40 THE TREE BOOK 



staminate, or pollen-bearing, flowers are orange 

 colored and fragrant. The pistillate ones are 

 scentless, and of a rich, ruby red. Roving flies 

 and bees carry the pollen from one to the other 

 in their quest for nectar. 



On a warm sunny day in the latter part of 

 March, or the first of April, those of you who 

 are familiar with the elm, have perhaps noticed 

 that its buds seem to swell, and you think it is 

 going to put out its leaves. Everybody says we 

 are going to have an early spring. Then sud- 

 denly the cold winds and frosty nights come on 

 again, and the leaves do not fulfil their prom- 

 ise. Now the fact is, the buds which you no- 

 ticed were not leaf buds at all. They were the 

 flower buds. Had you been more observing and 

 studied the twigs at close range, you would 

 have found a multitude of beautiful little flower 

 clusters, purplish or yellowish-green in their 

 general effect, and slightly fragrant. Each lit- 

 tle cup-shaped flower contains from four to nine 

 stamens, and in their midst a funny green pistil 

 forking into two feathery prongs. In almost 

 every cluster there are some flowers which have 

 no pistils. These, of course, have no use for 

 their pollen and it flies away with the wind. 

 Each fruit is in the middle of a circular green 

 wing, and as they huddle together on the boughs 



