HOW TO KNOW THE TREES 

 GROWING IN BRITAIN 



With Notes, descriptive and photographic, for their Identification 

 in all Seasons of the Year 



By HENRY IRVING 



THE BIRCH AND THE HORNBEAM 



THE slender grace of the Silver Birch 

 impresses everyone. Few of our trees 

 are so well loved. Coleridge's descrip- 

 tive title "Lady of the Woods" meets with 

 instant approval. 

 Yet, perhaps, the 

 limiting word of 

 that description 

 scarcely holds. If 

 the " Lady" Birch 

 loves the woods 

 she loves the open 

 daylight better. 

 Left to her own 

 devices she will be 

 found more often 

 fringing the forest, 

 where are free air 

 and sunshine, than 

 languishing within 

 its confined 

 shadows. For, in- 

 deed, the Birch 

 loves most the 

 open spaces, 

 breezy uplands 

 amongst the 

 bracken and 

 heather, even the 

 higher mountain 

 slopes whither the 

 Scots Pine will 

 scarcely venture. 

 That slender 

 graceof the 



" Lady " Birch is associated with a 

 splendid hardihood, and power of adaj)ta ■ 

 tion, unattained by sterner-seeming trees. 

 L(jving thus the ojjen air and the unshaded 

 light, the Birch is, by these, nurtured to 



20 153 



TRUNK AND BAKK OV COMMON HIKCII 



the utmost refinement of enduring tender- 

 ness. 



We have in Britain two chief varieties 

 of Birch, which amongst other distinc- 

 tions may be 

 most readily re- 

 cognised by the 

 habit of their ter- 

 minal twigs. The 

 one, the Com- 

 mon Birch, has 

 these spreading, 

 or erect; the 

 other, the White 

 Birch, has them 

 drooping, and 

 sometimes in long 

 festoons. 



In winter the 

 slender grace of 

 the Birch is per- 

 haps most ap- 

 parent. Its darker 

 twigs gleam in 

 the sunshine, 

 i^Mving emphasis to 

 the clear white of 

 the central stem. 

 Seen, as these 

 trees often may 

 be, marking the 

 margin of a Pine- 

 wood, they spread 

 there a subdued 

 light which, like 

 atmospheric haze, softens the dark masses 

 of the trees behind. But it is when seen 

 against the sky, with a depth of unbroken 

 blue or rounded mass of sun-lighted 

 cumulus cloud for background, that the 



