FLOWERING TREES 



sus, and a host of pink, white, and buff-coloured Tulips. 

 Beside these the earliest of the May Irises and all the 

 pretty creeping plants of the season enable us to ac- 

 complish many charming pictures, and in the autumn 

 the small highly coloured fruits, profusely borne, again 

 bring these trees into important requisition as colour 

 factors. 



The word Prunus covers a multitude of delights: 

 Peaches, Cherries, and Plums of a diversity and loveli- 

 ness quite undreamed save by those who have set out to 

 know them in all their great variety. If one needs to 

 make a choice perhaps the Cherries would come first, for 

 there is nothing quite like the pure perfection of Cherry 

 blossoms not the chill whiteness of Pear blossoms with 

 their strange cloying perfume, but a quality of purity all 

 their own, glistening, youthful, with no hint of cold 

 aloofness. They fill the mind and satisfy the soul, and, 

 spreading their white shade above the troops of golden 

 Daffodils, fill the garden with an enchanting radiance. 

 All the Cherries are bewitching; even the Japanese 

 Weeping Cherry, Cerasus pendula, is so exquisite in its 

 grief that one finds it possible for once to tolerate a tear- 

 ful tree. Cerasus avium var. multiplex, enveloped in 

 snow-white bloom, is thought by many to be the queen 

 of flowering trees, but there are so many treasures how 

 can one decide? This tree is perhaps too vigorous for 

 small gardens, for it reaches a height of forty feet; but if 

 there is room for it there is nothing lovelier. It blooms 



