The Flowering of the Forest Trees 75 
The seedling born of two plant-parents is even 
stronger and more adaptable than the one born of 
two flower-parents, and in the struggle for exist- 
ence it is the likeliest of the three to survive. 
And its plant-children will follow the parental habit 
of setting seed by aid of pollen brought from 
another plant. So age by age the ‘‘ dicecious’’ 
flowers have been separating their stamens and 
pistils more and more widely, and if the world 
lasts long enough the elms and red maples may 
reach the condition of the willows and poplars, 
with all the stamens borne on one tree, and all 
the pistils on another. 
In Nature’s school, elms and red maples seem 
to occupy an intermediate class with the walnuts 
and hickories below them, and the willows and 
poplars above. 
The white-ash trees, which blossom in latter 
March or early April, are somewhat unsettled in 
their habits. Like the elms, they use both breezes 
and insects as pollen-carriers, and they have gen- 
erally, but not entirely, adopted that plan of bear- 
ing stamens and pistils in separate flowers, which 
has become a fixed rule among the poplars. 
The staminate flower-buds of the ash are very 
noticeable in earliest spring, when they are inky- 
