124 THE BOOK OF THE OPEN AIR 



Lombardy poplar, with its tall, taper- but the larch in England has never the 

 ing column, is nothing but a cultivated rugged and virile growth of the same 

 variety of this last. Of the many tree where it shoots from the rock- 

 coniferous trees which have been strewn mountain-sides of its Alpine 

 acclimatized with greater or less sue- home, above the wild laburnums that 

 cess in parks and gardens, the larch line the torrent-beds with gold. Many 

 and the spruce alone have become centuries are needed before even the 

 sufficiently general in coverts and most vigorous and self-adaptive of 

 woodlands to appeal to the eye as such alien growths can attain, like the 

 English species by naturalization, if sycamore and elm, to that aspect of 

 not by native right. The tender, misty perfect harmony with their surround- 

 green of a budding April larch-cover is, ings which is inseparable from the 

 indeed, one of the best-known and beauty of English trees, where they 

 most beautiful features of spring; watch over the age-old and natural soil. 



XXV 



MIDSUMMER PLANTS 



" Art cannot rival this pomp of purple and gold." 



EMERSON. 



IV TOW that midsummer has come a brave show during the hot months in 

 great change has passed over our lanes and open fields. By the 

 the face of nature. The nesting season wayside the yellow St. John's- worts 

 is over ; the voice of the cuckoo are in bloom, and the purple mallow, 

 is no longer heard ; the woods are together with eyebright, and bell- 

 almost silent. The delicate flowers flowers, and crimson vetches ; while 

 of early summer have disappeared creepers are trailing over the hedgerows 

 before the heat of July and August, bryony, and clematis, and the wild 

 and for " the searcher after simples " hop, and the large white convolvulus, 

 it might seem that much of the in- In chalky districts the dark mul- 

 terest of the season was over. lein (Verbascum nigrum) is very con- 

 But if, in many cases, the flowers spicuous beside the dusty roads, with 

 of midsummer are coarser than those its tall spikes of bright yellow flowers, 

 of spring, they make, many of them, a the stamens of which are clothed with 



