Part 5
The White Willow produces two kinds of flowers, and these grow in catkins on different trees. The stamen catkins are the prettiest, and they appear about the same time as the young leaves. At first these stamen catkins are small egg-shaped buds, closely covered with silky grey down--pussy buds (3) the children call them; but they open very quickly, and in a few days you will see, dropping from the branches, small green catkins which curl slightly like caterpillars. Each catkin is covered with closely-shut scales, and by the time the leaves are out the scales of these stamen catkins unclose (4). Behind each scale there rises a pair of stamens on long slender stalks. These stamen stalks are hairy on the lower half, and so are the catkin scales. The heads of the stamens are sometimes tinged with red, and between each pair of stamens there lies a honey bag. Notice how constantly the bees are heard buzzing among the Willow branches. When the stamen heads are ripe they burst open, and the fine dust inside is carried by the wind to a Willow tree, on which the seed catkins grow.
These seed catkins (5) are covered with greenish scales, which are tightly pressed together at first. But in the warm spring sunshine the scales unclose, and from the foot of each scale rises a small green pear-shaped seed-vessel which has two tiny straps standing up at the top. The wind wafts the stamen dust to the tree, and some of it falls on these two small straps, which act as messengers and carry the dust down to the inside of the seed-vessel, where the plant makes ready the new seed. Unless you have a seed-bearing tree and a stamen-bearing tree growing within reach of each other, you cannot have any new seeds; but it is possible to increase the number of Willow trees by cutting off branches and planting them in a particular way in the ground, when they will send out roots and grow.
There are two other kinds of White Willow which are found nearly as frequently as the one I have just described, and neither is difficult to recognise. The Golden Willow is the name usually given to one, on account of its twigs, which are a bright shade of yellow-green, and these golden twigs are very noticeable in winter beside the dark branches of the Elms and Beeches. In this Willow the stamens and scales of the dust-producing catkins are the colour of a canary’s feathers, and in the spring sunshine they glisten like gold. This is the loveliest of all the Willow trees.
The third White Willow is known as the Crack Willow, because the branches are very easily broken; a knock will snap them from the tree trunk. If ever you try to gather a twig from other Willow trees, you will find how difficult it is to separate it from the branch. The thin green peel, with the leaves clinging to it, comes away in your hand, leaving the bare white twig still clinging to the branch, and without a knife you will scarcely force them apart. But the twigs of the Crack Willow may be snapped across easily, and the large branches are readily broken on a windy night.
The wood of the White and of the Golden Willow is valuable, and is much used by builders for floors and rafters. Coopers say it makes excellent casks, and many of our best cricket bats are made from Willow wood. When straw is scarce people are said to make hats from Willow sprays. They gather the small branches and split them into long, thin strips, and these are woven into fine plaits, which are then joined together.
PLATE XVI
THE GOAT WILLOW OR SALLOW
“In Rome upon Palm Sunday They bear true palms, The cardinals bow reverently And sing old psalms.
Elsewhere these psalms are sung Beneath the olive branches, The holly-bush supplies their place Amid the avalanches.”
The second Willow or group of Willows you should learn about is the most difficult of all. In it there are many different varieties, and you would require to plant one of each kind in your garden, as a gentleman in England has done, and study them carefully for many years to discover the points wherein each Willow differs from the other.
Though the Goat Willow or Sallow (1) sometimes grows into a tall tree, it is more often seen as a bush--a bush with a short, rough stem, which does not rise far above the ground, and which sends up many tall, slender branches, covered with smooth, purplish brown peel or skin. Early in March, before the snowdrops have withered, you will find the Goat Willow in every hedge and coppice bursting into scaly brown buds. It is one of our earliest trees, and after a few days of warm sunshine the brown scales unclose and the branches are dotted with the softest and silkiest little pussy buds (3), shaped like tiny eggs and covered with grey down.
These buds grow alternately on the smooth stem with a small space between each bud. In a few days the baby buds have changed, and you may find two Willow bushes growing quite near each other on which the buds are very different. For those woolly buds are the flower catkins, and the Goat Willow bears two kinds of flowers, which do not grow on the same tree.
The bees have found out that the Willow is in flower; you can hear a swarm of them buzzing in the leafless branches, and you wonder where there is any honey to be found. On one tree the soft grey downy buds have grown larger, and they are now golden yellow catkins (4). The whole bud is covered with dainty yellow-headed stamens, nestling in pairs among oval scales edged with silky down, and it is at the base of these yellow-headed stamens that the bee finds the sweet drops of honey juice.
For many hundreds of years branches of the Goat Willow or Sallow have been carried in this country to church on Palm Sunday in remembrance of the branches of palm which the people strewed in front of Christ when He entered Jerusalem. Troops of boys and girls go into the country lanes and coppices to gather Willow-palms, which they sometimes pluck so roughly and carelessly that the tree remains broken and ruined for the rest of the year. These silky stamen catkins of the Goat Willow are one of the most welcome signs of the return of spring.
But there are other Willow flowers to be looked at: flowers which may not be so attractive, but which bear the seeds and make ready the new plants. These flowers are silky too, and underneath the soft down is an egg-shaped catkin (5), covered with small pear-shaped green seeds. Each seed has a thick yellow point at the top, and at the base there rises a scale which is pointed like a cat’s ear and is covered with long, silky hairs. When the stamen flowers are ripe their yellow heads burst, and the fine dust which fills them falls on the backs of the bees who are sipping the honey juice. Then they fly away to find another honey flower, and they often alight on a seed catkin, where the pollen dust is shaken off among the little yellow points which are waiting for it to help in the making of the new seeds. Each flower catkin sits upright on a tuft of small pale green leaves.
The leaves (2) of the Goat Willow are very different from those of the other Willows; they are broad and oval, with edges which are crinkled or waved all round and with a network of fine veins covering the leaf. These leaves, when they first come out, are covered with white down, but by the time they are full grown they are dark and shiny on the upper side, and are only downy beneath.
There is another bushy Willow which perhaps you might mistake for the Goat Willow or Sallow: this is the Purple Osier. It grows in boggy marshes, by the banks of slow-running streams, and it too has silky grey catkins. But you will easily recognise the Purple Osier by two things. It has long, slender stems like whips, rising straight from the tree trunk. These slender stems are covered with a fine purple skin or peel, and if you try to pick an Osier stem the peel comes away in your hand, leaving the white Willow stem still growing. These Osier stems are valuable for making baskets, and are grown in great quantities for this purpose.
The second point in which the Purple Osier differs from the Goat Willow is this: if you gather a yellow catkin and look at the yellow-headed stamens which cover it, you will see that the slender stalks of the stamens are joined together, making one stalk with two yellow heads, whereas in the Goat Willow or Sallow each yellow stamen head sways at the end of its own stalk.
There is one other Willow tree I should like to tell you about, because it is so curious. It is a tree which creeps close to the ground, and which is found growing in great quantities in the Highlands among the grass and heather. It is called the Dwarf Willow, and it too has silky catkins which grow on the tough wiry branches.
You might not notice these stamen catkins, but you could not help noticing the seed catkins. These cover the ground with tufts of white cotton wool like thistle-down, and when you lift one of these tufts you find that the pear-shaped green seed-vessels have split down the centre to allow many tiny seeds to escape, and each seed is winged with a tuft of silky down. After all the seeds have flown away on the wind, the withered seed-vessels still remain on the catkin, no longer green, but a rusty red-brown colour, which is very noticeable among the small glossy green leaves.
PLATE XVII
THE SCOTCH PINE OR SCOTCH FIR
The Scotch Pine (1), or, as it is often called by mistake, the Scotch Fir, is one of our noblest trees; it is tall, and rugged, and sturdy, with a beauty which lies in its strength and dignity rather than in its grace. In bygone days large tracts of Scotland were clothed with vast forests of Scotch Pine, under whose gloomy branches many wolves roamed and the wild deer wandered in herds. But the owners of these noble forests cut down the trees to get money for the timber, and the wolves have disappeared. There is now only a scanty remnant of the great army of Pine trees which once clothed the northern lands of Britain.
Those vast forests were not planted by man. The young trees sprang from seeds which had fallen from the woody fruit cones, and were carried by rooks or other birds to places where human beings rarely trod. There the young seeds grew and sent out their greedy roots. If the soil was good and plentiful they produced a strong carrot-shaped root, which bored deep into the ground and gave the tree such a firm hold that no storm could tear it up. But if the ground had only a little earth on the surface and there were hard rocks beneath, then the roots crept like serpents near the surface of the soil, clasping the rocks with a tight grip to steady the tree.
How the wind roars in the Pine branches on the high mountain lands! It is like the sound of the sea. If the Pine tree had broad leaves, such as the Sycamore or the Lime tree, it would soon be blown down; but the storm gusts pass through its fine needle-leaves, and no harm is done.
The trunk of the Scotch Pine is very rough, and it is covered with rugged pieces of reddish bark, separated from each other by deep furrows. It rises to a great height, throwing out many large branches on each side, and there is always a bushy rounded tree-top looking up to the sky. In a Pine forest the lower part of the tree is usually bare. This is because the trees are planted so close together there is little air except near the top of the tree, and the lower branches are stifled.
Beneath the branches the ground is always carpeted with fallen Pine leaves, and very curious these Pine leaves (2) are. They look like green needles with soft blunt points, and the edges of each needle are rolled back so that the leaf appears round above and is boat-shaped below. The under-side of the needle is much lighter in colour than the dark green surface.
These needle-leaves usually grow in pairs, though you may find a bunch containing three or even four needles; they are held together by a thin grey sheath, which looks like paper and clasps the end of the bunch. These needle-bunches are placed all round the twig, close together, so as to form a dense brush. They remain on the tree for two or three years, then they fall; but their work is not done. Very often the Pine tree seed has been carried to some sandy sea-shore upon which nothing is willing to grow. There it takes root and flourishes, and in course of time it throws down handfuls of withered needle-leaves on the loose sandy ground. These needles decay and form a bed of soil which binds the sand together, and when the wind and the birds bring other seeds, they find a place in which they can take root and grow. In France great tracts of waste land have become valuable in this way through the planting of Pine trees.
The Pine tree has its flowers in catkins and its fruit in cones. The catkins are of two kinds, and they grow on the same tree, sometimes on the same branch. The stamen flowers (3) are found in dense spikes at the end of last year’s bushy twig. They look like a cluster of bunches of small yellow grains from which a tuft of fine green spears rises in the centre. These grains are the stamen heads, and in May and June they send out clouds of fine yellow powder, which floats in the air and settles on the leaves and on the grass and on the margins of lakes and rivers, where you can see little patches of it lying. Country peasants sometimes tell you that this yellow powder is sulphur which has fallen from the sky during a thunder-storm!
The seed flowers (4) of the Pine tree are very different. They grow either singly or in pairs at the end of this year’s new twig, and at first they are tiny pale pink cones. These cones are egg-shaped, and are made up of scales tightly pressed together, with little hard dots showing at the tip of each scale. The seeds are behind the scales, but you will not see them for a long time, as the cone takes eighteen months to grow up. At the end of the first summer you find that the pink cone has become a rich green colour (5) and is still soft, but when the second summer comes round, the cone is ash-grey in colour (6) and is hard and woody.
When the seeds are ripe the tightly-pressed scales unclose and curl up, showing thick wooden lips; at the base of each scale lie two white seeds, and each seed (7) has a thin filmy wing. When the seeds fall from the cone they are blown long distances, floating on the air by their filmy wings.
There is a bird called the crossbill which is very fond of Pine seeds, and very clever at picking them out of the half-opened cones.
You will occasionally find a tree, very similar to the Scotch Pine, in which the cones grow in groups of three or four together at the end of the twigs. This tree is called the Cluster Pine, and you will notice that its bunches of leaves are different in colour: they are a bluey green, and the tips of the needles are yellowish, as if they had begun to wither.
The wood of the Pine tree is very valuable. Thousands of pounds were paid for the trees in the old Scotch forests, and many stout ships were built from their sturdy trunks. Besides the good timber, the Pine tree gives us turpentine and resin from its juice. If you cut a hole in a Pine tree stem a thick juice will soon be seen oozing from this hole, and it quickly hardens into a clear gum.
PLATE XVIII
THE YEW
Once upon a time a discontented Yew tree grew in a country graveyard. Other trees, it thought, had larger and more beautiful leaves which fluttered in the breeze and became red and brown and yellow in the sunshine, and the Yew tree pined because the fairies had given it such an unattractive dress. One morning the sunshine disclosed that all its green leaves had changed into leaves made of gold, and the heart of the Yew tree danced with happiness. But some robbers, as they stole through the forest, were attracted by the glitter, and they stripped off every golden leaf. Again the tree bemoaned its fate, and next day the sun shone on leaves of purest crystal. “How beautiful!” thought the tree; “see how I sparkle!” But a hailstorm burst from the clouds, and the sparkling leaves lay shivered on the grass. Once more the good fairies tried to comfort the unhappy tree. Smooth broad leaves covered its branches, and the Yew tree flaunted these gay banners in the wind. But, alas, a flock of goats came by and ate of the fresh young leaves “a million and ten.” “Give me back again my old dress,” sobbed the Yew, “for I see that it was best.” And ever since its leaves remain unchanging, and it wears the sombre dress which covered its boughs in the days when King William landed from Normandy on our shores, and the swineherd tended his pigs in the great forests which covered so much of Merry England.
In history books we read how important the Yew tree once was. Long before the invention of guns and gunpowder, many of our soldiers carried bows made of Yew tree wood, and from these they shot deadly arrows with tremendous force. Three of England’s Kings--Harold, William Rufus, and Richard Cœur de Lion--were slain by such arrows, and it was from a Yew tree bow that Tell sent the arrow that halved the apple placed on his son’s head.
The Yew tree (1) grows very, very slowly; it never becomes a tall tree, not even when it has lived hundreds and hundreds of years, because, instead of sending up one thick trunk, it has the strange habit of dividing into a cluster of trunks, three or four or more of equal thickness, which rise from one root. These trunks are covered with browny red bark and are very smooth; the red bark peels off in thin flakes, and you can see that the wood beneath it is a deep orange red.
From the clustered trunks many branches stretch out to form a densely bushy tree; these branches are closely covered with small twigs, on which grow short narrow leaves (2), ending in blunt points, and with the edges slightly curved backwards. These leaves grow alternately all round the twig, and they are dark and glossy above but much paler beneath. They do not fall from the tree in winter, as the Yew, like the Holly, is one of our evergreen trees. Yew tree leaves are very poisonous, and many tales are told of cattle and horses which have died from eating them.
Some people believe that the Yew tree is planted in churchyards because it is poisonous and is associated with death; while others think just the opposite, and say that it is placed among the tombstones to remind us that the soul is undying, like the Yew tree leaves.
In February or March if you strike a Yew tree bough with a stick you will see clouds of fine yellow powder rising from the tree. This powder is the stamen dust, and if you pull a spray of leaves and examine it you will discover clusters of small oval yellow flowers (3) nestling close to the main stem where the leaf joins it. The Yew tree belongs to the great family of trees whose fruit is a cone and which bear their flowers in catkins. Take a magnifying-glass, and it will show you that each catkin is composed of a bunch of stamens rising from a slender pillar at the foot of which are a few dry, papery scales. Each stamen has six dust-bags at the end, and when the stamen powder is ripe these dust-bags open, and the fine yellow powder is blown like meal over the leaves and seeds.
The Yew tree has seed flowers (4) as well as those which bear the stamens. Usually they grow on a different tree, but occasionally you will find them on the same Yew, but on a separate branch. It is a curious thing about the Yew tree and its relations that these seeds are not covered in any way, but lie naked to the sun and rain. They always grow on the under-side of the stem, and at first they look like tiny acorns. You notice a small disc surrounded by a few scales, and on this disc sits the little green acorn with its olive green skin. This acorn is waiting for the stamen dust to reach it. As soon as the wind has blown the yellow powder over it a beautiful cup of pale pink wax grows round the green seed. There is no hard, woody cone on the Yew tree; the fruit (5) is this pale pink waxen berry, shaped like a fairy cup and filled with sticky juice. The walls of the pink cup are soft and fleshy, and you can just see the tip of the green seed standing up in the centre. They are very lovely, these waxy pink berries on the dark green spray, but they are said to be poisonous.
Sometimes at the end of a Yew spray there grows a curious-looking cone like a small artichoke, made of soft green leaves. This is caused by a tiny gnat which lays its eggs in a Yew tree bud, and in some strange way that we do not understand causes it to develop this tuft of strange leaves. You will remember that in the Oak a similar growth is found.
The wood of the Yew tree is very hard and durable, as are all woods which grow slowly. “A Yew tree post will outlast a post of iron” is a saying often repeated by farmers; but the Yew wood is not much in demand for manufacturing purposes.
PLATE XIX
THE JUNIPER
In the Bible we read that when Elijah fled from the cruel persecution of King Ahab and the wicked Queen Jezebel, he sat down under a Juniper tree to rest. When we look at the Juniper as it grows in this country, we wonder how the prophet could have found rest beside such a prickly tree, or shade beneath such a small one. But in other lands the Juniper grows much taller; and as all books about trees give it a place beside its relations the Yew and the Scotch Pine, it must be included among the common trees you should learn to know.
In Britain the Juniper (1) is found on heathy commons or high on the upland plains, where it flourishes as a large, thick, bushy shrub, and occasionally shoots up into a small tree. It is rather a gloomy-looking tree: in spring time, when most of our trees look fresh and bright in their young green leaves, the Juniper shows little change. Its leaves are evergreen, and the new leaves grow in small tufts at the tips of the branches, so that you scarcely notice them.
The Juniper bark is dark reddish brown, and it flakes off in small pieces in the same way as the Yew tree bark. The branches are small and thin, and they clothe the trunk close to the very ground; it would be difficult to sit comfortably under a Juniper tree in this country. Like the Yew, it is a very slow-growing tree.
Juniper leaves (2) are not in the least like ordinary leaves: they are more like thorns than leaves, and they are not easy to gather. But if you examine a spray carefully you will find that each leaf is like a narrow flat spear with a sharp point at the end. Each leaf has a slight groove cut from end to end in the upper side, which is dark green, very smooth and glossy. Notice how curiously the leaves are grouped on the spray. They are placed in incomplete circles of three, and there is always a short space between each of the circles.