276 COMMON TREES AND SHRUBS 



midrib of the latter being prolonged beyond the scale as 

 a narrow, curved process. The cone (Fig. 184, 4) is mature 

 in the following spring. It is smaller, more lax, and has 

 thinner and more flexible scales than the Pine, and the 

 cones remain on the old twigs many years before breaking 

 off. The seed is winged (5), and is dispersed by the wind. 

 For two or three years, the seedling, unlike the parent, is 

 evergreen. 



The Pine and Larch belong to a very ancient group of 

 plants, and differ in many important respects from Angio- 

 sperms. The pollen-grains are more complex and deposited 

 direct on the micropyle of the ovule ; there is no ovary, 

 style, or stigma ; the embryo-sac of the ovule becomes filled 

 with endosperm before fertilization ; the egg-cell is en- 

 closed in a flask-shaped structure known as the arche- 

 gonium, an organ characteristic of simpler plants such as 

 ferns and mosses. The seed is naked, i. e. not enclosed in 

 an ovary, the latter character suggesting the name Gymno- 

 sperms (Gr. gymnos naked) for the group to which the 

 Pine, Larch, and other cone-bearing trees, belong. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

 CATKIN-BEARING TREES 



Willow 



Two kinds of Willow are very generally recognized : 

 the ' Palm ' and the Osier. The ' Palm ' or Goat-Willow 

 (Salix capraea) (Fig. 185) grows on dry banks and in woods 

 and hedges, is of shrub-like habit, from fifteen to thirty 

 feet high, and has short, knotted branches loaded in early 

 spring with bright yellow catkins. The male flowers each 



