SHRUBS AND VINES 



** I sat me down to watch upon a bank 

 With ivy canopied, and interwove 

 With flaunting honeysuckle." 



— Milton. 



WITH all their distinctiveness of form and tem- 

 perament, one soon finds that trees, shrubs, 

 and woody vines are essentially one in nature 

 — a classification of convenience, not of science, with no 

 organic difference between the trailing arbutus and the 

 Sequoia giga?itea. The unbroken gradation from the 

 clinging ivy to the sturdy oak is so imperceptible that 

 precise characterization of the above sort is often diffi- 

 cult or impossible, and strictly scientific treatment of 

 these three forms of growth is comprised under the sin- 

 gle title '' Dendrologia. " 



More than a quarter of all the trees of our territory are 

 also to be reckoned as shrubs ; climate and soil largely 

 determine whether a species will have the figure and stat- 

 ure of the one or of the other ; the rhododendron is a 

 tree in the Southern States, but only a shrub at the 

 North ; black haw and hornbeam assume both forms in 

 the same locality ; some diminutive growths have a thor- 

 oughly arboreal figure, and some unmistakable shrubs 

 are taller than some trees ; lofty trees of the far West 

 dwindle to low shrubs in the East, and the same is true 

 of many species in their northerly and southerly range. 



130 



3^ 



