1. The general name of the largest of the vegetable kind, consisting of a firm woody stem springing from woody roots, and spreading above into branches which terminate in leaves. A tree differs from a shrub principally in size, many species of trees growing to the highth of fifty or sixty feet, and some species to seventy or eighty, and a few, particularly the pine, to a much greater highth.
2. TREE s are of various kinds; as nuciferous, or nut-bearing trees; bacciferous, or berry-bearing; coniferous, or cone-bearing, etc. Some are forest-trees, and useful for timber or fuel; others are fruit trees, and cultivated in gardens and orchards; others are used chiefly for shade and ornament.
3. Something resembling a tree consisting of a stem or stalk and branches; as a genealogical tree
4. In ship-building, pieces of timber are called chess-trees, cross-trees, roof-trees, tressel-trees, etc.
1. Any perennialwoody plant of considerable size (usually over twenty feet high) and growing with a single trunk.
2. Something constructed in the form of, or considered as resembling, a tree, consisting of a stem, or stock, and branches; as, a genealogical tree.
3. A piece of timber, or something commonly made of timber; -- used in composition, as in axletree, boottree, chesstree, crosstree, whiffletree, and the like.
is the first and largest of the vegetable kind, consisting of a single trunk, out of which spring forth branches and leaves. Heat is so essential to the growth of trees, that we see them grow larger and smaller in a sort of gradation as the climates in which they stand are more or less hot. The hottest countries yield, in general, the largest and tallest trees, and those, also, in much greater beauty and variety than the colder do; and even those plants which are common to both arrive at a much greater bulk in the southern than in the northern climates; nay, there are some regions so bleak and chill, that they raise no vegetables at all to any considerable height. Greenland, Iceland, and similar places, afford no trees at all; and the shrubs which grow in them are always little and low. In the warmer climates, where trees grow to a moderate size, any accidental diminution of the common heat is found very greatly to impede vegetation; and even in England the cold summers we sometimes have give us an evident proof of this in the scarcity of produce from all our large fruit trees. Heat, whatever be the producing cause, acts as well upon vegetation one way as another. Thus the heat of manure, and the artificial heat of coal fires in stoves, are found to supply the place of the sun. Great numbers of the eastern trees, in their native soil, flower twice in a year, and some flower and bear ripe fruit all the year round; and it is observed of these last, that they are at once the most frequent and the most useful to the inhabitants; their fruits, which always hang on them in readiness, containing cool juices, which are good in fevers, and other of the common diseases of hot countries. The umbrageous foliage, with which the God of providence has generally furnished all trees in ...warm climates, affords a most refreshing and grateful shade to those who seek relief from the direct and hurtful rays of a tropical sun.
The Land of Promise cannot boast, like many other countries, of extensive woods; but considerable thickets of trees and of reeds sometimes arise to diversify and adorn the scene. Between the Lake Samochonites and the sea of Tiberias, the river Jordan is almost concealed by shady trees from the view of the traveller. When the waters of the Jordan are low, the Lake Samochonites is only a marsh, for the most part dry and overgrown with shrubs and reeds. In these thickets, among other ferocious animals, the wild boar seeks a covert from the burning rays of the sun. Large herds of them are sometimes to be seen on the banks of the river, near the sea of Tiberias, lying among the reeds, or feeding under the trees. Such moist and shady places are in all countries the favourite haunts of these fierce and dangerous animals. Those marshy coverts are styled woods in the sacred Scriptures; for the wild boar of the wood is the name which that creature receives from the royal psalmist: “The boar out of the wood doth waste it; and the wild beast of the field dothdevour it,” Psalm lxxx, 13. The wood of Ephraim, where the battle was fought between the forces of Absalom and the servants of David, was probably a place of the same kind; for the sacred historian observes, that the wood devoured more people that day than the sword, 2 Sam. xviii, 8. Some have supposed the meaning of this passage to be, that the soldiers of Absalom were destroyed by the wild beasts of the wood; but it can scarcely be supposed, that in the reign of David, when the Holy Land was crowded with inhabitants, the wild beasts could be so numerous in one of the woods as to cause such a destruction. But, supposing the wood of Ephraim to have been a morass covered with trees and bushes, like the haunts of the wild boar near the banks of Jordan, the difficulty is easily removed. It is certain that such a place has more than once proved fatal to contending armies, partly by suffocating those who in the hurry of flight inadvertentlyventure over places incapable of supporting them, and partly by retarding them till their pursuers come up and cut them to pieces. In this manner a greater number of men than fell in the heat of battle may be destroyed. It is probable, however, that nothing more is intended by the sacred historian, than the mention of a fact familiar to military men in all ages, and whatever kind of weapons were then employed in warfare,--that forests, especially such thick and impassable forests as are common in warm countries, constitute the very worst ground along which a discomfited army can be compelled to retreat. Their orderly ranks are broken; the direction which each warrior for his own safety must take is uncertain; and while one tumultuous mass is making a pass for itself through intervening brushwood and closely matted jungle, and another is hurrying along a different path and encountering similar or perhaps greater impediments, the cool and deliberate pursuers, whether archers or sharp shooters, enjoy an immense advantage in being able to choose their own points of annoyance, and by flank or cross attacks to kill their retreating foes, with scarcely any risk to themselves, but with immense carnage to the routed army.
Several critics imagine that by עץ חדר, rendered “goodly trees,” Lev. xxiii, 40, the citron tree is intended. עץ-עבת, rendered “thick trees” in the same verse, and in Neh. viii, 15; Ezek. xx, 28, is the myrtle, according to the rabbins, the Chaldeeparaphrase, Syriac version, and Deodatus. The word אשל, translated “grove” in Gen. xxi, 33, has been variously translated. Parkhurst renders it an oak, and says, that from this word may be derived the name of the famous asylum, opened by Romulus between two groves of oak at Rome. On the other hand, Celsius, Michaēlis, and Dr. Geddes render it the tamarisk, which is a lofty and beautiful tree, and grows abundantly in Egypt and Arabia. The same word in 1 Sam. xxii, 6; xxxi, 13, is rendered “a tree.” It must be noted too, that in the first of these places, the common version is equally obscure and contradictory, by making _ramah_ a proper name: it signifies hillock or bank. Of the trees that produced precious balsams there was one in particular that long flourished in Judea, having been supposed to have been an object of great attention to Solomon, which was afterward transplanted to Matarea, in Egypt, where it continued till about two hundred and fifty years ago, according to Maillet, who gives a description of it, drawn, it is supposed, from the Arabian authors, in which he says, “This shrub had two very differently coloured barks, the one red, the other perfectly green; that they tasted strongly like incense and turpentine, and when bruised between the fingers they smelt very nearly like cardamoms. This balsam, which was extremely precious and celebrated, and was used by the Coptic church in their chrism, was produced by a very low shrub; and it is said, that all those shrubs that produced balsams are every where low, and do not exceed two or three cubits in height.”
Descriptions of the principal trees and shrubs mentioned in Holy Writ the reader will find noticed in distinct articles under their several denominations.
TREE-CREEPER, one of the smallest of British birds, and, regard being had to its requirements, one very generally distributed. It is the Certhia familiaris of ornithology, and remarkable for the stiffened shafts of its long and pointed tail-feathers, aided by which, and by its comparatively large feet, it climbs nimbly, in a succession of jerks, the trunks or branches of trees, invariably proceeding upwards or outwards and generally in a spiral direction, as it seeks the small insects that are hidden in the bark and form its chief food. When in the course of its search it nears the end of a branch or the top of a trunk, it flits to another, always alighting lower down than the place it has left, and so continues its work....
Inconspicuous in colour, for its upper plumage is mostly of various shades of brown mottled with white, buff, and tawny, and beneath it is of a silvery white, the Tree-Creeper is far more common than the incurious suppose; but, attention once drawn to it, it can be frequently seen and at times heard, for though a shy singer its song is loud and sweet. The nest is neat, generally placed in a chink formed by a half-detached piece of bark, which secures it from observation, and a considerable mass of material is commonly used to partly stuff up the opening and give a sure foundation for the tiny cup, in which are laid from six to nine eggs of a translucent white, spotted or blotched with rust-colour. The Tree-Creeper inhabits almost the whole of Europe as well as Algeria, and has been traced across Asia to Japan. It is now recognized as an inhabitant of the greater part of North America, though for a time examples from that part of the world, which differed slightly in the tinge of the plumage, were accounted a distinct species (C. americana), and even those from Mexico and Guatemala (C . mexicana) have lately been referred to the same. It therefore occupies an area not exceeded in extent by that of many Passerine birds, and is one of the strongest witnesses to the close alliance of the so-called Nearctic and Palaearctic Regions.
Allied to the Tree-Creeper, but wanting its lengthened and stiff tail-feathers, is the genus Tichodroma, the single member of which is the Wall-Creeper (T . muraria) of the Alps and some other mountainous parts of Europe and Asia, and occasionally seen by the fortunate visitor to Switzerland fluttering like a bigbutterfly against the face of a rock, conspicuous from the scarlet-crimson of its wing-coverts and its white spottedprimaries. Its bright hue is hardly visible when the bird is at rest, and it then presents a dingy appearance of grey and black. It is a species of wide range, extending from Spain to China; and, though but seldom leaving its cliffs, it has wandered even so far as England. Merrett (Pinax, p. 177) in 1667 included it as a British bird, and the correspondence between Marsham and Gilbert White (Proc. Norf. and Norw. Nat. Society, ii. p. 180) proves that an example was shot in Norfolk, 30th October 1792; while another is reported (Zoologist, ser. 2, p. 4839) to have been killed in Lancashire, 8th May 1872.
The genus Certhia as founded by Linnaeus contained 25 species, all of which, except the two above mentioned, have now been shewn to belong elsewhere; and for a long while so many others were referred to it that it became a most heterogeneous company. At present, so few are the forms left in the Family Certhiidae that systematists are not wanting to unite it with the Sittidae (cf. Nuthatch), for the two groups, however much their extreme members may differ, are linked by so many forms which still exist that little violence is done to the imagination by drawing upon the past for others to complete the series of descendants from a common and not very remote ancestor, one that was possibly the ancestor of the Wrens (q.v.) as well. One thing, however, has especially to be noticed here. The Certhiidae have not the least affinity to the Picidae (cf. Woodpecker, infra), but are strictly Passerine, though the Australian genus Climacteris may possibly not belong to them. (a. n.)
9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 23, p. 534 [724 words — estimated reading time: 5 minutes]
TREE-FERN. In old and well-grown specimens of some of the familiar ferns of our temperate climates the wide-spreading crown of fronds may be observed to rise at a distance often of a good many inches above the surface of the ground, and from a stem of considerable thickness. The common male fern Nephrodium (Lastraea) furnishes the commonest instance of this; higher and thicker trunks are, however, occasionally presented by the royal fern (Osmunda regalis), in which a height of 2 feet may be attained, and this with very considerable apparent thickness, due, however, to the origin and descent of a new series of adventitious roots from the bases of each annual set of fronds. Some tropical members and allies of these genera become more distinctly tree-like, e.g., Todea; Pteris also has some sub-arboreal forms. Oleandra is branched and shrub-like, while Angiopteris and Marattia (Marattiaceae) may also rise to 2 feet or more. But the tree-ferns proper are practically included within the family Cyatheaceae. This includes five genera (Cyathea, Alsophila, Hemitelia, Dicksonia, Balantium) and nearly 200 species, of which a few are herbaceous, but the majority arboreal and palm-like, reaching frequently a height of 50 feet or more, Alsophila excelsa of Norfolk Island having sometimes measured 60 to 80 feet. The fronds are rarely simple or simply pinnate, but usually tripinnate or decompound, and may attain a length of 20 feet, thus forming a splendid crown of foliage. The stem may occasionally branch into many crowns. The genera are of wide geographical range, mostly of course within the tropics of the Old and New World; but South Australia, New Zealand, and the Southern Pacific islands all possess their tree-ferns. In Tasmania Alsophila australis has been found up to the ...snow-level, and in the humid and mountainous regions of the tropics tree-ferns are also found to range up to a considerable altitude. The fronds may either contribute to the apparent thickness of the stem by leaving more or less of their bases, which become hardened and persistent, or they may be articulated to the stem and fall off, leaving characteristic scars in spiral series upon the stem. The stem is frequently much increased in apparent thickness by the downgrowth of aerial roots, forming a black coating several inches or even a foot in thickness, but its essential structure differs little in principle from that familiar in the rhizome of the common bracken (Pteris). To the ring or rather netted cylinder of fibro-vascular bundles characteristic of all fern stems scattered internal as well as external bundles arising from these are superadded; and in a treefern these are of course in greater numbers. The outer bundles give off branches to the descending roots from the region where they pass into the leaves.
Tree-ferns are of course cultivated for their beauty alone; a few, however, are of some economic applications, chiefly as sources of starch. Thus the beautiful Alsophila excelsa of Norfolk Island is said to be threatened with extinction for the sake of its sago-like pith, which is greedily eaten by hogs; Cyathea medullaris also furnishes a kind of sago to the natives of New Zealand, Queensland, and the Pacific islands. A Javanese species of Dicksonia (D. chrysotricha) furnishes silky hairs, which have been imported as a styptic, and the long silky or rather woolly hairs, so abundant on the stem and frond-leaves in the various species of Cibotium, have not only been put to a similar use, but in the Sandwich Islands furnish wool for stuffing mattresses and cushions, which was formerly an article of export. The “Tartarian lamb,” or Agnus scythicus of old travellers’ tales in China and Tartary, is simply the woolly stock of C. Barometz, which, when dried and inverted and all save four of its frond-stalks cut away, has a droll resemblance to a toy sheep.
See Fern; J. Smith, Histοria Filicum; Luerssen, Med. Ρharm. Botanik·, and for the structure of the stem, De Bary's Vergleich. Anatomie d. Phanerog. u. Fame.
9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 23, p. 534 [681 words — estimated reading time: 4 minutes]
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth vegetation: seed-bearing plants and fruit trees, each bearing fruit with seed according to its kind.” And it was so.
And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
The earth produced vegetation: seed-bearing plants according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit contains seed. They will be yours for food.
And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Out of the ground the LORD God gave growth to every tree that is pleasing to the eye and good for food. And in the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field that the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’”
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
When the woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom, she took the fruit and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.
And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
Then the man and his wife heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the breeze of the day, and they hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
And to Adam He said: “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat, cursed is the ground because of you; through toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.
And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil. And now, lest he reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever...”
So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of EdenCherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
So He drove out the man and stationed cherubim on the east side of the Garden of Eden, along with a whirling sword of flame to guard the way to the tree of life.
And the field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre, the field, and the cave which was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the borders round about, were made sure
So Ephron’s field at Machpelah near Mamre, the cave that was in it, and all the trees within the boundaries of the field were deeded over
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