5O SHARP EYES 



Look at this great satiny hickory bud swollen almost 

 to the size of a magnolia, while another near by has 

 burst into a mimic fleur-de-lis, with golden drooping 

 scales, disclosing the folded leaves and catkins which 

 were to be found last January had we sought them. 

 Any one who has watched the development of the 

 horse-chestnut's varnished bud, with young leaves en- 

 tangled in the cobwebby festoons of soft brown wool, 

 will appreciate Lowell's apt allusion above quoted, 

 while the bud of each separate shrub or tree in turn 

 will reveal some interesting individual trait. 



Let us look at the development of this dog- wood 

 bud. Even as early as last September it was to be 

 found upon the tips of the twigs, making ready for the 

 next year's spread of bloom even before its surrounding 

 leaves had thought of falling. Later in the autumn 

 it had increased in size, and the bare November tree 

 left them all exposed precisely as we saw them all win- 

 ter. In February they begin to swell, and the common 

 belief is that the large white blossom is at this time 

 forming within eager to burst its bounds. Not so. In 

 April these four purple bud-scales finally open, disclos- 

 ing the cluster of tiny flower-buds at the centre, but no 

 sign of the four great petals, for the dog-wood blossom 

 is not a blossom ; it is an assemblage of blossoms, the 

 so-called white petals, being, in truth, no petals at all, 

 but only singularly modified leaves, or what the botany 

 calls a corolla- like involucre enclosing the true flowers. 



It is generally supposed that the flowering dog-wood, 

 like other true blossoms, has simply thrown off its win- 

 ter bud -scales, and bloomed from within; but if we 

 carefully examine these white heart-shaped leaves, we 

 find that no such thing has taken place. The bud scales 



