Trees, Shrubs and Vines 
a fiendish walking-stick it must be the devil’s own choice. 
The linking of ‘‘ angelica-tree’’ with such apt terms as 
these finds no rational explanation in science or poetry. 
In the South it attains a height of forty to fifty feet, 
and its huge tuft of leaves spreading in all directions at 
the summit produces something of the appearance of a 
palm; but at the North it has only a scrubby, surly 
look of malignant deformity, ugly in summer, uglier in 
winter. The massive leaf-stem is stout enough to be a 
sizable branch, but the ultimate leaflets are scarcely three 
inches long. In July and August, towering above its 
palm-like elegance of foliage, rise long loose clusters of 
whitish blossoms, which ripen into black berry-like fruit 
that hangs long into the winter. In its autumn tints of 
yellow and red—the devil’s sulphur and flames, to carry 
out the analogy—it shows to best advantage. A large 
cluster of these monstrosities are at the southwest corner 
of the Lake, at the water’s edge, and two specimens are 
close to the walk which our companion-reader is now 
following. 
SOPHORA JAPONICA.—Close by the angelica-tree is a 
Japanese importation but little known, the sophora, of 
erect, graceful form, and with pinnate leaves that are 
quite suggestive of the locust, but more tapering. Like 
so much of pinnate-leaved vegetation in tree, shrub, and 
herb, this is a leguminose species, which means that its 
type of flower and pod is that of the peaand bean. The 
association of these forms of leaves and flowers, and the 
frequency of yellow blossoms in this family are facts for 
which science as yet offers no explanation. 
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