THE ALDER.
All persons, however ignorant of trees in general, are familiar with the common Alder. It abounds everywhere in wet places, skirting the banks of small rivers, bordering the sides of old turnpike roads, where they pass over wet grounds, filling up the basins of muddy canals, and covering with its monotonous green foliage many an unsightly tract of land, hiding and then revealing the glittering surface of sluggish stream and lonely mere. The Alder is a homely shrub, employed by Nature merely for the groundwork of her living pictures, for covering stagnant fens with verdure in company with the water-flag and the bog-rush, and as a border growth to the fenny forest, graduating its foliage by a pleasing slope down to the verdure of the plain. The assemblages of Alder constitute the plain embroidery of watercourses, and form the ground upon which many a beautiful flowering shrub is represented and rendered more interesting.
The Alder among shrubs takes the place which the grasses occupy among herbs; having no beauty of its own, but contributing to set off to advantage the beauty of other plants that flourish in the same ground. Nature likewise employs the roots of this tree as a subterranean network, to strengthen the banks of streams and defend them from the force of torrents. The Alder in New England is seldom large enough to be called a tree; it rarely stands alone, but almost invariably in clumps or larger assemblages, the different individuals of the collection forming each a single stem, almost without branches, making an outward curve a few feet from the ground, and bending inwards toward their summit.
The foliage of the Alder is homely, but not meagre, and its color is of a very agreeable tone. It is indeed a very important feature of the landscape in summer; but in autumn it remains unaffected by the general tinting of the season, and retains its verdure till the leaves fall to the ground. Nature seems to regard this tree as a plain and useful servant, not to be decked with beautiful colors or grand proportions for the admiration of the world. But, homely as it is, it bears flowers of some beauty. These consist of a profusion of purplish aments containing a mixture of gold, and hanging tremulously from their slender sprays. The extreme length and flexibility of these clusters of flowers render them exceedingly graceful, and permit them to be set in motion by the slightest breeze. The buds are seen hanging from the branches all winter, ready to burst into bloom when vivified by the first breath of spring.