Indiana trees

Today, we bring you one of Sylvia Henricks' "Remembrances." You can read more of Sylvia's columns weekly in The Franklin Township Informer, or in her book From The Ash Grove (available directly from the FTHS, and via the web site). 

“A hundred years ago fully seven-eighths of the State of Indiana was covered with forests.” Since I’m quoting from a book (Indiana, a Guide to the Hoosier State, written in 1941), I had better make that “200 years ago”. 

The early settlers were mostly farmers, hoping to make homes in which to raise and feed their families. They found their tracts of land covered with trees. Historians described the trees, growing so large and close together, that light could hardly reach the forest floor. Charles Deam in his Trees of Indiana (1931), reported 134 species, 124 native to Indiana, the other ten having been successfully introduced. Deam identified 17 species of oak, the black walnut and many species of maple tree. he also described “the beech, lovingly painted by Indiana artists for its mottled trunk and rich autumn colors, the massive sycamore, gleaming white along the banks of streams, and the majestic tulip tree, or yellow poplar, the State tree.”

But as beautiful as the trees were, the early settlers saw them not as adornment, but as something to be removed from the land, so that they could plant their crops. They spent much energy and time in clearing their farms. “Deadening” the trees was one method, removing the bark from an area surrounding the trunk, causing the tree to die. It was a slow process, but as the branches withered, light fell on the ground and made it possible to plow and plant underneath the tree.

“Log-rollings” were popular as community projects, where groups of men and women gathered. The men cut the trees down with their axes, cut and burned the underbrush, then chopped the trees into 10 to 20 foot lengths. These were piled up and burned. The women prepared a big meal to be enjoyed at the close of the day. Many of the best logs of oak, poplar, walnut and ash were left at the rollings to be split into rails for fences.

But some trees survived the land-clearing, perhaps by their location in a farmyard or by their size or beauty. One such tree stands along Shelbyville Road on a curve near Edgewood Avenue. It is, I believe, a kind of oak tree (a chestnut oak?) for an acorn was forming in the clump of leaves we picked up. The leaves are oval in shape, not lobed as are the leaves of many oaks. I once asked a man standing by his mailbox across the road from the tree if it had a special history was a landmark, an early campsite, a boundary. No, he said, not that he knew of. ‘‘It’s just a big ole tree,” he said. If anyone knows more than that, please let me know.