British Wild Flowers and Trees 257 



greatest development in rich soil, reaching a height 

 of four or five feet, and the numbers of slender 

 branches depending from each whorl look most grace- 

 ful. The wood Equisetum (E. sylvaticum) common 

 all over Britain, is smaller, but even more graceful. 

 The long simple-stemmed Equisetums, or Horse-tails, 

 are also interesting to cultivate in marshy spots, or 

 by the sides of water, but are not so graceful as 

 the species above named. 



British Willows. Our Willows are as beautiful 

 as Olives, perhaps much more beautiful, as after 

 one has enjoyed their slender wands and silvery 

 leaves against the summer sky they are the prettiest 

 things in the winter landscape when they have lost 

 all their leaves. Few even among the very men 

 whose business it is to study trees, and plant them, 

 i. e. landscape gardeners, have any idea of the noble 

 effects that may be got by the artistic (i. e. natural) 

 massing of our native willows, and their best varieties, 

 in fitting situations. These occur often in this river- 

 veined land, where there is so much marsh and 

 estuary and shoreland, in which the hardy willows 

 of our country and northern lands are at home. 

 I say again, nothing in tropical or other lands is 

 so effective in the landscape, so simple to secure, 

 and so enduring as the pictures we may make from 

 willows. Take the White Willow (Salix alba) alone — 

 a stately and very large tree with its mass of silvery 

 leaves so graceful in movement, and also a tree of 



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