BLOSSOM-TIME 41 



they are easily mistaken for young leaves. But 

 if you look, you will find the young leaves folded 

 carefully away finishing their winter sleep, in 

 buds much smaller than those from which the 

 blossoms came. 



Side by side with the elm blooms the poplar, 

 its soft, gray catkins, "like the tail-tips of lit- 

 tle kittens," bursting from the brown var- 

 nished, resinous buds, that all through the win- 

 ter have been "as water-tight as well-calked 

 canoes." There are staminate and pistillate 

 trees. Both kinds of flowers are borne in long, 

 swaying chains of cup-like florets, each shielded 

 by a tiny silvery-fringed scale, that seems to 

 have nothing but beauty as its excuse for being. 

 With Nature, however, "handsome is as hand- 

 some does." Through the winter the little tor- 

 toise shell scales, with their furry fringes 

 closely overlapped, have been keeping the little 

 flower babies warm in their tiny cradles. 



The flowers of the nut-bearing trees do not 

 open until the leaves are about one-third grown. 

 The staminate flowers are chains of scales, 

 dropping below the leaves, each scale being cov- 

 ered with many little pollen-shedding heads 

 on its lower surface. The wind scatters the 

 precious dust to the pistillate blossoms. Thus 

 those which grow nearest the branch tips are 



