Wild Apples | Page 8

the woods from the cultivated stock. Wilder
still, as I have said, there grows elsewhere in this country a native and aboriginal Crab-
Apple, "whose nature has not yet been modified by cultivation." It is found from Western
New York to Minnesota and southward. Michaux [Footnote: Pronounced mee-sho; a
French botanist and traveller.] says that its ordinary height "is fifteen or eighteen feet, but
it is sometimes found twenty-five or thirty feet high," and that the large ones "exactly
resemble the common apple-tree." "The flowers are white mingled with rose-color, and
are collected in corymbs." They are remarkable for their delicious odor. The fruit,
according to him, is about an inch and a half in diameter, and is intensely acid. Yet they
make fine sweet-meats, and also cider of them. He concludes, that "if, on being cultivated,
it does not yield new and palatable varieties, it will at least be celebrated for the beauty of
its flowers, and for the sweetness of its perfume."
I never saw the Crab-Apple till May, 1861. I had heard of it through Michaux, but more
modern botanists, so far as I know, have not treated it as of any peculiar importance.
Thus it was a half- fabulous tree to me. I contemplated a pilgrimage to the "Glades," a
portion of Pennsylvania, where it was said to grow to perfection. I thought of sending to a
nursery for it, but doubted if they had it, or would distinguish it from European varieties.
At last I had occasion to go to Minnesota, and on entering Michigan I began to notice
from the cars a tree with handsome rose-colored flowers. At first I thought it some variety
of thorn; but it was not long before the truth flashed on me, that this was my long-sought
Crab-Apple. It was the prevailing flowering shrub or tree to be seen from the cars at that
season of the year,--about the middle of May. But the cars never stopped before one, and
so I was launched on the bosom of the Mississippi without having touched one,
experiencing the fate of Tantalus. On arriving at St. Anthony's Falls, I was sorry to be
told that I was too far north for the Crab-Apple. Nevertheless I succeeded in finding it
about eight miles west of the Falls; touched it and smelled it, and secured a lingering
corymb of flowers for my herbarium. This must have been near its northern limit.

HOW THE WILD APPLE GROWS.

But though these are indigenous, like the Indians, I doubt whether they are any hardier
than those back-woodsmen among the apple-trees, which, though descended from
cultivated stocks, plant themselves in distant fields and forests, where the soil is favorable
to them. I know of no trees which have more difficulties to contend with, and which more
sturdily resist their foes. These are the ones whose story we have to tell. It oftentimes
reads thus :--
Near the beginning of May, we notice little thickets of apple-trees just springing up in the
pastures where cattle have been,--as the rocky ones of our Easter-brooks Country, or the
top of Nobscot Hill in Sudbury. One or two of these perhaps survive the drought and
other accidents,--their very birthplace defending them against the encroaching grass and
some other dangers, at first.
In two years' time 't had thus Reached the level of the rocks, Admired the stretching
world, Nor feared the wandering flocks.
But at this tender age Its sufferings began: There came a browsing ox And cut it down a
span.
This time, perhaps, the ox does not notice it amid the grass; but the next year, when it has
grown more stout, he recognizes it for a fellow-emigrant from the old country, the flavor
of whose leaves and twigs he well knows; and though at first he pauses to welcome it,
and express his surprise, and gets for answer, "The same cause that brought you here
brought me," he nevertheless browses it again, reflecting, it may be, that he has some title
to it.
Thus cut down annually, it does not despair; but, putting forth two short twigs for every
one cut off, it spreads out low along the ground in the hollows or between the rocks,
growing more stout and scrubby, until it forms, not a tree as yet, but a little pyramidal,
stiff, twiggy mass, almost as solid and impenetrable as a rock. Some of the densest and
most impenetrable clumps of bushes that I have ever seen, as well, on account of the
closeness and stubbornness of their branches as of their thorns, have been these
wild-apple scrubs. They are more like the scrubby fir and black spruce on which you
stand, and sometimes walk, on the tops of mountains, where cold is the demon they
contend