THE ALDER. 



91 



deep green leaves, which as well as the young 

 shoots are covered with a glutinous substance, 

 more especially in the early part of the summer. 

 The leaves are roundish, blunt and serrated,* 

 shining above, and furnished at the angles of the 

 veins beneath with minute tufts of whitish down. 

 The leaf-stalks are nearly an inch in length, and 

 furnished with stipules,f which entirely enclose 

 the leaves before their expansion. The flowers 

 are of two kinds ; the barren are long drooping 

 catkins which appear in the autumn, and hang on 

 the tree all the winter, and the fertile are oval, 

 like little Fir-cones, but are not produced until 

 spring. When these ripen, the thick scales of 

 which they are composed separate, and allow the 

 seeds to fall, but remain attached to the tree 

 themselves all the winter, and by them the tree 

 may be distinguished when stripped of all its 

 foliage. In young trees the bark is smooth and 

 of a dark purple-brown hue, but in old trees it is 

 rugged and nearly black. When allowed to attain 

 its full growth, it reaches a height of forty or 

 fifty feet, if the situation be favourable ; but in 

 the mountains and in high latitudes it does not rise 

 above a shrub. Wordsworth, in one of his son- 

 nets to the river Duddon, says : — 



" But now to form a shade 

 For thee, green Alders have together wound 

 Their foliage ; Ashes flung their arms around. 

 And Birch-trees risen in silver colonnade." 



There are probably few rivers in England 

 which have not Alders growing somewhere 



* Serrated, notched like a saw. *j* Stipules ; see vol. i. p. xix. 



