A Wild Apple Tree in Fall

An apple tree lived at the edge of some woods. It was called a wild apple because no person had planted it or taken care of it or given a name to the sort of apples it bore.

The tree grew from a seed that had been dropped near the woods more than sixty years ago. Would you like to guess how the seed was dropped? Nobody really knows, but of course anyone may guess about it.

Perhaps a crow picked the apple the seed was in and flew with it toward the woods. A crow has a funny way of picking apples. He flies very slowly to the end of a branch and takes the stem of the apple in his bill. He carries the fruit by the stem to some place he likes for a picnic ground. Then he makes joyful cawing chuckles as if he were rather pleased with himself, as no doubt he is.

Or it may be that some boy or girl about your age threw away an apple core while walking near the woods one fall day years ago. And perhaps the wild apple tree grew from one of the seeds in that core.

When the tree was old enough, it had apples every year. Some wild apples are hard and sour and bitter. Others are quite as good to eat as any apples that grow in orchards. The apples on the tree at the edge of the woods had pretty red skins and a delicious taste.

No man did anything for this wild tree, but it had some care in other ways.

Often a little bird with a black cap came and sang among its branches. He came during the summer, when many other birds also visited the tree. He came, too, in the fall, after most other birds had gone south. His name was Chickadee.

Chickadee took a great deal of exercise. Perhaps that is why he had so good an appetite. He was nearly always hungry.

He did not eat any of the bright red apples, though. He never did seem to care for juicy fruits. But he found something else on the branches that he liked. He found some oyster-shell scales with eggs under them.

An oyster-shell scale is a tiny, dark brown object that is shaped somewhat like an oyster shell. It is larger at one end and curved. It is made with a sort of wax.

The insect that makes such a scale has parts in its body that are called wax glands. The wax that is formed in the glands is so soft that it can be pushed out through openings (pores) in the insect's body. But after the wax has been pushed out where the air touches it, it becomes hard. It is then a shiny shell-like covering for the insect. When the insect molts, its old skin is added to the scale.

This little insect lays all its eggs under the waxen scale that covers its body. Often there are more than fifty eggs under one scale. They stay under the scale all winter. That is, they do unless something happens to them.

Perhaps you know that a chickadee likes insect eggs. So between his songs he helps himself to what he finds under the oyster-shell scales.

A full-sized scale of this sort is only about one eighth of an inch long. So you can be sure that the fifty or more eggs it covers are very, very small. They are, indeed, so tiny that a chickadee can eat hundreds of them and still be hungry enough to hunt for more.

Oyster-shell scale insects harm trees by piercing the tender bark and sucking the juice. So the more of these eggs a chickadee eats, the better for the tree.

There were other kinds of eggs on the wild apple tree in the fall. When Chickadee tasted them, he felt so cheerful he sang.

He liked the tent-caterpillar eggs, for one kind. Of course tent caterpillars did not lay the eggs, for no caterpillar can lay an egg. But tent caterpillars hatch from such eggs in the spring unless something happens to them before that time.

A reddish brown moth lays tent-caterpillar eggs in the summer. She puts three or four hundred eggs in one mass. The mass is like a ring around the twig. The moth covers her eggs with a liquid that hardens in the air. So the egg mass has a waterproof cover. It looks like shiny varnish with tiny bubbles in it.

Chickadee could pick through the waterproof cover with his strong little bill. And it was well for the apple tree that he could find the eggs, for tent caterpillars eat apple leaves. A tree can spare some of its leaves very well, but it needs most of them itself.

In one way and another the wild apple tree gave much pleasure during the fall days. It furnished rosy apples to boys and girls and crows that came to pick some of them. Some of the fruit fell to the ground and supplied many picnic dinners to crickets and other little six-footed creatures.

A pretty striped chipmunk came for some seeds and whistled in a shrill way whenever he was disturbed at his feast. A gay, chattering red squirrel went off with some of the apple seeds. And a quiet little meadow mouse ran that way, now and then, for his part of the treat.

The tree was a sort of storehouse, too, of insect eggs, as you have read. Woodpeckers and nuthatches helped the chickadee eat them.

So when you think of the wild apple tree, which had no person to take care of it at all, perhaps you will feel rather glad to know that these three kinds of birds came to visit it.

What To Do after Reading Chapter One

READ

Choose one of the following subjects to read:

(1) "Chick, D.D.," Chapter I in Bird Stories.

(2) "Seeds That Pay for Their Rides," pages 59–62 in Chapter 3 in First Lessons in Nature Study.

(3) "Juicy Fruits," pages 76–84 in Surprises. 

WRITE

Choose one of the following subjects and write about it. Write at least fifty words.

(1) Chickadee.  Tell something about this bird. Tell what kinds of food he likes. Tell how he can help take care of an apple tree.

(2) Apple Seeds.  Apples that are left on a tree fall to the ground in time. There would not be room for young apple trees to grow under the branches of the old tree. Write about some different ways in which apple seeds can be carried to places where they may find room to grow.

(3) Rose Family.  The apple tree belongs to the Rose Family. If you chose to read "Juicy Fruits," tell about some other fruits that grow on plants of the Rose Family.

AN APPLE HUNT

If you live in the country, look at  as many different kinds of apples as you can find on trees. Tell what colors you see on the ripe apples. Do not touch  any apples unless the owner of the tree gives them to you. (Remember your outdoor good manners!)

If you live in the city, look at  as many different kinds of apples as you can find in stores. Tell all the colors you can see on the ripe apples. If you buy an apple, you may like to show it to the boys and girls in your class.

AN APPLE SHOW

Ask your teacher if she would like you to have a little Apple Show in your room. Perhaps she will help you plan for one.