Wild Apples | Page 9

with, than anything else. No wonder they are prompted to grow thorns at last, to
defend themselves against such foes. In their thorniness, however, there is no malice,
only some malic acid.
The rocky pastures of the tract I have referred to--for they maintain their ground best in a
rocky field--are thickly sprinkled with these little tufts, reminding you often of some rigid
gray mosses or lichens, and you see thousands of little trees just springing up between
them, with the seed still attached to them.
Being regularly clipped all around each year by the cows, as a hedge with shears, they are

often of a perfect conical or pyramidal form, from one to four feet high, and more or less
sharp, as if trimmed by the gardener's art. In the pastures on Nobscot Hill and its spurs
they make fine dark shadows when the sun is low. They are also an excellent covert from
hawks for many small birds that roost and build in them. Whole flocks perch in them at
night, and I have seen three robins' nests in one which was six feet in diameter.
No doubt many of these are already old trees, if you reckon from the day they were
planted, but infants still when you consider their development and the long life before
them. I counted the annual rings of some which were just one foot high, and as wide as
high, and found that they were about twelve years old, but quite sound and thrifty! They
were so low that they were unnoticed by the walker, while many of their contemporaries
from the nurseries were already bearing considerable crops. But what you gain in time is
perhaps in this case, too, lost in power,--that is, in the vigor of the tree. This is their
pyramidal state.
The cows continue to browse them thus for twenty years or more, keeping them down
and compelling them to spread, until at last they are so broad that they become their own
fence, when some interior shoot, which their foes cannot reach, darts upward with joy:
for it has not forgotten its high calling, and bears its own peculiar fruit in triumph.
Such are the tactics by which it finally defeats its bovine foes. Now, if you have watched
the progress of a particular shrub, you will see that it is no longer a simple pyramid or
cone, but out of its apex there rises a sprig or two, growing more lustily perchance than
an orchard-tree, since the plant now devotes the whole of its repressed energy to these
upright parts. In a short time these become a small tree, an inverted pyramid resting on
the apex of the other, so that the whole has now the form of a vast hour-glass. The
spreading bottom, having served its purpose, finally disappears, and the generous tree
permits the now harmless cows to come in and stand in its shade, and rub against and
redden its trunk, which has grown in spite of them, and even to taste a part of its fruit, and
so disperse the seed.
Thus the cows create their own shade and food; and the tree, its hour-glass being inverted,
lives a second life, as it were.
It is an important question with some nowadays, whether you should trim young
apple-trees as high as your nose or as high as your eyes. The ox trims them up as high as
he can reach, and that is about the right height, I think.
In spite of wandering kine and other adverse circumstance, that despised shrub, valued
only by small birds as a covert and shelter from hawks, has its blossom-week at last, and
in course of time its harvest, sincere, though small.
By the end of some October, when its leaves have fallen, I frequently see such a central
sprig, whose progress I have watched, when I thought it had forgotten its destiny, as I had,
bearing its first crop of small green or yellow or rosy fruit, which the cows cannot get at
over the bushy and thorny hedge which surrounds it; and I make haste to taste the new
and undescribed variety. We have all heard of the numerous varieties of fruit invented by

Van Mons [Footnote: A Belgian chemist and horticulturist.] and Knight. [Footnote: An
English vegetable physiologist.] This is the system of Van Cow, and she has invented far
more and more memorable varieties than both of them.
Through what hardships it may attain to bear a sweet fruit! Though somewhat small, it
may prove equal, if not superior, in flavor to that which has grown in a garden,--will
perchance be all the sweeter and more palatable for the very difficulties it has had to
contend with. Who knows but this chance wild fruit,