144 FOREST TREES OF CALIFORNIA. 



AMERICAN ASPEN. 



(Populus tremuloides ; eorreetly, tremuliformis.) 



" When zephyrs wake 



The aspen's trembling leaves must shake." — Johnson. 



THIS is usually a small tree of thirty to fifty feet, but m 

 some of our alluvial bottoms and borders of lakes, 

 abounding in groves, it rises to seventy-five or one 

 hundred, always with a relatively small diameter of one to 

 two feet in California; but in the Valley of the Mississippi 

 River, trees four feet in diameter and two hundred feet high 

 are known. This tree is always neat, and as a belle in her 

 teens ; the body slender, and apparently perfectly cylin- 

 droid ; smooth and soft as if just bound in Russia leather, of 

 whitish-clayey, or semi-sober pea-green bark; the branches 

 also are slender and small ; the bark on their upper surface 

 becoming lighter colored, which reflects the light afar, and 

 renders these trees conspicuous objects at a great distance, 

 and more especially in their bright yellow Autumn dress. 

 The young shoots are bright varnished, bronzy, brownish 

 green, and the short twigs go off at broadened angles, which 

 give ample space for the foliage, making the spray open and 

 airy; the long buds sharp pointed, glossy, varnished with 

 balsam ; like all the poplars, leaves somewhat heart-circular 

 in general outline ; two inches or so long, and about equal in 

 breadth ; short, abruptly-pointed, slightly wavy-toothed and 

 a little downy on the margin, supported on very slender, 

 long leaf-stalks; latterly compressed, or thinly flattened at, 

 and less so far back from the blade, contrariwise; and thus 

 weakened, to any breadth-wise, horizontal impulse, they fluc- 

 tuate and flutter, or rock as lightly and prettily as any wave- 

 lets with their breezy lights and shadows o'er the mirrored 

 lake ; to the beholder it seems a ceaseless wonder how these 

 leaves can be so sensitively responsive to the most trivial 

 zephyr, even when all else around is still, save their own 

 cupiditative prattle to the passive ear; and to the eye, as 

 ever, glinting the light of truth above the trembling shades; 

 as sparkling wit is wont to " drive dull care away." with all 

 her approaching gloomy shadows, yet can we not discern,, 

 alternating coyly, the humorous, the festive, and the foolish 

 withal? Let not the sage nor serious, forever hearken to 

 hear some portentous " going in the tops of the aspens ;" 

 nor are these emblem leaves of the literati and the poets 

 altogether so frivolous as some of them suppose, and many 



