WILLOW FAMILY 



Fruit. — Oblong-conical capsules, two-valved, thin-walled, light 

 green and nearly one-fourth an inch long, borne in drooping aments 

 about four inches long. Seeds obovate, light brown and surrounded 

 with long, soft, snowy white hairs. May and June. 



Nature chooses wisely her place for Aspen tremuloides at the edge of a wood, 

 with darker, higher trees behind as a background. 



— Edith Thomas. 



The entire Poplar family are a restless folk and the Aspen 

 the most so of the group. The reason lies in a personal 

 peculiarity. The character of the petiole or leaf stem has 

 much to do with the movement of the foliage of every tree. 

 In the beech and elm, for example, the petiole is short and 

 stiff and as a consequence the leaves have little independent 

 motion but sway with the branch. The Poplars, on the other 

 hand, have long slender petioles to begin with, and these are 

 laterally compressed — pinched sidewise, not flattened — and 

 this compression being vertical to the plane of the leaf, 

 counteracts the ordinary waving motion which a leaf has in 

 the wind and causes it to quiver with the slightest breeze, 

 whence the proverbial comparison, "TremWing like an aspen 

 leaf." From Homer to Tennyson the race of poets have 

 noted this peculiarity of all aspens. 



Some wove the web, 

 Or twirled the spindle, sitting, with a quick 

 Light motion like the aspen's glancing leaves. 



—Odyssey. 



His hand did quake 

 And tremble like a leaf of aspen green. 



A perfect calm, that not a breath 

 Is heard to quiver through the closing woods, 

 Or rustling turn the many twinWing leaves 

 Of aspen tall. 



WilloM'S whiten, aspens quiver. 



-Spenser. 



—Thomson. 

 -Tennyson. 



The small Aspen is a very common tree, little prized and 

 rarely planted. Often an undergrowth in an oak wood, it is 



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