Most trees, like people, exhibit increasingly notable character as they age. Few young trees offer anything but lanky, gawky, adolescent-style habit. Their teen-age vicissitudes, zits and all, are hanging out for all to see. On down the road (and in the case of slow growers, way down the road) they begin to redeem themselves with a growth habit and intricate branch structure that doesn’t even resemble that of their younger years.

If all goes well, before this month is out we will begin to see the first of the "spring" blooms in crocuses, helleborus, snowdrops, etc. Meanwhile, we’re left with having to search out what we can come up with to enjoy of the world around us, whether it be within our own boundaries or further afield in the "borrowed" landscape.

Trees come to our rescue, and mightily at that. Writers have rattled on for centuries about the satisfaction of branch tracery against a leaden winter sky. I’ll have to say it won’t excite you the way full blown spring does, but it will do until green comes along.

Among the numerous species of oaks, hardly any of them are identical in winter effect. Among the best are aged white oaks and post oaks. An isolated specimen of either, unfettered by surrounding vegetative competition, will over a century or so build into the most marvelous of our trees, valuable in all seasons but particularly in winter.

Their silhouettes offer an aura of strength and sturdiness, yet with a cage of ultimate branches that achieves somehow a delicate quality that belies their tough-as-nails constitution. The strength of oaks is legendary, and little but fire or old age can end their earthly reign.

Two venerable white oaks at the home of Henrietta Enoch on Dunlap Street have over the past few years suffered from just those nemeses. On the north side of the old two-story house one monster white oak, hollowed and crippled by age, had to be felled some years ago and its mate on the other side of the house has been hit by lightning at least once, to devastating result. Both of these white oaks were fully 6 feet in diameter at chest height.

A notable and picturesque specimen of post oak, apparently healthy, stands tall on the front lawn of the George Moore residence on Chickasaw Road.

On a smaller scale, there is no tree in the wild to compare in winter value with the sassafras. I’ve extolled the sassafras before for its fall foliage and other reasons, but an old one, perhaps in a fence row in an open pasture, will present a pretty picture indeed, even in winter. A grouping of them (and they tend to travel in flocks) is even better.

Sassafras trees in youth shoot straight up and produce sparse branching. However, it doesn’t take long until they begin to branch pleasingly and symmetrically. After more years they lose their symmetry and the once-straight branches begin to curl and twist in a seemingly exotic manner. The silhouette of an aged sassafras is like that of no other American tree.