124 FAMIEIAR TREES 



named it the Traveller's Joie." The uppermost 

 leaves on a shoot may be only pinnately-lobed, or 

 may be made up of but three delicate ovate leaflets 

 with downy under-surfaces ; but the fully-developed 

 leaves are bi-pinnate, with from five to nine leaflets, 

 each three or four inches long, on long slender stalks 

 slightly swollen at each point where two opposite 

 secondary petioles are given oflp. The leaflets some- 

 times have irregularly-toothed margins ; and their 

 network of veins is rather prominent. 



One of the most interesting features of the plant 

 is its method of climbing. Some of the leaf-stalks, 

 the lower sides of which are sensitive to contact, 

 curve themselves once or twice round any stem which 

 they touch, whether of their parent plant or of any 

 other; and, having done so, unlike the similar 

 petioles in our garden Nasturtiums, become rigid and 

 persist for several years. Darwin, who suggested that 

 we have here a first stage in the evolution of tendrils, 

 pointed out that the leaves which twine m this way 

 have fewer and smaller leaflets than those which do 

 not, as if they were on the way to lose their leaf- 

 blades altogether. 



The branching clusters of greenish-white flowers, 

 sweet-scented but without honey, thus oflering only 

 their copious pollen to their insect visitors, form a 

 new beauty in May and June ; but the fruits rising 

 above the withered brown leaves of autumn are even 

 more conspicuous. Each of the little distinct one- 

 seeded carpels of which they are made up retains its 

 own style as a long, feathery, white plume, so that the 

 bush has earned such local names as Grey- beards, 



