LEAF AND BRANCH 
guishing ear-marks these are, may be suggested 
by a few haphazard descriptions of the common 
trees about us. 
The spruce, for instance, is a straight- 
trunked tree that throws out branches that 
ride upward like crescents, and bear needles 
that hang downward like fringes. Its outline, 
when seen in silhouette against the sky, is 
pyramidal ; its color is dark green, often 
blue-green when seen from a distance, and at 
twilight it is cold-purple. The pine is like it, 
but its branches are not so crescent-shaped, 
and the needles push outward in clusters rather 
than droop downward in fringes. It is of a 
darker color than the spruce, and at night or 
under shadow it is bluer. The poplar is a tall 
tree, and often a straight one, but the branches 
do not swing outward like the pine. They 
seek rather to grow straight beside the parent 
stem, and the twigs and the sharp-pointed 
foliage surround the branches as a loose sleeve 
the armof a woman. It is white-trunked, with 
a leaf that is bright green on one side and sil- 
very green on the other side. The black oak 
grows a straight trunk with limbs that shoot 
out almost at right angles; but the white oak 
and the pin oak are crooked and twisted, their 
Tree char- 
acteristics, 
Vartous 
tree-forms, 
