THE WIND FLOWERS 51 



shoots of the hedgerow in spring are we country- 

 men forced to see that here are clusters of pollen- 

 producers as worthy of notice as the red tails that 

 fall from the poplar. In London the diligent wood- 

 pigeons throw down the elm bloom in bunches, so 

 that the saunterers by Rotten Row wonder what 

 manner of tree it can be they are walking under. 



" The murmur of innumerable bees in immemorial 

 elms" is not the legitimate murmur of honey-gatherers 

 and pollen-carriers. If it is heard at all (and the 

 poet may be wrong) it comes in summer, long after 

 the blossoms have blown and withered, and the bees 

 are attracted by the ooze of the well-detested honey- 

 dew from the bodies of aphides. The incalculable 

 amount of pollen that is being produced now is all 

 for wind distribution. It must be produced by the 

 pound for each stigma that is to be fertilised. The 

 whole atmosphere must be filled with it, so that a 

 tree in each parish may get its share. And, even 

 then, to what end, so far as our elms are concerned ? 

 All these acres of rosy bloom, pollen grains more 

 numerous than the snow that has fallen in a week, 

 a million eager stigmas touched and never a seed 

 that will sprout. For the exotic elm that has in a 

 few hundred years spread throughout the land by 

 means of suckers is doomed in our country to per- 

 petual sterility. Marvellous that it should bloom 

 year by year with undiminished assiduity ! 



It is, of course, the season of wind flowers. Who 

 would have the catkins fling out their pollen when 

 the world is full of sticky new leaves and all manner 

 of summer distractions to the messengers of love? 

 Even with the world in bare branches, the chance 



