THE PLANT WORLD 67 



Briefer Articles. 



UWDRAPED TREES. 



Trees are perhaps as beautiful in their undraped condition as when 

 clothed with foliage. Each has its peculiarity of branching and makes its 

 own silhouette against the sky. I doff my hat to any grand old elm — one 

 whose quaint branches twist and turn and writhe, like the locks of some 

 mighty Gorgon. Such a tree is ever beautiful — now, when the limbs are 

 bare ; in spring, when the brown buds cover it ; and in summer, when 

 piled high with green. Note the magnificent buttresses of the trunk ! 



And how characteristic are the boles or trunks of trees, each as indi- 

 vidual as a human face ! Take the mossy elm ; the clean gray, mottled 

 beech ; the chestnut, smooth and polished when young, long scored 

 when old ; the iron-wood, with its tense muscles standing out like those 

 of a wrestler ; the oak, with its close intricacy of creases ; the hickory, 

 with tough, resistant columns ; and the snow-white shaft of the ladj^- 

 birch. 



Consider the various buds : How marvelous is their provision for pro- 

 tection ! There are, for instance, those of the horse-chestnut, varnished 

 without, and within packed with soft warm wool. The hickory has 

 almost coriaceous scales ; a neat bundle in all cases. Here see the infinite 

 variety of shapes, from the long-pointed bud of the beech to the insignifi- 

 cant ones of the oak or the green and prominent ones of lilac. From 

 these buds we can learn the future manner of branching, as also the 

 position of leaves. The crescentic scars beneath the buds show where 

 leaves once stood. If then the buds are now opposite, so were and will 

 be the leaves. 



The fall of the leaf is a curious matter. Early in the season in many 

 plants, our trees especially, there begins to be formed a line of separation 

 between leaf -stalk and parent stem. This, as the season advances, grows 

 deeper and deeper until finally the attachment is only nominal . Then mere 

 gravity, the disturbance by wind or rain, serves to detach the leaf. If 

 frost should occur, a layer of ice is formed in this incision, and all the 

 leaves fall as by word of command. The piles of fallen leaves are them- 

 selves interesting. Fresh, glossy, sweet-smelling at first, they soon 

 become dry and wrinkled. Thoreau has compared some dried leaves, 

 perhaps those of oak, to the tin and iron cuttings around a foundry. The 

 likeness is often very marked. 



How infinite are the forms of these fallen leaves ! Nature, in fashion- 

 ing them, indulges in the wildest vagaries and fancies. It is interesting 

 to pick up some clean, well-marked leaf, like that of the tulip tree, the 



