50 Field, Forest, and Wayside Flowers 
The swamp or pussy-willow often blossoms in 
later March, braving high winds and leaden skies. 
The red maple and the poplar bloom at about 
the same time, and the sugar-maple a little later. 
By later April, in ordinary seasons, the young 
seeds of the poplar are formed, and dangle from 
the branches in long, green clusters, so many and 
so dense that they impart their color to the tree. 
The elms, too, finish flowering betimes, and 
cover themselves with young seed-pods, which hang 
in bunches from the boughs and twigs 
(Fig. 6). They are thin and flat and 
of a vivid, tender green, and will be 
mistaken by nine observers out of ten 
for expanding leaves. The real leaves 
Meantime are finishing out their win- 
Fic. 6.—Fruit 
of the elm. » insi 2 i 
omee ate’ > Dap inside the leaf-buds, which 
table World. . 
atte World) are still very small and show scarcely 
a tinge of green. 
In the country west of the Alleghanies the 
silver poplar or ‘‘ abele’’ (Populus Alba) is one of 
the most familiar trees and one of the first to 
respond to the wooing of the south wind and the 
sun. Its flower-buds are covered with shining 
brown scales, which split apart, in latter March or 
early April, and show rifts of gleaming gray. 
