374 



THE POPLAR FAMILY. 



species have been registered in books, and most of the poplars are 

 probably true ones ; but a large portion of the reported willows are 

 unquestionably suppositious. The great variation in the forms of the 

 leaves of certain kinds ; the diflficulty of matching the males and 

 females, since they very rarely grow in company ; and the further 

 diflSculty of matching the foliage and the flowers of those that bloom 

 before the leaves are open, render the study of the genus exceedingly 

 perplexing, and will always keep it so to the young student. As re- 

 gards those which bloom before the leaves, unless they be marked in 

 some way (as with a bit of coloured ribbon tied round one of the 

 branches), and leaves be gathered, when ready, from the same indi- 

 vidual, it is utterly impossible to know anything accurate about them. 



Fig. 197. 



Figs. 193 and 194, male and female florets of poplar; Figs. 19G and 197, male 

 and female florets of willow (all magnified). Fig. 195, leaf of white poplar. 



Hooker, in the British Flora (fifth edition), reckons seventy species 

 wild in Britain ; Lindley, in the second edition of his Sijnopsis, follow- 

 ing the arrangement of the German botanist Koch, reduces the number 

 to thirty ; and Mr. Bentham, in his Hand-book, to only fifteen. The 

 last is likely to be the soundest estimate, and that which I adopt in 

 the present volume, satisfied that the really distinct forms of nature are 

 very much less in number than is commonly supposed. Of Hooker's 

 seventy there occur near Manchester fifteen, which in the following 

 pages appear as nine ; and of the four reputed English and Manchester 

 poplars, I admit three, mentioning however, as with the Rnhi, the 

 names and localities of the whole. Of some species we have no male 

 trees ; of others no females ; I give the characteristics, nevertheless, of 

 the flowers of both sexes, in case they should be met with elsewhere. 



