THE WILLOWS AND POPLARS 83 



Low Countries, These sank into insignificance during the seven- 

 teenth and eighteenth centuries when they were replaced by itiner- 

 ant basket makers, whose activities sufficed for supplying the local 

 demand. With the advent of the factory system and the simul- 

 taneous great increase in trade and communications, the demand 

 for baskets and hampers for parcel sliipments of all kinds gave a 

 great impetus to basket making, particularly in Europe where 

 labor was so much cheaper than in America. This, coupled with 

 the constantly increasing popularity of wicker furniture, has re- 

 sulted in a constant and increasing demand for willow shoots. 

 Napoleon's embargo stimulated willow culture in Britain, and 

 considerable areas in our own eastern States have long been de- 

 voted to this purpose, usually however with little selection as to 

 species cultivated or cultural methods. 



Willows, particularly pollard willows, play a great part in land- 

 scape painting, especially in the art of France and that of the Low 

 Countries where they are such famiHar objects lining roads, canals 

 and drainage ditches. The association of sadness with willows 

 probably survives from the captivity of the children of Israel 

 "by the rivers of Babylon." At the Feast of the Tabernacles they 

 were commanded to take, on the first day, branches of palm trees 

 and willows of the brook. The so-called weeping or Babylonian 

 willow is a favorite graveyard tree, so much so that "she is in her 

 willows" was a common expression applied to widows throughout 

 rural England. Shakespeare has Ophelia drowned by a willow, 

 and Fuller says of it: "A sad tree, whereof such who had lost their 

 love make their mourning garlands." 



There are more than 200 existing species of willows of all grades 

 of stature, and while we think of them as especially characteristic 

 of the North Temperate Zone they are by no means confined 

 to it but range from the Arctic Circle southward across the equa- 

 torial regions into the South Temperate Zone. In America there 

 are upwards of 100 species, ranging in size from tiny plants a few 

 inches high under the Arctic Circle to trees 140 feet tall and 4 feet 

 in diameter in more genial situations, as in the bottom lands of 

 the lower Mississippi V^alley. About a score of these are trees. 



