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Updated: May 29, 2025
"Look intently enough at anything," said a poet to me one day, "and you will see something that would otherwise escape you." I thought of the remark as I sat on a stump in an opening of the woods one spring day. I saw a small hawk approaching; he flew to a tall tulip-tree, and alighted on a large limb near the top. He eyed me and I eyed him.
The whole forest is interwoven, like a vast tent or awning, with the jessamine and the wild vine, which, springing from the ground, grapple themselves to the tree-trunks, ascend to the highest branches, and then again descending, cling to another stem, and creeping from mangrove to myrtle, from magnesia to papaw, from papaw to the tulip-tree, form one vast and interminable bower.
The tulip-tree, so called obviously because of the shape of its flowers, has a most mellifluous and pleasing botanical name, Liriodendron Tulipifera is not that euphonious? Just plain "liriodendron" how much better that sounds as a designation for one of the noblest of American forest trees than the misleading "common" names!
"I sprang to my legs in anger and indignation. "'There, don't be passionate; it is so tiresome. What do you call that tree there? "'It is a tulip-tree, said I, coldly. "'Then, to put your gallantry to the test, do climb up there and pluck me that flower. No, the far one. If you fall into the lake and are drowned, why it would put an end to this foolish interview. "'And if not? said I.
Over the whole he had laid great green leaves that looked like the leaves of the tulip-tree. The narrow end of the canoe was filled with purple sea-urchins, all alive, and of the most vivid color. I took one up, and asked him if they were good to eat. His arrangements looked a great deal more picturesque than our preparations for picnics.
The red cardinal chatters among the cane; the blue jay screams in the pawpaw thicket, perhaps disturbed by the gliding of some slippery snake; while the mock-bird, regardless of such danger, from the top of the tall tulip-tree, pours forth his matchless melody in sweet ever-varying strain.
I have said that this same tulip-tree which I will call liriodendron hereafter, at a venture is a notable American tree, peculiar to this country. So believed the botanists for many years, until an inquiring investigator found that China, too, had the same tree, in a limited way.
The next morning, as I did sally forth with my cross-bow to have a shot at a screech-owl which for some nights past had disturbed Marian's slumbers, she in her turn having disturbed mine, I did see Lord Denbeigh come out upon the terrace and throw himself down along the grass, beneath a tulip-tree, with a book.
Dogs and dog-keeper had long since gone the way of most of the old-time Southern manorial largenesses; but the cabin still stood solidly planted in the midst of its overgrown garden patch, with a dense thicket of mountain laurel backgrounding it, and a giant tulip-tree standing sentinel over a gate hanging by one rusted hinge.
It falls on the ear, giving pleasure ecstatic The song of the birds and the hum of the bees Commingling their tones with the ripples erratic. Hark! hear you the red-crested cardinal's call From the groves of annona? from tulip-tree tall The mock-bird responding? below, in the glade, The dove softly cooing in mellower shade While the oriole answers in accents of mirth?
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