
And lilies and roses so fair to see.
Hurrah for the fir tree, the Christmas tree;
A prince in all the forests is he!
The little children
With merry shout
Came crowding, clustering
Round about.
Brighter and rounder grew their eyes,
And they gazed at the fir in glad surprise.
Hurrah for the fir tree, the Christmas tree;
A prince in all the forests is he!”