WILLOW FAMILY 



perhaps better known when, forming a little thicket, it makes 

 a mass of trembling leaves on a gravelly bank by the road- 

 side, or skirts the border of a swamp, or forms the first 

 growth on dry upland which has been swept by fire. Under 

 favorable conditions it becomes a tree fifty feet in height 

 and in the mountains of Arizona will reach one hundred feet. 

 Small and quivering leaves necessarily make a tree look 

 fragile and it is doubtful if any size could take from it the 

 appearance of weakness which is its marked characteristic. 



The trunk is slender, the head round-topped, the bark 

 pale green becoming whitish and blotched and marred with 

 age. The leaf is almost round, with a slightly heart-shaped 

 base, serrate margin and acute apex. It comes out of the 

 bud involute, pale green, shining and downy, but finally be- 

 comes smooth and firm in texture, dark green above and dull 

 yellow green beneath. The seeds ripen in May and by 

 means of the long white hairs which surround them are 

 borne by the winds to a considerable distance from the 

 parent tree. 



It ranges from Hudson's Bay to Mexico. It grows farther 

 north than the spruce and the larch, and flourishes on the 

 mountain ranges of Chihuahua. 



Professor Sargent says : " The great value of the Aspen 

 lies in the power of its small seeds, supported by their long 

 hairs and wafted far and near by the wind, to germinate 

 quickly in soil which fire has rendered infertile ; and in the 

 ability of the seedling plants to grow rapidly in exposed 

 situations. Preventing the washing away of the soil from 

 steep mountain slopes and affording shelter for the young of 

 longer-lived trees, it has played a chief part in determining 

 the composition and distribution of the subalpine forests of 

 western America and in recent years it has spread over vast 

 areas of the slopes of the Rocky Mountains from which fire 

 had swept the coniferous trees." Loudon considers our 

 American Aspen'to be but a variety of the Aspen of Europe, 

 Populus tremula. 



There lingers in Scotland, it is said, the belief that the 



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