WILLOW FAMILY 



F7Hit. — Oblong-conical capsules, two-valved, thin-walled, light 

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

 about four inches long, ^eeds obovate, light brown and surrounded 

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



Nature chooses \\isely her place for Aspe/i hct/iuloiJes at the edge of a wood, 

 with darker, liigher trees beliind as a background. 



— Edith Thc^m.^s. 



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 tlie 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 wdiich a leaf has in 

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

 whence the proverbial comparison, "Trembling 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 treml>le like a leaf of aspen green. 



A perfect calm, that not a breath 

 Is heard to c]uiver through the closing woods, 

 Or rustling turn the many twinkling leaves 

 Of aspen tall. 



— Spenser. 



-Thomson. 



Willows whiten, aspens quiver. 



— 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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