Tree Study 



765 



them have an even number? How are the leaflets set upon the petiole? 

 Describe the leaflets, including shape, veins, edges, color above and below. 

 Is the petiole pliant, or stiff and strong? Is it the same shape and size 

 throughout its length? Break a petiole, is it green throughout? What 

 can you see at its center? Are the leaves opposite or alternate? When 

 they fall, do they drop entire or do the leaflets fall apart from the stem? 



9. Sketch the horse-chestnut tree. 



10. How do the flowers and leaves of the horse-chestnut differ from 

 those of the sweet buckeye and of the Ohio buckeye ? 



Supplementary reading Trees in Prose and Poetry, p. 17. 



THE WILLOWS 



Teacher's Story 



They shall spring up among the grass, as willows by the water courses. 



ISAIAH. 



"When I cross opposite !he end of Willow Row the sun comes out and the trees are very 

 handsome, like a rosette, pale, tawny or fawn color at base and red-yellow or orange-yellow 

 for the upper three or four feet. This is, methinks, the brightest object in the landscape 

 these days. Nothing so betrays the spring sun. I am aware that the sun has come out 

 of the cloud just by seeing it light up the osiers."- THOREAU. 



HE willow, Thoreau noted, is the golden osier, a colonial 

 dame, a descendent from the white willow of Europe. 

 It is the most common tree planted along streams to 

 confine them to their channels, and affords an excellent 

 subject for a nature-study lesson. The golden osier has 

 a short though magnificent trunk, giving off tremendous 

 branches, which in turn branch and uphold a mass of 

 golden terminal shoots. But there are many willows 

 besides this, and the one who tries to determine all the 

 species and hybrids must conclude that of making 

 willows there is no end. The species beloved by children 

 is the pussy willow w r hich is often a shrub, rarely reach- 

 ing twenty feet in height. It loves moist localities, and on its branches in 

 early spring are developed the silk)-, furry pussies. These are favorite 

 objects for a nature-study lesson, and yet how little have the teachers or 

 pupils known about these flowers! 



The willow pussies are the pollen-bearing 

 flowers; they are covered in winter by a 

 brown, varnished, double, tentlike bract. 

 The pussy in full bloom shows beneath each 

 fur-bordered scale two stamens with long fila- 

 ments and plump anthers; but there are no 

 pistils in this blossom. The flowers which 

 produce seed are borne on another tree entirely 

 and in similar greenish gray catkins, but not 



so soft and furrv. In the pistillate catkin 



i ,. . , iu -i i_ .u-i Enlarged willow blossoms. 



each fnnged scale has at its base a pistil Pistillate blossom showing nect ar. 

 which thrusts out a \ -shaped stigma. The gland, (n.gi.) 



. c i j-i 11 r Staminate flower showing the nec- 



question of how the pollen from one gets to t ar, gland (n.gi.) 



