176 ARISTOCRATS OF THE GARDEN 



spring. Of material both herbaceous and woody 

 there is ample and in every garden there is room for 

 improvement. The central truth which all should 

 realize is that in gardens it is in variety not in uni- 

 formity that beauty must be sought. 



In the woods and by the roadside and on the mar- 

 gins of swamps a number of native woody plants put 

 forth their blossoms very early in the spring and es- 

 cape the notice of the multitude who pass them by. 

 The Silver Maple (Acer saccharinum) in New England 

 is the first of native trees to open its flowers, which are 

 heavily clustered on the naked twigs but are less con- 

 spicuous than those of the Red Maple (A. rubrum), 

 which open soon afterward and are red or orange-red 

 and sweetly fragrant. 



The American Elm ( Ulmus americana) is one of the 

 most beautiful of all trees, with its massive trunk 

 dividing a few feet from the ground into several or 

 many stout ascending stems, which branch and form a 

 rounded or flattened wide-spreading crown in which 

 the lesser branches are more or less pendent. In this 

 tree, too, the flowers are clustered on the naked twigs 

 and consist of little more than pink anthers suspended 

 on elongating thread-like filaments. In the Hazelnut 

 (Corylus) and in the Alder (Alnus), the female flowers 

 are insignificant but the male flowers are borne on 



