THE ASPEN. 
Po'pulus trem/ula L. 
Tue chief structural characters of the Aspen are 
that its shoots are downy, and its leaves on very 
long stalks; those on the suckers heart-shaped, 
pointed, but not toothed; those on the branches 
rounded, with incurved. teeth ; and all of them silky 
on the under surface when young, though generally 
becoming smooth later. Its buds are slightly viscid, 
and the flowers in the female catkins are densely 
crowded together. The lobed catkin-scales are 
fringed with hairs; the two stigmas are each divided 
into two erect segments; and in the male plant 
each catkin-scale bears generally eight stamens 
in its axil. 
The Aspen is not usually a large tree, though 
Loudon records a specimen at Castle Howard, in 
Yorkshire, 130 feet high, and three and a half feet 
in diameter, and various other examples reaching 
diameters of four feet, and one at Bothwell Castle, 
Renfrewshire, 117 feet in the spread of its branches. 
This latter tree was eighty years old; but the species 
is not a long-lived one, and, like all Poplars, is very 
liable to rot from the tearing off of boughs by wind, 
and to subsequent attacks by various insects. As 
the tree gets older its horizontal branches become 
pendulous. The young shoots are generally reddish, 
with prominent brown hairs—or both these shoots 
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