A year among the trees

by Wilson Flagg

THE WILLOW.

The Willow is of all trees the most celebrated in romance and romantic history. Its habit of growing by the sides of lakes and rivers, and of spreading its long branches over wells in solitary pastures, has given it a peculiar significance in poetry as the accompaniment of pastoral scenes, and renders it one of the most interesting objects in landscape. Hence there is hardly a song of nature, a rustic lay of shepherds, a Latin eclogue, or any descriptive poem, that does not make frequent mention of the Willow. The piping sounds from wet places in the spring of the year, the songs of the earliest birds, and the hum of bees when they first go abroad after their winter’s rest, are all delightfully associated with this tree. We breathe the perfume of its flowers before the meadows are spangled with violets, and when the crocus has just appeared in the gardens; and its early bloom makes it a conspicuous object when it comes forth under an April sky, gleaming with a drapery of golden verdure among the still naked trees of the forest and orchard.

When Spring has closed her delicate flowers, and the multitudes that crowd around the footsteps of May have yielded their places to the brighter host of June, the Willow scatters the golden aments that adorned it, and appears in the deeper garniture of its own green foliage. The hum of insects is no longer heard among the boughs in quest of honey, but the notes of the phebe and the summer yellow-bird, that love to nestle in their spray, may be heard from their green shelter on all summer noons. The fresh and peculiar incense of the peat-meadows, with their purple beds of cranberry-vines and wild strawberries, the glistening of still waters, and the sight of little fishes that gambol in their clear depths, are circumstances that accompany the Willow, and magnify our pleasure on beholding it, either in a picture or real landscape. We prize the Willow for its material qualities no more than for its poetic relations; for it is not only the beauty of a tree, but the scenes with which it is allied, and the ideas and images it awakens in the mind, that make up its attractions.

The very name of this tree brings to mind at once a swarm of images, rural, poetical, and romantic. There is a softness in the sound of Willow that accords with the delicacy of its foliage and the flexibility of its slender branches. The syllables of this word must have been prompted by the mellow tones which are produced by the wind when gliding through its airy spray. Writers of romance have always assigned the Willow to youthful lovers, as affording the most appropriate arbor for their rustic vows, which would seem to acquire a peculiar sacredness when spoken under the shade of the most poetical of all trees.

The Willow, though tenacious of life, will not prosper in dry places. Its presence is a sure indication of water, either on the surface of the ground or a little beneath it. The grass is green at all times under this tree, and the herds that browse upon its foliage and young branches find beneath them the most grateful pasture. In the New England States it has long been customary to plant Willows by the wayside, wherever the road passes over wet grounds. Some of the most delightful retreats of the pedestrian are found under their shady boughs. When he is panting with heat and thirst, the sight of their green rows fills him with new animation, as they indicate the presence of water as well as cooling shade. The same comely rows are seen skirting the pools and watercourses of our pastoral hills and arable meadows. They are planted also by the sides of streams and canals, where they serve, by their long and numerous roots, to consolidate the banks, and by their leaves and branches afford shelter to cattle. These Willows are among the fairest ornaments of the landscape in Massachusetts just after the elm and red maple have put forth their flowers. And so lively is their appearance, with their light green foliage, that when we meet with a group of them in the turn of a road on a cloudy day, we seem to be greeted with a sudden gleam of sunshine.

The Willow is one of the few trees which have been transplanted from Europe to our own soil without being either equalled or surpassed by some American tree of kindred species. But there is no indigenous Willow in any part of the American continent that will bear comparison in size and in those general qualities which we admire in trees, either with the Weeping Willow or the common yellow Willow. The latter is as frequent in our land as any one of our native trees, except in the forest. It attains a considerable height and great dimensions, seldom forming a single trunk, but sending upward from the ground, or from a very short bole, three or four diverging branches, so as to resemble an immense shrub. This mode of growth is caused perhaps by our way of planting it,—by inserting into the ground cuttings which have no leading shoot. Indeed, all these Willows are pollards. Not one of the species is found in our forest, except where it has spread over land that has once been cleared and cultivated. In that case, we find mixed with the forest trees Willows, apple-trees, and lilacs, which were planted there before the tract was restored to nature. I have seen trees of this species growing as standards of immense size, with their branches always joining the trunk very near the ground. On this account little rustic seats and arbors are more frequently erected in the crotch of a Willow than in that of any other tree.

The most of our indigenous Willows are mere shrubs. Though there are above thirty American species, but few of them rise to the stature of trees. Some of them are creeping plants and prostrate shrubs, some are neat and elegant trees in miniature. Their branches are also of many colors, some of a fine golden hue, spreading a sort of illumination over the swamps where they abound; some are red; others with foliage so dark as to have gained the name of Mourning Willow. Some, like our common bog Willow, are called white, from their downy or silken aments. One of the most beautiful of the small species is the golden osier, or Basket Willow. The yellow twigs of this shrub, coming up from the ground like grass without subdivisions, but densely from one common root, are very ornamental to low grounds. It would seem as if Nature, who has given but little variety to the foliage of this tree had made up for its deficiency by causing the different species to display a charming variety in their size. Thus, while the common yellow Willow equals the oak in magnitude, there are many species which are miniature shrubs, not larger than a heath plant. As one of the beautiful gifts of nature, the Willow claims a large share of our admiration. Though not a convenient ornament of our enclosures, the absence of this tree from the banks of quiet streams and glassy waterfalls, overhanging rivers and shading the brink of fountains, would be most painfully felt by every lover of nature.