Winter Tree Form in The stances through which the tree has come to its present state. greater number of deciduous trees express their individuality of growth in forms of softer and less definite outline which, though absolutely characteristic for each species, are characteristic in a subtler way, and render the trees recognizable much as men are recognizable, unmistakably, but hardly through the recognition of any definitely describable feature. Some trees of no very definite branch arrangement like the apple, some trees which grow in particularly exposed situations, like the Monterey cypress, long-lived trees like the white oak, trees with wood that resists decay and can survive the mutilations of wind and snow like the cedar, any of these may through the result of exposure, or merely in some cases as the result of great age, assume picturesque forms which have great individuality and pictorial interest. Such forms may be appropriate to a free-standing specimen tree which is a point of interest in itself, or to a tree adding interest to a larger foliage mass of which it is an outlying unit, and yet individuality of this kind does not prevent trees from forming groups or masses where the unity of the individual is merged in the effect of the group. Deciduous trees often manifest their character more plainly in winter, when their peculiar manner of growth, their distinctive attitude of trunk and branches, is not cloaked by their summer garb of foliage. In the intricacy of snow-covered winter branches, in the lacework of naked trees against the sunset sky, never repeating itself and yet characteristic in its pattern for the oak, the beech, the hornbeam, and for every different kind of tree, there is certainly no less beauty than in the simpler and more obvious forms of the trees in their summer guise. (See Plate 15 and compare Plates 16 and 18.) At the other extreme from this beauty of characteristic structure, Topiary Work is the effect of simplified and definite man-made shape obtainable in topiary work.* Plants so treated have suffered a fundamental change of character as units in landscape design. They have ceased to express by their form their own individuality and have become architectural or sculptural elements expressing the will of man. They are still living objects, however, and in their texture they still to some extent reveal their growth, and thus they form an intermediate step between free* Cf. Curtis and Gibson, The Book of Topiary. (See REFERENCES.) growing plants on the one hand and such things as statues and steps on the other. (See Drawing VI, opp. p. 48, and Drawing XX, opp. p. 158.) The texture of a plant is the result of the shape, size, and surface Plant of the leaves, their attitude and grouping on the twigs and smaller Texture boughs, and their arrangement to make up the whole foliage mass of the plant. Large leaves, particularly such as are heavy and set stiffly upon the twigs, tend to give a plant a coarse texture and a certain strength and robustness of appearance. Small leaves, and those which are so set that they tremble upon their stalks, tend to give a plant a certain haziness of outline and an effect of softness and delicacy. Leaves numerous and close-set, like those of many evergreens, will give the foliage masses of the separate boughs, and usually indeed a whole tree, an appearance of solidity and heaviness, which even apart from its color will distinguish it from deciduous trees. Glossy leaves, or leaves which are lighter on one side, will bring to the texture of the foliage of a tree a certain gayety and sparkle, and will at times cause the tree apparently quite to change its texture at the will of the wind. The grouping of the leaves upon the twigs and the grouping of the twigs in turn upon the boughs give a different pattern in the texture of trees according to their kind. (For examples of various textures of foliage, see Plates 4, 9, 21, 25, 26, and 27.) Texture is the form of small parts: there must exist a scale relation between any texture and the form which it clothes. The leaves of the hyacinths in the field of a Dutch grower make a textured carpet of the ground, the leaves of one hyacinth in a pot can only be considered as related forms. A forest seen from a distant mountain has a furry soft texture (see Frontispiece); nearer at hand this texture is seen to be made up of separate trees. separate trees. This scale relation of texture is a very important consideration in planting design. The landscape architect might plant a mile-long straight avenue of hemlocks and the effect of the row of trees might be a straight line, although the individual trees making up this line might be twenty feet in diameter and thirty feet apart. If, however, the designer wished to plant an edging in a straight line bounding a flower bed five feet long, he would be compelled to use such things as box bushes, not more than six inches in diameter and six inches apart, and indeed if he wished his bounding line to appear at all rigidly straight, he would be obliged to clip his box bushes so that the unit of the texture of his border would be changed from that of the individual bush to the smaller-scale unit of the individual leaf. That is, in any planting mass which is to tell as a unified shape, the texture must not be so coarse in relation to the size of the mass as to tell as subordinate shapes breaking up the perception of the main shape intended in the design. The considerations of texture in planting design derive additional importance from the fact that whereas the size and form of a plant can be predicted only in a general way, and will be dependent on local conditions and accidents of wind and weather, the texture of a plant of any given kind is practically a definite and predictable thing, and planned effects in plant textures are therefore fairly sure of realization. A plantation may be unified by being composed throughout of plants of similar texture. Also one planted area may be differentiated from another by a difference in texture of its component plants. A projecting point in a plantation, a free-standing mass, may be strengthened by being composed of plants of dense and heavy texture. A bay in a plantation may be to some extent subordinated, or a plantation may within certain limits be given a certain additional effect of distance, by being composed of plants of a fine and soft texture of foliage. If it is desirable to make one plant mass stand out distinctly from a background of other plants, this may be done by a difference in texture between free-standing mass and background according to the circumstances of the case, for example, a sharp-cut heavy-textured evergreen against a misty background of willows, or a clump of delicate yellow birch backed by a pine wood. In a similar way a bed in a garden may be unified and diversified by a judicious choice of the textures which can be produced by the herbaceous plants in it. The corners of a bed may be strengthened by the heavy leaves of the showy stonecrop or the plantain-lily; the center of the bed may be effectively filled by the solid and lasting green of peonies; along the side of the bed the delicate misty flower of gypsophila might be paneled with clumps of iris, and even without the color of the flowers such a bed might be satisfactory in design from the effect of its texture alone. |