CHAPTER IV
HARVESTS OF THE THAMES: WILLOWS, OSIERS, RUSHES
The willows, pollarded or left to their natural growth, that form, as it were, a continuous guard of honour along many miles of the upper course of the Thames, and overhang with a wild luxuriance its mazy backwaters, are indeed a guard to those banks in more than fanciful phrase. Their tangled roots clutch them in many-fingered embrace and support them in times of flood, and their gnarled and fantastic trunks serve the useful office at such times (when the meadows are under water and resemble inland lakes) of exactly delimiting the course of the stream, where the current runs deep and strong, and dangerous. Willows we always associate with a watery situation, and their habit is indeed better suited to low-lying meadows and to river-courses than to places high and dry. The great demands the willow makes upon water place it in the forefront as a drainer of marshy soil: and thus not only beside the Thames, but along rivers in general, and in the fens and on Sedgemoor, where the energies of hundreds of years past have been directed towards expelling the water, it is a familiar feature of the landscape. We also inevitably associate the willow, and especially that drooping variety, of the pendant boughs and leaves, known as the “weeping willow,” with melancholy, and, from Shakespeare to W. S. Gilbert, it is associated with unrequited love. The spot where Ophelia met her death is thus described in Shakespeare:
“There is a willow grows ascaunt the brook,
That shows his hoar leaves on the glassy stream.”
The expression “hoar leaves” refers to the under side of the willow-leaf, of a whitish or silvery hue, not unlike hoar-frost; prominently seen when a strong wind ruffles the branches.
A THAMES-SIDE FARM.