DECIDUOUS TREES. 



387 



The Weeping Willow, Salix babylonica, is by far the most 

 beautiful of this great family, and its wonderful combination of 

 charms are too common to be fully appreciated. It strikes root 

 from cuttings as readily as a currant twig, and then grows with 

 great rapidity, becoming a tree of irregularly-rounded masses fifty 

 to sixty feet high and broad within twelve or fifteen years after 

 planting. 



The weeping willow is the type of pensile trees. In their first 

 growth the branches aim bravely upward, but the slender subsi- 

 diary branches soon give up all struggle with the laws of gravity, 



