CHARACTERISTICS OF SPRUCE TREES 103 
or whorls. Their leaves are spirally or radially 
arranged—that is to say, they cover the stem and 
lateral branchlets on all sides, and do not leave bare 
spaces upon the latter in lines like the V-shaped, or 
pectinate arrangement, of the Silver Fir. 
-Needle-like in shape their leaves arise singly from 
the stems and branchlets. On examination it will 
be found that they are placed upon little raised 
woody excrescences of the stem. These are variously 
called pulvini, or cushions, peg-like projections, or 
stumps. In golf phraseology they would be called 
“ tees,”’ and not inaptly, since a tee is a base which 
intervenes between the ground and the ball placed 
upon it, and so in like manner is this projection, 
nothing more or less than a base that intervenes 
between the leaf and the stem. 
Pulvinus is the Latin for a cushion, and a cushion 
is a commodity commonly considered in the Western 
grades of refined civilization to imply something 
that is soft and yielding, and this impression it 
conveys to nearly all except perhaps to a Japanese, 
who, in spite of all these opportunities of mollifying 
influences that civilization has flung in his face, still 
prefers to lay his Spartan head on a wooden rest. 
The object of our description is, however, anything 
but soft and yielding ; on the contrary, it is hard 
and wooden as the Japanese head-rest. The simile 
does not seem a very happy effort upon the part of 
the author of it. Anything more anti-pulvinate, in 
the European acceptance of the term, could not be 
conceived by any one who seeks enlightenment from 
the meaning of language. 
However you like to think of it, whatever you care 
to call it, this fact is assured, that leaf and pulvinus 
are in relation of clinging affinity, and you cannot 
pull the one off without tearing away the other. 
Prince Houssain, of Arabian Nights fame, stuck no 
