76 FAMILIAR TREES 



their veins, in summer their green, if monotonous, 

 is generally cheerful and, even when it becomes 

 duller and more grey, is never heavy, owing to 

 their constant motion ; and in autumn, though soon 

 scattered by the winds of the equinox, they present 

 us with new, if brief, glories. Their green becomes 

 clearer and is then invaded by lemon yellow ; damp 

 turns this yellow first to gold or orange and then to 

 the umber of decay ; and all these tints are fre- 

 quently to be seen on a single leaf. 



The catkins produced in March or April are 

 characteristically loose in the arrangement of the 

 flowers upon them. Those of staminate trees are two 

 to four inches long, cylindrical, pendulous, and dark 

 red from the colour of the anthers, of which there are 

 generally eight in each flower. The fruiting catkins 

 are shorter and take a more upward direction. The 

 stigmas are four-lobed and the capsules are round. 

 They ripen in May, when the cottony seeds are often 

 conspicuous among the young leaves. 



Growing by the water-side, or in moist earth, with 

 thick sapwood through which their watery food- 

 supply rises rapidly, the Poplars have at the tips or 

 on the margins of their leaves, at least when they are 

 young, special glandular structures whence water may 

 exude in drops, so that the tree may be said to weep. 

 According to Ovid, when Phaeton borrowed the 

 chariot and horses of his father the Sun and by his 

 furious driving set half the world on lire, Jupiter 

 hurled him from the chariot into the river Po, where 

 he was drowned. His unhappy sisters, the Heliades, 

 lamenting his fate upon the river bank, were changed 



