The Trees in My Forest by Bernd Heinrich

Author:Bernd Heinrich
Language: ru
Format: mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9780061844300
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-06-07T10:21:23+00:00

APPLE TREES

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white, Like nothing else by day, like ghosts at night

—Robert Frost

I lived for a while on a small farm near my forest. This farm was far out on a dirt road, and in spring that road became a series of mud wallows. Sugar maples grew alongside the road, and the fields were surrounded by forest. The tree I remember most was an apple tree next to the chicken shed. In summer, this apple tree shaded the rusted farm machinery and the whetstone that we turned by pumping a treadle with one foot. The whetstone had once been used to sharpen the scythes that were swung every summer to cut brush to keep the forest at bay, as it always threatened to creep back in from the edges along the stone walls.

One sunny May morning every spring the apple tree would erupt in a blaze of pink and fragrant bloom. Honeybees came in a steady stream to and from the box hive of pine boards and basswood honey frames that sat on the windowsill in the house attic. They swarmed around the apple tree, humming without pause. On such days when the bees came out of their hive, we didn’t need to be threatened by the Hereford bull to make climbing the tree inviting. Sitting on a sturdy branch among the blossoms, we saw not only these honeybees but also burly fuzzy bumblebees that had emerged from their underground nests in rotten stumps. Occasionally we heard a low hum and we’d look to see a jewel of the bird world, the ruby-throated hummingbird, resplendent with its metallic reflecting ruby throat patch and sparkling green back.

Within days all of the pink petals fell to the ground like drifting snow, to vanish as quickly as they had arrived. Small green apples soon swelled on the ends of the twigs in the warm June breezes. Most of the other apples on the farm were red and firm-fleshed Macs growing in a clearing in the woods, but this tree matured lemon yellow fruit with soft white juicy meat. The apples ripened a month before the others. Even while they were still too tart to eat, we used them as missiles to hurl into the frog pond in the cow pasture.

The pleasure of the apple bloom that Robert Frost writes about—the trees’ production of sex organs in preparation for a massive orgy—was also ours. But the apple tree is gone, and there are no more crowded orchards on my hill. There are a few stray apple trees growing wild, and then there is the tiny apple bush with the small black fruit, Pyrus melanocarpa. Its pink blossoms are smaller than the end of my pencil. In the fall, its wrinkled black fruits (from which the Latin name is derived) look more like shriveled blueberries than apples. Pyrus melanocarpa is pollinated by bumblebees, and its fruits are eaten and seeds spread by ruffed grouse, robins, and cedar waxwings.

The color of fruit is important to birds.

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