100 HIGH LIFE. 



Yet this little herb-like willow, one of the most 

 northerly and hardy of European plants, is a true tree at 

 heart none the less for all that. Soft and succulent as 

 it looks in branch and leaf, you may yet count on it 

 sometimes as many rings of annual growth as on a lordly 

 Scotch fir-tree. But where? Why, underground. For 

 see how cunning it is, this little stunted descendant of 

 proud forest lords : hard-pressed by nature, it has learnt 

 to make the best of its difficult and precarious position. 

 It has a woody trunk at core, like all other trees ; but this 

 trunk never appears above the level of the soil : it creeps 

 and roots underground in tortuous zigzags between the 

 crags and boulders that lie strewn through its thin sheet 

 of upland leaf- mould. By this simple plan the willow 

 manages to get protection in winter, on the same 

 principle as when we human gardeners lay down the 

 stems of vines : only the willow remains laid down all 

 the year and always. But in summer it sends up its 

 short-lived herbaceous branches, covered with tiny green 

 leaves, and ending at last in a single silky catkin. Yet 

 between the great weeping willow and this last degraded 

 mountain representative of the same primitive type, you 

 can trace in Europe alone at least a dozen distinct 

 intermediate forms, all well marked in their differences, 

 and all progressively dwarfed by long stress of un- 

 favourable conditions. 



From the combination of such unfavourable conditions 

 in Arctic countries and under the snow-line of mountains 

 there results a curious fact, already hinted at above, 

 that the coldest floras are also, from the purely human 

 point of view, the most beautiful. Not, of course, the 



