My Garden in Spring 



Napoleon's imprisonment on the island. He had a seat 

 placed under it, and frequently sat there, as it was close 

 to a spring, the water of which he liked to drink. About 

 the time of the Emperor's death, a storm shattered the 

 tree, and Mme. Bertrand planted some cuttings of it round 

 Napoleon's grave. Before the opening of the Suez Canal, 

 ships touched at St. Helena on their way home from the 

 East round the Cape of Good Hope, and the passengers 

 generally visited Napoleon's tomb and brought away 

 cuttings of the Willow, which quickly rooted in a bottle of 

 water, and were ready to be planted by the time they 

 reached England. Several trees in this neighbourhood 

 are known to have been brought in this way from St. 

 Helena, and I believe the tree here was a cutting from one 

 of them. An Arabian legend tells that the Weeping 

 Willow sprang from the tears David wept when he re- 

 pented of the murder of Uriah. 



It is a favourite plant throughout the temperate 

 regions for planting in cemeteries. The pendant branches 

 I suppose are thought to resemble the hanging head of a 

 mourner, and so we term such forms of trees weeping 

 varieties, but it always strikes me as unfair to associate 

 the Weeping Willow with grief. The grey-leaved Willows 

 are sombre and sad-looking in summer among green- 

 leaved trees, but S. babylonica is always the first of decidu- 

 ous trees to look green in Spring, remains a tender light 

 green all through the summer, and is often one of the 

 latest to shed its leaves, and has the appearance of a 

 flourishing, happy, and gaily-clad tree for a longer period 

 than most others. It is a curious fact that, unlike the 

 other weeping trees, Ash, Beech, Elm and so forth, of 

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