The Brownie Scouts and Their Tree House

All morning the forest had echoed with laughter. The Brownie Scouts--six of them--together with their leader, Miss Gordon, were enjoying a weekly hike through the metropolitan natural park.

Sure-footed, the girls had roamed over the many trails, lingering by the brook and tossing stones from the rustic bridge.

Now as the sun rose higher, they played their favorite game of identifying trees.

“Oh, that beautiful one directly ahead is a walnut!” declared Connie Williams.

The little girl was a leader in the Rosedale Brownie Troop and very bright at school. However, all the girls liked her for she never tried to show off.

“Oh, I don’t think it’s a walnut tree!” exclaimed Veve McGuire.

The dark-haired, freckled girl lived next door to Connie. Sometimes, just for the fun of it, she disagreed with her friend.

“It’s an oak tree!” chimed in Jane Tuttle, tossing her long yellow braids.

A hoot arose from the other Brownies, Sunny Davidson, Eileen Webber and Rosemary Fritche. Jane, they knew, nearly always was wrong about trees.

“It couldn’t be an oak,” insisted Eileen. “The leaves are shaped all wrong.”

Sunny appealed to Miss Gordon. “What kind of tree do you say it is?” she demanded. “An oak or a walnut?”

“A walnut,” replied the Brownie leader. “But then, I could be mistaken. Let’s look at the identification tag.”

Nearly all of the largest trees in the park had been marked with their correct names. The girls enjoyed making their own guesses, and then checking to see if they were correct.

Before Connie could do so, Veve darted ahead to read the tag on the tree trunk.

“Ha!” she cried. “Everyone is wrong! It isn’t a walnut and it isn’t an oak. It’s a Liriodendron tulipifera!”

“Oh, that’s the scientific name,” laughed Miss Gordon.

“It says tulip tree underneath,” revealed Veve.

“A tulip?” repeated the Brownie Scout leader, deeply puzzled. “That’s odd. To my way of thinking, it doesn’t look a bit like a tulip tree.”

“Aren’t the leaves of a tulip dark green and very glossy?” inquired Connie. She felt quite crestfallen to have made a mistake.

“I always thought so,” replied Miss Gordon. “Also, the leaves of a tulip usually are restless, almost like those of a poplar tree. Apparently though, I’m not as clever about recognizing varieties of trees as I thought.”

Starting on down the trail, the Brownies soon came to another interesting-looking specimen.

“Well, there at least is a tree that no one can mistake,” declared the Brownie leader. “Who agrees with me that it’s a red maple?”

“I do!” laughed Connie.

“Of course!” shouted Jane. “No one can mistake a maple.”

As the girls approached the beautiful, slender tree, Miss Gordon told them that at every season the red maple had distinguishing characteristics.

“Even during winter, the twigs shine as if covered with red varnish,” the teacher explained.

Each leaf, she added, had from three to five points, often with red stems.

“I’m going to gather some of the leaves for my notebook,” declared Eileen. “I want to find one that is changing color.”

Although frost had not yet come, the weather had turned somewhat chilly. The Brownies noticed that many of the trees were beginning to shed their leaves. Others were turning yellow, gold and rusty brown.

In the act of picking up an especially pretty leaf from the ground, Eileen chanced to glance at the tag tacked to the tree trunk.

“Say! This isn’t a maple tree!” she exclaimed.

“Go on!” Sunny retorted. “Don’t try to kid us!”

“Read the tag for yourself if you don’t believe me.”

The other Brownies clustered about Sunny. In amazement they read that the tree was a white ash.

“But that’s utterly impossible!” protested Miss Gordon. “Why, I never in my life failed to recognize a red maple!”

“We have a white ash tree in our yard at home,” contributed Rosemary. “It has seed pods and the leaves droop. This tree doesn’t look one bit like our white ash.”

“I thought I could recognize nearly all of the more common trees,” wailed Connie. “Now I’m mixed up.”

“We’re all mixed up,” said Miss Gordon. “I simply can’t understand it. Do you suppose the tags could have been exchanged?”

“Maybe the pixies did it!” laughed Sunny. She liked to say she believed in fairies, although she knew none actually existed.

Deeply puzzled, the Brownie Scouts resumed their hike.