776 



Handbook of Nature-Study 



ing off at its own angle to get its own pollen. The flower has the calyx. 

 four-lobed; the style is long and slender and is divided into a V-shaped 

 purple stigma. 



The staminate flowers appear early in the spring, and look like knobs on 

 the tips of the coarse, sparse twigs ; they consist of masses of thick, green 

 anthers with very short, stout filaments; each calyx is four-lobed. 



Staminate blossoms of white ash. 

 Photo by G. F. Morgan. 



These flowers are attached to a five-branching stem ; but the stem and its 

 branches cannot be seen unless the anthers are plucked off, because they 

 hang in such a crowded mass. Later the leaves come out beyond them. 



The leaf buds in winter are very pretty; they are white, bluntly 

 pointed, with a pale gray half -circle below, on which was set last year's 

 leaf. Another one of nature's miracles is the bouquet of leaves coming 

 from one of the big four-parted terminal buds, which is made up of four 

 scales, two of which are longer and narrower than the others. Within the 

 bud each little compound leaflet is folded like a sheet of paper lengthwise, 

 and folded with the other leaflets like the leaves of a book ; and when 

 they first appear they look like tiny, scrawny, birds' claws. But it is 



