The Flora of Winter 



A TRIBUTE TO THE EVERGREENS 

 "BY FRED MYRON COL'BY 



POETS rave about the delights of 

 spring, the glories of autumn, and 

 the luxuriant magnificence of sum- 

 mer. But who has ever talked about the 

 flora of winter? Yet there is nothing 

 so beautiful as a winter landscape. There 

 is a purity and a grandeur about it that 

 the summer landscapes lack. That sensu- 

 ousness of sound and color is gone, but 

 the air is full of ozone, and the delicate 

 aroma of the pines and the cypress trees. 

 Even the slumberous whisperings of the 

 needle-laden boughs, or the soft pelting 

 of the snow crystals upon the emerald- 

 tufted cones, have a charm that summer 

 sounds do not possess. 



The flora of winter is well defined. 

 Winter is rich in color, and the enchanted 

 foliage is like a chapter from the Arabian 

 Nights. Not only ruby and emerald jew- 

 els and shining crystals, but living cones 

 and leaves of green — the dress of a real 

 sovereign — are borne by these trees, the 

 evergreens, which stand out against the 

 whiteness just as if they had stepped out 

 of Aladdin's garden. Have you counted 

 all these beautiful evergreen trees that 

 pitch their emerald richness against the 

 • snowy whiteness or the dreary brown of 

 winter? They constitute a verv inter- 

 esting family. The pine, the spruce, the 

 hemlock, the fir, the arbor-vitse, the cedar, 

 the juniper, the cypress and the yew — 

 which of these trees could we spare from 

 the landscape ? If we call the white pine 

 the king of our woods, the hemlock should 

 stand for the queen, and a group of balsam 

 fir would answer for the princes. The 

 cedars and spruces stand as sentinels along 

 the line of hills, guarding the valleys, the 

 cedars solitary watchmen, the spruces 

 clambering up in bands, while the yew 

 and the arbor-vitae cluster with neighborly 



kindness in our gardens and cemeteries 

 and in the squares and parks of our cities. 



These trees belong to one of the oldest 

 classes of our flora. They formed the 

 landscapes of the old coal period. All 

 these black masses of anthracite were once 

 stately pines and cedars. They sheltered 

 the huge, unwieldy lizards, and reflected 

 themselves in the glassy waters where the 

 saurians swam and basked in their dreamy 

 existence. Legends, sweet and manifold, 

 cluster around these trees in the literature 

 of every race. The juniper-tree is dear 

 to the children from the old German story 

 of the "Stepmother and the Juniper- 

 Tree." The yew, so celebrated from its 

 churchyard associations and from its be- 

 ing employed in the manufacture of bows 

 — the weapon principally used by the 

 Welsh and English before the introduc- 

 tion of firearms — was a sacred tree with 

 the Druids, and is connected with many 

 of their religious ceremonies. 



The balsam fir forms a great feature in 

 the German forests, and it reigns espe- 

 cially in the Black Forest, where all the 

 elves and dwarfs of the German stories 

 are to be found. Then there is the cy- 

 press, consecrated by the ancient Greeks 

 to Venus and Apollo, and dedicated to the 

 dead. 



The stateliest and noblest of the coni- 

 ferse is the white pine. Like a Greek 

 statue in a luxurious drawing room, sharp- 

 cut, cold, virginal, shaming by the gran- 

 deur of mere form the voluptuousness of 

 mere color, so stands the pine, a thing 

 to be worshiped rather than to be loved. 



In the winter the pine seems like a 

 trusty friend, stretching out his shelter- 

 ing arms, a type of strong constancy. You 

 think of Bayard Taylor's "The Palm and 

 the Pine,'' and dream of the swart, bare- 



