THE GLAUCOUS WILLOW 



FOR a brief period in early spring the Glaucous Willow adds the final touch of beauty 

 to the landscape. It dots the hillsides and the water-courses with the yellow tones 

 of its pollen-bearing blossoms and the delicate greens of its seed-bearing catkins, 

 making for a week or two the greatest show of any of the trees or shrubs. The blossoming 

 branches attract the visits of a host of small bees, which come out of their winter burrows 

 very early in the spring and gather from the pussy willows nectar and pollen to provision 

 their nests. The flowers are also sought out by the queen bumblebees, the early butter- 

 flies, and certain other insects which serve the plant by carrying pollen from one kind of 

 flower to the other, and thus enable it to develop the small fruits which, late in spring or 

 early in summer, break open and allow the downy seeds to be wafted away by the wind. 



The Glaucous Willow is more likely to be found as a shrub than as a tree, although 

 in Northern New England it very commonly assumes the tree form, some of the trees 

 reaching a diameter of ten or twelve inches. The species ranges from Nova Scotia to 

 Manitoba on the north, extending southward to Missouri, Illinois, and North -Carolina. 

 In summer it may usually be distinguished by the whitish color of the under leaf-surface, 

 the leaves having slightly and sparsely serrate margins, and the general form shown in 

 the right-hand picture of the plate. 



This is preeminently the Pussy Willow, being the species to which this title is 

 properly applied. It is very easily reproduced from cuttings and is of decided value in 

 landscape planting, especially along water courses, where its roots serve to hold the banks 

 of the stream in place, and where also its flowers in early spring add their unique beauty 

 to the landscape. 



As is well known the willows are the despair of the botanists. Nearly two hundred 

 species have been described, and there appear to be besides innumerable natural hybrids 

 that render exact classification, even to the specialist, almost impossible. Consequently 

 the lay reader may well be content to identify a very few of the most distinctive kinds. 

 He can if he so desires start a willow garden through cuttings and thus be able to follow 

 each sort through the year. 



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