68 Blossomed Boughs 



from a spell of wintry weather which seemed to 

 promise the worst. Yet the scarcity or abundance 

 of any kind of fruit in autumn, whether cultivated 

 or wild, generally bears a close relation to the 

 weather which prevailed at the crucial moment in 

 spring ; and if the blackthorn blossoms in a black- 

 thorn winter its boughs are as likely to be bare in 

 autumn as those of the kindred plum and damson 

 trees of the garden which flowered at the same time. 

 The blackthorn is the first of a long succession of 

 white-flowering trees and shrubs which spread their 

 abundant bloom over a large part of the country all 

 through the spring and earlier summer, and do not 

 come to an end until the last disc of elder flower has 

 faded in the bronzed July hedgerows. White is 

 by far the commonest colour among the flowering 

 trees and shrubs of Britain, and no other could be 

 so thoroughly in consonance with the cool freshness 

 and temperance which breathe so deeply from the 

 luxuriance of an English summer. Yet these white 

 blossoms are by no means all of the same fashion 

 of whiteness ; indeed, many of them are not strictly 

 white at all, though in a far-flung landscape they 

 seem to repeat among rivers, woods, and meadows 

 the pureness of the sailing clouds. Nothing is 

 whiter than the scented petals of the wild cherry, 

 which are outshaken in the April woodlands, 

 simultaneously with the tender leaves, before the 

 day of the blackthorn is yet over. But the apple 

 blossom, which follows, is lit with pink ; it is this 

 blush on the white bloom of the apple tree which 

 makes it perhaps most beautiful of all the blossoms 



