GETTING AC^AINTED WITH THE TREES 



and the way it ends the fall. About my home, 

 it is the first of wild woods trees to bloom, 

 except perhaps the silver maple, which 

 has a way of getting through with its 

 flowers unnoticed before spring is thought 

 of. One finds the delicate little 

 bright yellow flowers of the spice- 

 bush clustered thickly along the 

 twigs long before the leaves are 

 ready to brave the chill air. Af- 

 ter the leaves have fallen in the 

 autumn, these flowers stand out in 

 a reincarnation of scarlet and spicy 

 berries, which masquerade continually 

 as holly berries when cunningly in- 

 troduced amid the foliage of the 

 latter. Between spring and fall the 

 spice -bush is apparently invisible. 



How many of us, perfectly famil- 

 iar with "the holly berry's glow" 

 about Christmas time, have ever seen 

 a whole tree of holly, set with berries? 

 Yet the trees, sometimes fifty feet 

 high, of American holly — and this is 

 spice-bush vcry different from the English holly 



194 



Flowers of the 



