Wild Apples - Penn State University
Wild Apples - Penn State University
Wild Apples - Penn State University
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<strong>Wild</strong> <strong>Apples</strong><br />
flowers for my herbarium. This must have been near its northern<br />
limit.<br />
12<br />
HOW THE WILD APPLE GROWS<br />
BUT THOUGH THESE ARE INDIGENOUS, like the Indians,<br />
I doubt whether they are any hardier than those<br />
back-woodsmen among the apple-trees, which,<br />
though descended from cultivated stocks, plant themselves<br />
in distant fields and forests, where the soil is favorable to<br />
them. I know of no trees which have more difficulties to<br />
contend with, and which more sturdily resist their foes. These<br />
are the ones whose story we have to tell. It oftentimes reads<br />
thus :—<br />
Near the beginning of May, we notice little thickets of<br />
apple-trees just springing up in the pastures where cattle have<br />
been,—as the rocky ones of our Easter-brooks Country, or<br />
the top of Nobscot Hill in Sudbury. One or two of these<br />
perhaps survive the drought and other accidents,—their very<br />
birthplace defending them against the encroaching grass and<br />
some other dangers, at first.<br />
In two years’ time ‘t had thus<br />
Reached the level of the rocks,