6 FAMILIAR WILD fLOll'ERS. 



sallow appeared the best available, though sometimes the 

 sombre yew or other evergreen trees were used instead. 

 The custom is of great antiquity, and numerous references 

 to it may be found in old writers, though the limited space 

 here at our disposal forbids our quoting any of them. 



The sallow, like the other species of the genus, is 

 dioecious, that is to say, its blossoms, instead of being, like 

 those of the buttercup and many other plants, both pistil 

 and stamen bearing together, are on each tree of one sex 

 alone. The golden yellow clusters of the <( palm,"" the sub- 

 ject of our illustration, are the stamen-bearing catkins; 

 the pistillate are green in colour, somewhat longer, narrower, 

 and less compactly cylindrical. Before flowering the male 

 catkins are of a soft grey colour, and very smooth and silky 

 to the touch ; but as the stamens develop the silvery grey 

 is metamorphosed into golden yellow. The heads, we find, 

 will continue to expand if the stems be placed in water ; 

 the greyer piece in our figure, in the course of a day or 

 two in our study, turned as yellow as the other, and both 

 of them lasted in perfection for some time, so that its 

 picturesque and quaint-looking sprays are eminently adapted 

 for a place either in ecclesiastical or home decoration. The 

 leaves of the sallow are somewhat more egg-shaped and 

 broadened than in some of the other common species of 

 willow, and the shrub does not seem so entirely a plant of 

 the damp low-lying meadows and edges of streams as many 

 of the willows do, for though, like these, it may be found 

 there, it may perhaps equally commonly be found in woods 

 and thickets on higher ground. The word sallow descends 

 to us from the Anglo-Saxons, and signifies a plant suitable 

 for withes or ties, the flexible character of the stems of this 

 and the other willows marking them out as especially use- 



