38 



FLORA AND SYLVA. 



Northern Ocean winds and is nowhere 

 happier than in our cold eastern lands 

 where the air is fragrant with the breath 

 of its pale flowers in spring. 



The great facility in propagation of 

 the Willow, which every grower takes 

 advantage of, is against the tree and is 

 the cause of some writers describing it 

 as short-lived. Naturally, if we increase 

 the tree from shoots we cannot expect 

 the same endurance and stature that 

 we do from seedling trees. Nature did 

 not make the flower-seed vessels for 

 nothing, and the noble trees one sees 

 here and there are from seed. As the 

 seed is plentiful we ought always to raise 

 the trees in that way. In the eastern 

 counties, near the coast, it attains per- 

 haps its finest development in Britain, 

 and is among the trees that may be used 

 to plant as a first defence against the 

 sea-winds. 



Wood. — Apart from its beauty, 

 there are few trees (a fact which is not 

 generally known or they would be more 

 often planted) that are so valuable for 

 their wood, good specimens being pre- 

 cious for making cricket-bats. Large 

 and well-grown trees are more valuable 

 than Oak and more difficult to procure. 

 The wood is very tough, easy to work, 

 denting and not splitting when struck; 

 planks are valuable as linings and for 

 brakes as fire resisting. If we want the 

 best timber we should plant it in allu- 

 vial soil by streams and lakes; and also 

 the best effects, since the spiry leaves 

 go best with other waterside trees and 

 plants. 



Like so many other trees, it is all 

 the better for grouping and massing, 



and we get a much better effect in that 

 way than by mixing it up in plantations, 

 as is so commonly done. The fact that 

 it does best in certain soils should en- 

 courage us to plant it there in masses. 

 Better three acres of it than three trees. 

 Bold masses of Willow trees growing 

 near the house give pleasant shade, and 

 a great many hardy plants may be grown 

 beneath that shade. 



To the field artist or tree-lover the 

 White Willow is known at sight or a 

 mile away, but there is so much con- 

 fusion among Willows, and such curi- 

 ous hybrid forms occur, that the late 

 Mr. Syme's description of the tree may 

 be of use in distinguishing it from those 

 Willows coming nearest to it in charac- 

 ter. Syme, author of the third edition 

 of "English Botany," was one of those 

 botanists who took a keener interest in 

 living things than in the dried material 

 of the herbarium, and I think the best 

 of all British botanists. He rather re- 

 luctantly puts the Yellow Willow {S. 

 vitelline?) under alba as a form, but from 

 our point of view this will not do, let us 

 keep the trees distinct, as they are in 

 effect, in colour, and in size. 



" A tree attaining a great size, with thick Jis r 

 sured bark; branches more erect than in S. fragilis, 

 the shoots of the year generally silky pubescent. 

 Leaves 2.\ to 4 inches long, with the lateral margins 

 more regularly curved from the base to the apex 

 than in S. fragilis ; and in the typical form, both 

 sides are clothed with silky white hairs, especially 

 when young; when old, the upper side becomes green 

 from the pubescence being sparse, the under side in 

 one var iety at length nearly denuded and glaucous. 

 The male catkins are shorter and more slender than 

 those of S. fragilis, with the f laments and anthers 

 darker yellow. The female catkins are much more 

 slender and lax than in fragilis and viridis, with 

 longer catkin-scales and with very shortly stalkea 



