DECIDUOUS TREES. 389 



enliven or vary the more common tree outlines more perfectly than 

 most other trees. 



The Ring Willow. Salix annularis. — This is only a variety 

 of the weeping willow, curious on account of the leaf curling in the 

 form of a ring. Portions of these trees occasionally return to the 

 natural form of leaf, so that the simple form and the curled leaf are 

 both growing on the same tree. It does not make so beautiful a 

 large tree as the common sort, and is scarcely worth planting. 



The Golden Willow. Salix vitellina. — A tree but little 

 smaller than the weeping willow, with similar leaves and tone of 

 foliage, but without its perfectly pendulous habit. Its peculiarity, 

 and one which makes it a marked, and often a beautiful tree, is the 

 golden color of its young wood. When the tree is clothed with 

 leaves, the yellow twigs seen through them give additional warmth 

 of tone to their color, and when bare of leaves makes a bright and 

 cheerful winter tree. It is irregularly round-headed in outline, and 

 less broad in proportion than the weeping willow. The lights and 

 shades in its head are softly blended, and the lightness and warm 

 color of its foliage contrast well with trees having dark foliage or 

 abrupt shadows. There is a beautiful specimen on the west side 

 of the Mall in the New York Central Park. 



The White Willow, Salix alba, and the Russell or Bedford 

 Willow, S. Russelliana, are both English varieties long domesti- 

 cated in this country. They become large trees with great rapidity 

 — attaining a height of sixty or seventy feet in thirty years. With 

 the exception of the color of the bark they have the same general 

 characteristics as the golden willow. 



The Glossy-leaved Willow, 5. lucida, is a native shrub of 

 considerable beauty, described by Gray in the Natural History of 

 New York as " a shrub eight to fifteen feet high, with shining yel- 

 lowish-brown bark. Buds yellowish, smooth. Leaves three to five 

 inches long, and an inch or more in width, rather obtuse when 

 young, but tapering at maturity to a long slender point, and rather 

 acute at the base. A very handsome willow." 



