Camping and woodcraft - Scoutmastercg.com

CHAPTER IVNATURE'S GUIDE-POSTSSameness of the Forest.—All dense woodslook much alike. Trees of most species grow verytall in a forest that has never been cut over, theirtrunks being commonly straight and slender, with nobranches within, say, forty feet of the ground. Thisis because they cannot live without sunlight for theirleaves, and they can only reach sunlight by growingtall like their neighbors that crowd around them.As the young tree shoots upward, its lower limbsatrophy and drop off. To some extent the characteristicmarkings of the trunk that distinguish the differentspecies when they grow in the open, and to agreater extent their characteristic habits of branching,are neutralized when they grow in dense forest.Consequently a man who can readily tell one. speciesfrom another, in open country, by their bark andbranching habits, may be puzzled to distinguish themin aboriginal forest. Moreover, the lichens andmosses that cover the boles of trees, in the deep shadeof a primitive wood, give them a sameness of aspect,so that there is some excuse for the novice who saysthat **all trees look alike" to him.The knowled2;e of trees that can be gained, firstfrom books and secondly from studies of trees themselvesin city parks or in country wood-lots, must besupplemented by considerable experience in the realwilderness before one can say with confidence, bymerely glancing at the bark, "that is a soft maple,and the other is a sugar-tree." And yet, I do nottinow any study that, in the long run, would be49