46 WITH THE FLOWERS AND TREES 



color a sort of tender, poetic pink that awakens 

 enthusiasm in the most phlegmatic. You cannot 

 believe at a little distance that the effect is not due 

 to myriads of flowers; but it's only leaves, and the 

 color lingers in the new foliage for weeks. In age 

 the tree develops marked branchiness, the great 

 limbs flung about with all the dignified gesticula- 

 tion of an old oak. 



" But there is another tree I shall show you, that 

 you are likely to mistake for the camphor at other 

 seasons of the year, for it is grown extensively for 

 street shade and fools every new-comer. It is the 

 bottle-tree Sterculia diversifolia from Australia. 

 The way to distinguish it from the camphor is to 

 note its leaves, which in the bottle-tree are odorless 

 and variously formed, some being entire but many 

 of them cut into two or three fingers. Then the 

 trunk is very different, being peculiar in having a 

 broad base from which it tapers upward rather 

 markedly, suggesting a certain type of bottle, 

 though the name was given in the first place to 

 another species, Sterculia rupestris, with a bulged- 

 out trunk like one of those English soda-water bot- 

 tles that won't stand up. There's a lot of bottled 

 up usefulness in the Sterculia tribe for it is a big 

 family. There is an illuminant oil to be extracted 

 from the seeds, and the seeds themselves of several 



