XXXVI. THE TREES IN SUMMER 
“Under the greenwood tree 
Who loves to lie with me, 
And tune his merry note 
Unto the sweet bird’s throat, : 
Come hither, come hither, come hither.” 
—Shakespeare (As You Like It). 
In summer we live nearest the trees. We exchange our 
solid roofs for their latticed crowns, and sit beneath them: in 
the open air. They spread green canopies above us, all 
fringed with beautifully sculptured leaves. Broad-leaved 
trees with the densest crowns, like hard maples, we like best 
for shade: these best exclude the sun. 
In summer, the characters of boughs and buds, which have 
served us best for winter studies of deciduous trees (see 
Study 9 on page 76), are somewhat obscured by the foliage; 
but the leaves in themselves offer ample recognition marks 
instead. The species of tree is usually to be told from a 
single leaf; for each kind, though variable in lesser details, 
has a form and a structure and a texture of its own. The 
differences are sometimes extraordinary, as in the leaf types 
shown in figure 97: but even when the leaves of two species 
look very much alike, there are apt to be minor differ- 
ences of outline, of venation, of margin, of hairiness, of 
length of leaf-stalk, etc., by which the two may be distin- 
guished. 
In summer, the trees are busy. Each one is increasing, 
as much as it can, its hold upon the earth and its spread into 
the sunlight. To every living twig it is adding new growth. 
Until full stature is attained, it adds long leafy shoots at 
each sunlit tip; and afterwards, and underneath in the 
shadow, it adds enough new growth to hold a few green leaves 
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