nearly the elegance of
leaf form, but no one tree rivals completely the sweet-gum at the time
when the autumn chill has driven out all the paleness in its leaf
spectrum, leaving only the warm crimson that seems for awhile to defy
further attacks of frost.

As to shape, the locality settles that; for, a very symmetrical small to
maximum-sized tree in the North and on high dry places, in the South
and in wet places north it becomes another "tree of the first
magnitude," wide-spreading and heavy. A stellar comparison seems to fit,
because of these wonderful leaves. They struck me at first, hunting
photographs one day, as some sort of a maple; but what maple could have
such perfection of star form? A maple refined, perfected, and indeed
polished, one might well think, for while other trees have shining
leaves, they are dull in comparison with the deep-textured gloss of
these of the sweet-gum.

[Illustration: The liquidambar]

Here, too, is a tree for many places; an adaptable, cosmopolitan sort of
arboreal growth. At its full strength of hard, solid, time-defying
wooded body on the edge of some almost inaccessible swamp of the South,
where its spread-out roots and ridgy branches earn for it another common
name as the "alligator tree," it is in a park or along a private
driveway at the North quite the acme of refined tree elegance, all the
summer and fall. It takes on a rather narrow, pyramidal head, broadening
as it ages, but never betraying kin with its fellow of the swamp, save
perhaps when winter has bared its peculiar winged and strangely "corky"
branches.

[Illustration: The star-shaped leaves and curious fruits of the
liquidambar, late in the summer.]

These odd branches bear, on some trees particularly, a noticeable ridge,
made up of the same substance which in the cork-oak of Europe furnishes
the bottle-stoppers of commerce. It makes the winter structure of the
sweet-gum most distinct and picturesque, which appearance is accentuated
by the interesting little seed-balls, or fruits, rounded and spiny, that
hang long from the twigs. These fruits follow quickly an inconspicuous
flower that in April or May has made its brief appearance, and they add
greatly to the general attractiveness of the tree on the lawn, to my
mind. Years ago I first made acquaintance with the liquidambar, as it
ought always to be called, one wet September day, when an old
tree-lover took me out on his lawn to see the rain accentuate the pol