THE LOMBARDY POPLAR 75 



above prominent leaf- bases. The twigs are a shining 

 yellow or light bronze, and smooth, round below but 

 slightly angular above, with scattered cork-warts and 

 five-angkd pith. The leaves are involute in the bud, 

 triangular or rhombic in outline, and two to four 

 inches long, in addition to the slender stalk, which 

 itself is about two inches in length. The blade is 

 either straight, slightly cordate, or slightly wedge- 

 shaped at its base, with an acuminate " drip-tip " and 

 regular crenate-serrate margin. 



When young the leaves are of a beautiful trans- 

 lucent bronze, fringed with silky hairs, and with 

 similar deciduous hairs on both surfaces ; but they 

 become rigid, smooth, and grass-green, only slightly 

 paler beneath. Hanging loosely, as they do, on 

 their slender petioles, their surfaces are perhaps more 

 often in a vertical than in a horizontal plane. The 

 petioles are laterally compressed, as in the other 

 species ; and the veins are arranged much as in the 

 Aspen, the midrib being sinuous and prominent, and 

 the secondaries few in number, given off pinnately, 

 and slightly arcuate, looping into an inframarginal 

 series, and connected by a copiously branched mesh- 

 work of tertiary veins, but with the basal pair 

 opposite and strong, so as to produce the " pseudo- 

 palmate" appearance. The leaves are developed in 

 May, after the catkins and later than those of the 

 other species or of the Lombardy Poplar. Whilst 

 in spring they have shone and blushed with hues of 

 mingling red and yellow, to which the word " bronze " 

 that we have used does but faint justice, as they 

 seem sometimes to have warm blood coursing in 



