The Aspen leaves (2) are very dainty and pretty. Each leaf grows at the end of a long slender stalk which is flattened like a ribbon, and is placed edge-ways to the twig. The stalk is not strong enough to hold the leaf upright, so it droops, unless when the breeze lifts it in the air, and then you hear a constant rustle-rustle, as if the leaves were whispering to each other. These Aspen leaves are nearly round, and they have evenly-cut teeth on the edges. They are rather small and are dark in colour, and there is no white lining underneath except the soft down which you often find on very young leaves, and which soon disappears.
Through the grass beside its root the Aspen sends up a great many young shoots which are called suckers. The leaves on these young suckers are heart-shaped, and the edges are quite smooth, without any teeth.
Cattle are very fond of these young leaves, so are deer, and goats, and even the beaver. In some places people strip the Aspen leaves from the trees and give them to the cattle, which eat them greedily.
PLATE XV
THE WHITE WILLOW
To distinguish different members of the Willow family is very difficult. It contains many brothers and sisters who are so much alike that you would require to study nothing but willows for many a day if you wished to know each from the other.
In this book are described three different Willows. The first is a lofty tree with a thick trunk and spreading branches; the second is usually a bushy mass of slender twigs bending over the river bed; and the third is a small creeping shrub which twines itself among the roots of the heather, and carpets the ground with masses of silky down. And I think if you know well these three kinds of Willow, you should be able to group the other members of the family around them.
The White Willow (1) is the name given to the largest Willow tree, and very beautiful it is in early spring when the leaves unfold. It has a thick trunk covered with rough, rugged bark, and it sends out large branches, from which grow many smooth, slender twigs. The leaves (2) appear about the middle of May, long narrow leaves which taper to a point, and from a distance you would think that the edges were quite smooth. But when you pick a leaf you find that there are dainty little teeth cut all round the edge. These narrow leaves are covered on both sides with a silky grey down; this gives them a pale, silvery-grey colour, and from a distance you can easily recognise a White Willow tree by the glistening of this beautiful grey foliage, so different from the vivid young green of the Larch and the yellow-green of the Limes and Sycamores.
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.