In April the young leaf buds appear; pale green knobs, or little bundles, bursting from every branch. Each leaf (2) is cut up into blunt fingers, and soon it loses its paleness and becomes dark green and glossy. In autumn these leaves change to gold and dark red and brown; but the frosty nights and cold winds soon strip them from the branches.
May is the month when the flowers (2) begin to bloom—clusters of tiny snow-white balls, each at the end of a slender green stalk. In England it was the custom to give a basin of cream for breakfast to the person who first brought home a branch of Hawthorn in blossom on the first of May.
When the flower balls or buds unclose, you find that they have five snow-white petals, which are set in the throat of the calyx cup. Within this ring of petals, round the mouth of the cup, grow many slender stamens, each with a bright pink head. And if you look at the back of the flower, you will see five green points which stand out like the rays of a star behind the white petals. These are the sepals.
Below this green star the stalk looks slightly swollen: this swelling contains the seed, and by the time autumn comes it will have grown into a small green berry. After the white petals and the pink-headed stamens have fallen, you will find clusters of these berries, which are called haws, each with the withered remains of the sepals clinging to the top, as you find them in the Rose and in the Apple. The berries (3) become crimson when the frost comes, and birds eat them greedily.
We have few trees which flower so beautifully as the Hawthorn. In May and June the hedgerows are laden with its masses of snowy blossoms. Sometimes you will find Hawthorns on which the flowers are a vivid crimson, and these are so transparently beautiful they look as if the light shone through them. And in autumn no tree is more attractive than the Hawthorn, with its gleaming berries and many-coloured leaves.
The wood of the Hawthorn is not very serviceable. It is hard and may be highly polished, but the trees are too small for the timber to be useful.
The branches, like those of the Ash and the Whin, burn readily, even when green, and in Scotland the bark was used in olden days to dye wool black.
PLATE XXVIII
THE BOX
Many of us only know Box as the name given to the small bushy plant which is placed along the edges of our garden borders to keep the earth from falling out on the gravel path. And we are surprised to learn that this plant is only the Dwarf Box, and that the true Box is a tree, a fair-sized tree, which may be seen any day in Oxford growing to a height of over twenty feet. We must learn to recognise the Box tree, for in the South of England there are still many districts where it grows freely.
It has been known in this country for hundreds of years, but its fame has come down to us in a curious way. In old books we read that the Box was chiefly prized as the tree which would stand more clipping than any other. People in those days had a strange fancy for cutting trees and bushes into quaint shapes. They had Box trees which looked like peacocks, and Box trees shaped like beehives. There were arm-chairs, and tubs, and even statues made of growing Box, cut and trimmed by the gardener’s clever shears.